July 17, 2025 • 31 mins
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts almost $500 billion in US clean-energy spending, just as the country was starting to get serious about its climate goals. Some say the country is acting like a petrostate, waging war against clean energy. Others are more sanguine and believe that the US will stay the course in the long term. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Jigar Shah, a clean energy expert and former head of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, to make sense of the bill’s impacts, and whether it’s as bad for climate as it seems.
Explore more:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week one Big
Beautiful Climate mess. On July third, the US Congress passed
President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, a huge package of
(00:23):
economic and tax legislation that's meant to reorganize American society.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The bill gave.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Tax breaks to corporations and to the richest Americans while
cutting into budgets for medical programs, food aid, and, most
importantly for this show, clean energy spending. The US Office
of Budget Responsibility estimates that the bill, which we'll call
O Triple B, will cut four hundred and eighty eight
billion dollars in clean energy spending over the next ten years.
(00:52):
And that's only the government spending part. The four hundred
and eighty eight billion dollars were supposed to be matched
many times over by private and investment, which may not
happen now. As a result, it is a dire prognosis
for the US, which only just started to take its
climate goals seriously. So has the US given up on
green tech? Jiggershaw doesn't think so.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
The moment that we're in is the exact same moment
that the fracking industry was in in twenty fourteen. When
the Saudi Arabians decided to declare war against the fracking
industry in the United States, and the fracking industry didn't
cry in their beer. They came out of that stronger
than they went into that battle. But I think at
the time all of the stock analysts and all of
(01:35):
the big newspapers were saying the fracking industry was dead.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Jiggershaw spent the last two decades in the clean energy
industry in the US, and most recently he was the
head of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office. He's
also a previous guest on Zero when he came on
to announce a nine billion dollar loan to Ford Motors
to help the company build out its electric vehicle battery manufacturing.
So I got to ask him, what does the passing
(02:00):
of the O Triple B mean for the US's climate goals,
whether US climate innovation is now dead in the water,
and what does the bill's passing mean for US China
clean tech competition. Welcome back to the show, Jigger.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
It's great to be back. It's always interesting times that
we live in.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Well, let's start with the headline, because President Trump's one big,
beautiful bill has now become an act, and according to
the Office of Budget Responsibility, it means four hundred and
eighty eight billion dollars worth of clean energy spending that's gone.
Much of it was linked to President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
And of course you served under the Biden administration. So
(02:43):
let's look at the big picture first and we'll come
to the nittigrity later. Biden set out a goal that
the US will cut its emissions in half by the
end of the decade relative to two thousand and five levels.
Do you think the O Triple B has killed any
hope that the US will meet those goals.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I think that the people who voted for the O
Triple B believe that they intended to kill those goals.
I think that that we've seen this before, right, So
I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I mean, this is
obviously a huge setback for our industry, right, And you
would say that this is the first time that a
(03:22):
sitting president has gone to war with clean energy. But
I think at the same time, when you think about
where our industry was in twenty seventeen when Trump first
came into office, it was quite nascent, right. I mean
solar panels were not necessarily fully bankable, like battery storage
was a gleam in people's eye. Today, I would suggest
that you know, we are now in a place where
(03:44):
Pakistan is deploying you know, twelve gigawatts of solar a year, right,
and you see many other countries doing the same thing
around the world. I think you've got you know, folks
who are installing balcony solar at record levels in Germany.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Battery storage has clearly saved the Texas grid every single day,
and as a result, like the O trouble, b has not.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Touched battery storage.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
And so I would suggest to you that one the
industry has to recognize that it has now gotten targeted,
and so it needs to invest the money required to
actually defend itself. Right. So, today the clean energy industry
the United States invests double the amount of CAPEX that
the oil and gas industry does each year. And that's
(04:25):
a big number because remember the US is the largest
producer of oil and gas in the world. So I'm
not referring to a small industry, but we're double the
amount of capax every year that the oil and gas
industry do, and we spend one twentieth of the amount
of money on influence and political power, and so as
a result, we have very little of it. And so
(04:46):
I think for a long time people thought, but we're
cute and furry and beautiful to hold like no one
hates clean energy. Well, there are people who actually hate
clean energy, right, And so I think we all need
to acknowledge the humble nature of what's happened here and
recognize that this is all solvable. Right, that we can
(05:08):
build political power, we provide a huge amount of local benefits.
And you know, I would say, this is the first
time in my lifetime that so many elected officials deliberately
tried to sabotage their own constituents in service to a
party leader. So we'll see how durable this war against
clean energy really is.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So I spoke to one analyst and he basically put
it in the simplest way. He said, the clean energy
part of this bill is more about cultural issues than
economic ones. At a time, as you noted, rest of
the world is doubling down on clean energy, this bill
will pull the US back from investing in it. His
read was that the US is actually acting like a
(05:50):
petro state, not a country that wants to dominate on energy?
Is that a fair read?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
You know, I find that people have a lot of
these hot takes, and I think it's important to start
with just saying what I did before, which is that
we were targeted as an industry and as a result,
and we were unprepared for that targeting and so we
lost that. Being said, right, we have an affordability crisis
in the United States. Right, what this bill has done
is stripped seventeen million people have medicaid. If you look
(06:18):
at the way the president has operated our economy, we
started his administration with a two percent average tariff on
all incoming goods the United States. Today, our average triff
is fifteen percent, and with all the announcements happening as
we speak, that number might be twenty five percent. That
is generally on the back of poor people, right, And
(06:38):
so that means a bunch of people are going to
spend an extra eighteen hundred dollars five thousand dollars per
year on stuff, depending on what they're buying. And so
you could imagine how quickly this will change within a year.
That if a year from now, people's electricity bills are
up nine percent, because of all these bad decisions, you
could imagine them reversing them very quickly after the midterm elections, right,
(07:02):
And so I want to make sure that people recognize
this for what it is, which is a stunning defeat
of the clean energy industry and a wake up call
to the fact that yes, we have extraordinary solutions and
they are by far the easiest way to reach energy
dominance and to reach affordability for consumers. But we did
(07:24):
not do the work to make sure that everyone understood that.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
So let's get into the details, and I'll just list
a few things because they're worthy of noting. We know
that ev tax credits that were taken off seven five
hundred dollars off the sticker price of a car, those
are going away later this year, a whole bunch of
incentives that would have made it cheaper for people to
electrify their home. But rooftop solar those are going away.
(07:50):
But there are some tax credits for clean energy that
have been protected. So when you look at the bill,
is there any good news for climate tech in there?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, So let's be very specific about what's in the bill,
because I think that people get very confused. We are
going to have a boom in residential solar this year
as people try to install solar before the twenty five
D tax credit expires at the end of the year. Right, So,
everybody I know of that I've talked to is fully
sold out through the end of the year. Right there,
they're working as hard as they can. For the large
(08:22):
scale projects or this is commercial and utility scale projects,
all of the companies who've already started construction of projects
will be given the ability to finish them, you know,
within twenty twenty seven without any additional foreign entities of
concern language, any of the other poison pills don't apply
if the project's already under construction, And so that takes
(08:43):
us all the way through twenty twenty seven, right So
I just want to make sure that we're crystal clear
that like solar and wind are going to have bumper
years this year, next year, probably in twenty twenty seven
as well. Then there's a drop off. And so this
is you know, what you call a cold water approach
to phasing out subsidies. Right now, you've got a lot
(09:04):
of less mature sectors that have been given much more runway,
and batteries are included in that so I think that's
a good new story. And the vast majority of the
battery developers are all solar and wind developers, those divisions
of their companies will grow while the other divisions of
their companies might go slightly flat. Then you've got a
huge pusher on nuclear, which I think has largely been
(09:25):
started by the Biden administration, and I think that currently
the Trump administration is sort of just using the work
that we did. I don't think they've actually done their
own work yet, but I'm hopeful that they will. Right
they have promised to streamline regulations and make it easier
to do stuff, But when I talk to investors, their
spreadsheetsn't haven't resulted in any reductions and costs in the spreadsheets,
(09:47):
So we'll see whether that comes through. I think enhanced
gild thermal is on its way. I think that was
already on its way with the Geothermal Liftoff report that
we wrote and all the other things that we've done.
I think the oil and gas industry are very interested
in investing in that space. I would suggest that they're
actually not being ambitious enough in the enhance shield thermal
based on the private sector side, I think that this
administration desperately wants to help them more, and they're not
(10:09):
being more vocal about how they might be able to
receive or utilize that help, right, So I think there's
some communication challenges there. There was a huge amount of
additional resources provide to hydro power, and we have thirty
seven thousand megawatts of old hydro that is going to
be retired over the next five to eight years, right,
(10:30):
So relicensing all that hydro, putting in next generation technology
could get fifty percent more power output out of all
of those existing sites, right, So it's a huge source
of clean, firm power that could come forward. There was
an extension of the fuel cell tax crits, which I'm
not quite sure is amazing, but it's great. There's some
good stuff in there, right, and around the commercialization of technology.
(10:51):
But I do think that the intention of this, which
I think will remain to be clear, is a phase
out of tax credits for mature technologies and more of
a focus on immature and commercializing technologies.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
There's also some tax cards being given to bring in
biofuels into sustainable aviation fuels. Yeah, what do you make
of those?
Speaker 3 (11:13):
You know, we wrote a lift off report at my
insistence that we published right before we left office, and
so to summarize it, basically says the EU refuses to
allow any crops to be used in their SAF production. Right,
so to the extent that you're making SAFF, you're making
it for the EU. They will not allow coren ethanol
to be used in any of that SAFF. So I
(11:33):
don't really understand why you would do it. I think
the Japanese program does allow for these sort of feedstocks
and so, but I think you could dwarf the Japanese
market pretty quickly by the existing plants that we've already
funded right out of the Loan Program's office. And so
I'm a big fan of biomethanol for shipping. I do
think that clean hydrogen is largely going to go into ammonia,
(11:54):
which is what we always predicted at the Loan Program's office.
So I think a lot of these clean fuels what
do you call it fights that people were having the
last four years, are trying to resolve themselves as to
you know, like which feedstocks go into saff, which feedstocks
go into shipping? You know, which feedstocks go are the places?
And so we're trying to figure all that stuff out.
(12:15):
In the US is clearly blessed with an extraordinary agriculture industry,
but I think, as you also know, agriculture is not
devoid of climate impacts. And so I do think that
from a climate perspective, we're going to all have to
be a lot more thoughtful about whether this is really
serving us well on the climate side, or whether this
(12:35):
is really just a push.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
And speaking of the Loan Program's Office, last time you
were here on zero almost exactly two years ago, you
were talking about the nine point two billion dollar loan
to Ford to build batteries for electric cars. How much
of the progress you made at the LPO will be
undone by this bill or what has been done by
the Trump administration so far.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I think it depends on what you mean by under
I would say that to date they have not undone anything. Right,
so all of the loans that we issued have been
honored to date, none of them have been unfairly rescinded
or whatever you would suggest. I do think they've been
slow to close the loans that I had laid for
them to close, and so I'm shocked at how long
(13:19):
it's taken for them to take the wins that we
gave them. If you look at the O Triple B,
it has more resources for loan Program's office. That's very specific,
right to relabeling the seventeen oh six program, which was
Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program into like the Energy Dominance Financing
or they've relabeled some other stuff. So so they have
(13:42):
a lot of resources, and so the resources that they
have remaining could match our production. So they could do
another one hundred and eight billion dollars worth of loans
over this next four years, presumably in their preferred sectors
like you know, nuclear or geothermol or or these other areas.
But you know, to date they have not shown that
(14:03):
they have a clear mandate around where to put that money.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You had about four hundred billion dollars count here and
there when initially we talked about it. There has been
certain amount of rescinding happening, right, three point six billion
dollars for the Title seventeen Loan Guarantee Program, three billion
dollars for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing, five billion dollars
for the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program. So current loans that
(14:28):
you have given out, those haven't been rescinded, But there
are future loans that could have been given out under
those programs that are gone now.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, but I don't think it really matters all that much.
I mean, this is all money that was set aside
to do certain things. Right, it was very clear that
elections have consequences and they were not going to do
those certain things, and so having the money sit there
and them not putting it out the door, it doesn't
make any sense. And so they've rescinded it. Fine, and
they've provided an additional billion dollars of new money for
things that they do want to do. So they took
(14:55):
some away, they put some more back in, and they
can give us the Loan Programs Office more money in
the funding bills that there will be passing later this year. Right,
So that part I'm not concerned about. I do think
that they have the resources to do the same amount
of loans that we did, but in their preferred sectors.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
We'll be back with more of my conversation with Jiggashaw
after this break, and Hey, if you're finding this episode insightful,
please take a moment to rate and review the show
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback really matters and
helps new listeners discover the show. Thank you. Coming back
(15:42):
to the politics of it, and I think you put
it well, which is that, Look, the clean energy industry
in the US doesn't spend much, very small fraction one
twentieth of what the oil and gas industry spends on lobbying.
But in the thinking of the Inflation Act and of
the Biden administration, there was always this goal that if
(16:05):
you bring both red states, Republican led states, and Democrat
led states together and you provide these tax credits going
to all states, and especially in the IRA much of
it was going more than the majority was going to
the Republican side, that that is what will hold these
politicians to account and they won't cause self harm by
(16:26):
rescinding these things. So where did that fail and what
lessons do you take from it for the clean energy industry?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I think there are two different questions, right, So I
think we need to be very careful about what we're
concluding in these data points, right. I mean, President Trump
is a very unique individual. Like when you think about
his poll numbers and his actual voting numbers, he really
won the working class in a very big way. But
more than that, since twenty seventeen, he has remade the
(16:57):
Republican Party so that he is the only dominant force
that everyone should fear him. When you have that much
power over individuals, then they do things that are blatantly
in disregard for their constituents. And so whether it's out
of fear right, fear for their family, fear for reelection,
fear for whatever it is, that does not invalidate the
(17:19):
thesis behind the Inflation Reduction Act. When you think about
twenty plus people on the Republican side in the House
that signed the letter, plus you had four or five
Republican Senators that were genuinely looking to try to save
all the incentives. And so when you think about where
this whole thing landed, right, it is terrible for the
clean energy industry, and it was so much better than
(17:44):
it could have been, right, And so I don't think
that we should take from this that this is not
a durable solution.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
In a million years, no one would.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Have suggested that elected officials would actively sabotage facturing facilities
in their community. No one would have guessed that, right,
this is the single largest assault on working class people
that we've had in I don't know, like since Ronald
(18:13):
Reagan was promising to do that in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
We're also in this period where the US and Europe
and the Western world in general is seeing electricity consumption
rise at a level that it hasn't seen in decades.
Much of what would have happened under the IRA would
have enabled the rollout of clean energy, but crucially, it
would have rolled out cheap electricity to these data centers
(18:36):
that are consuming huge amounts of it.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
How do you.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Think ut triple B affects the scaling up of data
centers in the US.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
I think that the economic development story in the United States,
right is something that's very strong, and it's one that
the utilities want to support. It's the governors want to
support their utilities in getting those things done. And you know,
I mean, at least in rhetoric, the President of the
United States also wants to make sure we win the
AI race and all that stuff, right, So I think
(19:08):
that we're going to win that race. I think what's
going to likely occur is we're going to move much
faster than even I imagined into the you know, distributed
capacity procurement. You know that Spark Fund is doing in Minnesota,
the virtual power plant programs that are being done across
the country. I think what you will see in this
moment is an enormous deployment of demand flexibility enabled by
(19:32):
the batteries that you know got full subsidization within the ultriple.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
B Well, the battery manufacturing supply chain though does not
have the same credits left.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
No they do.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
They still get the.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Forty five x credit local content.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
No local content, they don't, so they no longer have
to buy lithium or graph height or battery separators or
whatever from local companies. But there's a production credit. So
for every megawat hour of batteries that they made, they
got a payment. They still get those and most of
the existing battery manufacturing facilities in the US or EV
(20:09):
battery manufacturing facilities, so they will continue to be put
into evs. And then you know, I think some of
the battery manufacturing facilities that were built a little more
slowly are converting themselves into utility scale battery manufacturing facilities,
so making LFP batteries, making batteries that are for utility
scale applications, and so that conversion is happening now.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So BLOOMAGAINIFS modeling shows that manufacturing capacity increase in battery
making in the US is going to be much lower
because a lot of the electric vehicle battery manufacturing is
not coming online. But overall, trying to actually build out
a supply chain in the US for batteries is going
to be a harder challenge than it was before the
(20:53):
U Triple B. Is that not right?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, that's right. So battery manufacturing was on track to
reaching four hundred gigo wa hours worth production in the US.
I still think we're going to reach that target, to
be clear, but I think what's happening is for the
plants that were were being built more slowly, they have
an opportunity today to convert them to serve the utility
scale battery market and not the electric vehicle market, and
(21:17):
all of those conversions are being made. So I think
we'll still get to four hundred gig what hours, but
it'll be a bigger mix between of utility scale versus
electric vehicle batteries. But the electric vehicle batteries will still
be I don't know, two hundred and seventy gig what
hours or so. So that's why I'm saying like, I
don't think we know how this is going to play out.
I feel like the O Triple B was so randomly
(21:39):
constructed that you know that, I think people are still
trying to figure out exactly how they're going to implement
all these provisions.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
So on evs. The projections before or Triple B was
that the US would have reached half of new sales
being EV's by twenty thirty. That's now dropping, according to
Borghini f estimates, to thirty seven percent. Fast forward fifteen years.
Let's not worry about what is going to happen tomorrow.
(22:08):
But given the rest of the world is speeding up
on EV transition, It's not just China, it's also India,
It's also Europe, even Africa. You're seeing two whelar electric
vehicles take off. Do we end up in this situation
where the US still remains the place where the gas
guzzler is king and everybody else is you know, zipping
(22:29):
around in EV's breathing clean air.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
We don't, no.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I mean, this is what I'm saying is that I
feel like all of these prognostications are done on models
that were built by you know, sort of human beings
who had assumptions. Right, The way that the US market
has been moving and will move is to plug in
hybrid vehicles. We were never going to be all electric vehicles.
Both my in laws and my parents just bought a
(22:55):
plug in hybrid vehicle. They're both the same exact one actually,
and it was thirty three like miles or thirty four
miles electric. Almost all new models are heading towards forty
forty five miles electric for these plug and hybrid vehicles,
and I think the vast majority of people, I think
are going to move to these thirty forty mile plug
and hybrid vehicle batteries. And my parents, I mean, they
(23:18):
get that light that shines that says your gas is
getting stale because you haven't used it in two months, right,
So it meets one hundred percent of their needs. And
I put in a level too charger for them, but
they won't use it. So they'll they just plug it
into the wall using Level one because it's only one
of a thirty four mile range and they're like it
works fine, Like we don't need that. So I think
(23:39):
you will see that America because of the long distances
that we drive. Like what you will find is the
vast majority of people will find comfort with a plug
in hybrid, and then they will solve their range anxiety
by just using gasoline when they go beyond that period,
and that will still result in ninety percent of that
family is vehicle miles traveled going to zero mission.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So if we split the energy transition into these mature
technologies and these maturing immature technologies, we looked at how
much of the tax rates for the mature technologies are
being taken away. On the maturing side, we talked through
nuclear geothermal, maybe some bio fuel for saff but those,
as you said, are not being done thoughtfully. There's no
(24:23):
real proactive nature to try and build those out. Sitting
here outside the US, it does feel like the US,
at least under Trump, will have given up on competing
with China on the mature technologies. Right, You're going to
have some solar and some batteries and they'll grow, but
(24:43):
really that supply chain is not going to get built
in the US in the next four years. You're going
to have to depend on foreign entities. Maybe you're welcome, Uckshut,
You're welcome.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
For a long time, everybody was yelling at me for
the IRA being too low and you're stealing all of
our companies and all of our opportunity. I have now
given it back to you. You must now continue the mission.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Do you think I mean from the US perspective, do
you think four years down the line, say another president
comes in and say it's a climate friendly one, We'll
look at what happened and say, yes, we can still
compete with China.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Look, I think that the thing that people got wrong before,
and I think what they're getting wrong now is that
while I loved serving the last four years within the
Biden administration, we were always private sector led, government enabled.
