Three questions about the future of US climate tech under Trump

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Donald Trump has officially been in office for just over a week, and the new administration has hit the ground running with a blizzard of executive orders and memos.

Some of the moves could have major effects for climate change and climate technologies—for example, one of the first orders Trump signed signaled his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the major international climate treaty.

The road map for withdrawing from the Paris agreement is clear, but not all the effects of these orders are quite so obvious. There’s a whole lot of speculation about how far these actions reach, which ones might get overturned, and generally what comes next. Here are some of the crucial threads that I’m going to be following.

Will states be able to set their own rules on electric vehicles? 

It’s clear that Donald Trump isn’t a fan of electric vehicles. One of the executive orders issued on his first day in office promised to eliminate the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.” 

The federal government under Biden didn’t actually have an EV mandate in place—rather, Trump is targeting national support programs, including subsidies that lower the cost of EVs for drivers and support building public chargers. But that’s just the beginning, because the executive order will go after states that have set their own rules on EVs. 

While the US Environmental Protection Agency does set some rules around EVs through what are called tailpipe standards, last year California was granted a waiver that allows the state to set its own, stricter rules. The state now requires that all vehicles sold there must be zero-emissions by 2035. More than a dozen states quickly followed suit, setting a target to transition to zero-emissions vehicles within the next decade. That commitment was a major signal to automakers that there will be demand for EVs, and a lot of it, soon.

Trump appears to be coming after that waiver, and with it California’s right to set its own targets on EVs. We’ll likely see court battles over this, and experts aren’t sure how it’s going to shake out.

What will happen to wind projects?

Wind energy was one of the most explicit targets for Trump on the campaign trail and during his first few days in office. In one memo, the new administration paused all federal permits, leases, and loans for all offshore and onshore wind projects.

This doesn’t just affect projects on federal lands or waters—nearly all wind projects typically require federal permits, so this could have a wide effect.

Even if the order is temporary or doesn’t hold up in court, it could be enough to chill investment in a sector that’s already been on shaky ground. As I reported last year, rising costs and slow timelines were already throwing offshore wind projects off track in the US. Investment has slowed since I published that story, and now, with growing political opposition, things could get even rockier.

One major question is how much this will slow down existing projects, like the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho, which got the green light from the Biden administration before he left office. As one source told the Washington Post, the new administration may try to go after leases and permits that have already been issued, but “there may be insufficient authority to do so.”

What about the money?

In an executive order last week, the Trump administration called for a pause on handing out the funds that are legally set aside under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That includes hundreds of billions of dollars for climate research and infrastructure.

This week, a memo from the White House called for a wider pause on federal grants and loans. This goes way beyond climate spending and could affect programs like Medicaid. There’s been chaos since that was first reported; nobody seems to agree on what exactly will be affected or how long the pause was supposed to last, and as of Tuesday evening, a federal judge had blocked that order.

In any case, all these efforts to pause, slow, or stop federal spending will be a major source of fighting going forward. As for effects on climate technology, I think the biggest question is how far the new administration can and will go to block spending that’s already been designated by Congress. There could be political consequences—most funds from the Inflation Reduction Act have gone to conservative-leaning states.  

As I wrote just after the election in November, Donald Trump’s return to office means a sharp turn for the US on climate policy, and we’re seeing that start to play out very quickly. I’ll be following it all, but I’d love to hear from you. What do you most want to know more about? What questions do you have? If you work in the climate sector, how are you seeing your job affected? You can email me at ca*************@**************ew.com, message me on Bluesky, or reach me on Signal: @casey.131.

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Related reading

EVs are mostly set for solid growth this year, but what happens in the US is still yet to be seen, as my colleague James Temple covered in a recent story. 

The Inflation Reduction Act set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for climate spending. Here’s how the law made a difference, two years in.

For more on Trump’s first week in office, check out this news segment from Science Friday (featuring yours truly). 

STEPHANIE ARNETT/ MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | RAWPIXEL

Another thing

DeepSeek has stormed onto the AI scene. The company released a new reasoning model, called DeepSeek R1, which it claims can surpass the performance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1. The model appears to be incredibly efficient, which upends the idea that huge amounts of computing power, and energy, are needed to drive the AI revolution. 

For more, check out this story on the company and its model from my colleague Caiwei Chen, and this look at what it means for the AI industry and its energy claims from James O’Donnell. 

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