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Stuart Palley

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory is not good for the climate. Lacking American leadership, global efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions are likely to flag.

But on the narrow objective of reducing domestic emissions, chances are a Trump presidency will not make as much of a difference as one might suspect. Environmentalists alarmed by Mr. Trump’s promises to end Washington’s embrace of renewable energy might take a more optimistic view, at least at first: They might have opportunities to promote building a zero-carbon economy by harnessing Mr. Trump’s interest in deregulating and ramping up energy production.

The United States’ track record on reducing greenhouse gas emissions was unexpectedly encouraging during Mr. Trump’s first term, through no particular effort on his part. Despite his promises to promote fossil fuels, emissions barely budged during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office, before they tanked during the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> pandemic. Renewable power on the electricity grid <a href="https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_03_01_a.html" target=_blank>grew 49 percent</a> during his administration. The share of fossil fuels in electricity generation fell from 65 percent in 2016 to 60 percent in 2020.

Mr. Trump’s calls to “drill, baby, drill” might sound unseemly, given the urgency to end the use of fossil fuels. But this is not where the battle for the climate will be won or lost. <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545" target=_blank>Oil production surged</a> during the Biden administration. Still, U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions declined over the past two years — fueled by a surge in production of renewable energy. And that will probably continue.

The subsidies for renewables in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, which encouraged vast new investment in clean power production, remain in place, and there is a plausible case they will persist. Much of the money has gone to Republican-controlled states where wind and solar resources are abundant and building infrastructure faces fewer regulatory hurdles. Their governors and members of Congress will undoubtedly push to keep the federal assistance flowing.

Even if Mr. Trump persuaded Congress to end the subsidies altogether, the decarbonization of energy in the United States would probably continue, though perhaps with less speed and at a smaller scale. Renewable power generation is cheap enough that it no longer requires subsidies to make substantial inroads into the grid. In several states, decarbonization is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-023-03645-7" target=_blank>proceeding faster</a> than what federal clean energy mandates require.

The biggest obstacles to further decarbonize the U.S. power grid are the extreme regulatory barriers to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/06/environmentalists-climate-clean-energy-regulation/" target=_blank>building new infrastructure</a>, particularly the <a href="https://repeatproject.org/docs/REPEAT_IRA_Transmission_2022-09-22.pdf" target=_blank>transmission capacity</a> the country needs to move electricity long distances. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 allows all sorts of challenges to new projects on a variety of environmental grounds. In this regard, Mr. Trump’s deregulatory agenda could further the climate agenda by allowing developers to build the new infrastructure the energy transition requires.

To be sure, there is plenty to worry about in another Trump presidency. While reducing American greenhouse-gas emissions will be part of the battle to contain climate change, it is not the most critical. The United States <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-will-reach-new-high-in-2024-despite-slower-growth/#:~:text=The%202024%20Global%20Carbon%20Budget%20finds%20that%20CO2%20emissions%20from,previous%20record%2C%20set%20last%20year." target=_blank>accounts for only 13 percent</a> of the world’s emissions. Preventing a climate catastrophe will require enormous progress on trimming the other 87 percent. This will be far more difficult if Washington pulls support.

Despite declines in the United States and Europe, global emissions are expected to rise this year. They will be driven mostly by emissions from India — where the supply of renewable energy is growing slower than the overall demand for power and coal is filling the gap. Emissions from other poor countries are also projected to grow alongside their demand for power.

Trimming emissions in these economies will require new technologies that the United States needs to invest in at home — both to develop them and make them cheap. It will also require money for developing countries. Experts at the international climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, this week <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/A-Climate-Finance-Framework-IHLEG-Report-2-SUMMARY.pdf" target=_blank>have suggested that</a> less-developed countries will need about $1 trillion a year in outside help. This is a forbidding number. Without the United States, it will be nigh impossible to attain.

Engaging with Mr. Trump will be essential. Perhaps the next president could be persuaded that China would provide the technology and financing if the United States doesn’t, taking a dominant role in supplying critical infrastructure to the world. Those concerned about the climate need to at least try to make the best of the next four, long years.

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