I think people thought that that was a throwaway line,
but it really wasn't. Everything in the United States is
(25:44):
driven by the private sector. And if you look at
this next week, there's a big conference in Detroit of
all the major venture capital funds and others who voted
for Trump, and they are all talking about putting up
tens of billions of dollars into reindustrialing our country. And
so they're looking to pick up all these projects and
to continue to build them right. And so we'll see
(26:06):
which ones succeed in which ones don't succeed. In what
they decide to do and what they don't decide to do.
But that's the private sector leading. Trump is not going
to stop them from leading, right, Like, if they want
to build something here in the United States, because we
did ninety percent of the work under the last administration
and they want to take it the last ten percent
of the way, they're going to do that, right, And
so like, I just think that people thought that there
(26:28):
was this imperial presidency within the Biden administration and now
an imperial presidency within the Trump administration, and for these issues,
neither is true.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Now.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You know, we could talk about immigration, or we could
talk about other issues, but like, for these issues, neither
was true. Right, This was always private sector led, and
those people continue to do it.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Now.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Have we taken a gut punch, like a you know,
a huge gut punch. Yes, Right after we thought that
we had align the interest of everyone in the political
spectrum around figuring out how to diversify supply chains from China, right,
people are saying, well, we're going to say all the
right things, but we're not going to do all the
right things, and the ult triple be that sucks, But
(27:09):
hopefully it's a wake up call to our industry that look,
these technologies continue to be the way of the future. Right,
If you can't do it in the United States, you
can go to the UK, you can go to the EU,
you can go to Canada, go to Australia. They still
have all their programs in place. They want you to
go there to do that work. And some folks are
just you know, stubborn, So they're going to keep trying
(27:29):
to do it here in the United States and I'm
here for it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
What should the clean energy industry do? You said, increase
political spending for lobbying, which you know, given how much
spending happens in US politics already, especially during the presidential elections,
you're calling for more.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Great, but strategically, although it's not spending that way, right,
it's more about the fact that we have projects in
communities around the country and most of those communities don't
even know that we're there. Right.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
We need to fund the t ball team, we need
to fund the local high school, we need to do
all of the things that you have to do. But
remember the moment that we're in is the exact same
moment that the fracking industry was in in twenty fourteen
when the Saudi Arabians decided to declare war against the
fracking industry in the United States, right, and the fracking
industry didn't cry in their beer. They woke up and said,
(28:19):
all right, let's figure out how to right size our
supply chain. Let's figure out how to get all of
our suppliers to cut their costs, Let's figure out how
to do all these things to continue to stay alive. Right,
And they came out of that stronger than they went
into that battle. But I think at the time, all
of the stock analysts and all of the big newspapers
were saying the fracking industry was dead, right, And so
(28:41):
I think that when you think about all the times
that I have been left for dead on the side
of the road, whether it was in two thousand and
eight after the global financial crisis, whether it was after
the Spanish program collapsed upon itself in twenty nine and
twenty ten and people said people are never going to
invest in Spain ever again, right, whether it's in German
and the manufacturing collapse of the solar panel industry there, like,
(29:03):
there's lots of times that our industry has been left
for dead, and we have risen and being stronger for it.
I think it's important to acknowledge, yes, the clean energy
industry is at war with this administration, and yes, the
clean energy industry has what it needs to thrive in
(29:24):
this moment. But you know, along the way, fifty percent
of our companies may go bankrupt, right the ones that
weren't well capitalized, the ones who weren't run well, et cetera,
may go bankrupt. And then the other fifty percent are
going to probably thrive out of this and take the
rest of the market share and continue to succeed. It
is still the case that our technologies are the best
in the world, and it is the only way we're
(29:45):
going to achieve energy dominance. It's the only way we're
going to unlock all these economic opportunities. But you know,
I think you can hold both of those ideas in
your head at the same time.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, I assume the clean energy industry wants to listen
to this, because right now things do quite dire and
you are still bullish, bullish within the framework of what
is going to be a tough challenge. Thank you, Jager,
of course, thanks for having me, and thank you for
(30:17):
listening to zero now for the sound of the week.
That's the sound of rock fall and the main climbing
route up mont Blanc. For the first time in recorded history,
during this European heat wave in June, the summit of
(30:40):
mont Blanc, at a height of four meters, remained above
freezing for a full twenty four hour period. