President Donald Trump struck a blow against the “net-zero” climate agenda on Monday with an executive order targeting “unreliable, foreign controlled” renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
“For too long, the Federal Government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar. The proliferation of these projects displaces affordable, reliable, dispatch-able domestic energy sources, compromises our electric grid, and denigrates the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape,” said President Trump in the order “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources.”
The order warned that reliance on green-energy subsidies poses a natural security threat by making the U.S. beholden to supply-chains controlled by foreign adversaries. Trump also warned that green-energy subsidies cost taxpayers massive amounts of money.
“Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts to unreliable energy sources is vital to energy dominance, national security, economic growth, and the fiscal health of the Nation,” said the president.
Under the order, the U.S. will begin to “rapidly” eliminate taxpayer-funded green-energy subsidies, working to amplify provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill spending package that repealed and modified green-energy tax credits.
The order particularly targeted taxpayer funding for energy sources and supply chains created and controlled by foreign adversaries like China. The U.S. is largely reliant on China for many of its clean energy programs because China produces 80 percent of the world’s solar panels.
In contrast, the U.S. produces just two percent of the world’s solar panels.
China also produces two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, used to store energy produced by solar panels, and two-thirds of the world’s wind turbines.
The order instructs the Secretary of the Treasury to strictly enforce the end of clean-energy subsidies within 45 days of the enactment of the Big Beautiful Bill, which Trump signed on July 4. The order will also ensure that the Secretary of the Treasury implements enhanced foreign entity of concern restrictions included in the spending bill.
Those restrictions limit the amount of batteries a company can purchase from a foreign adversary.
Under the order, the Secretary of the Interior will review policies to determine whether any give preferential treatment to wind and solar energy instillations, and modify or repeal those policies.
Maine’s state government, under the control of Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) and Democrats in the legislature, has pushed economically questionable green-energy policies, including the controversial net-energy billing policy that has driven companies out of business by raising electricity rates to subsidize clean energy projects.
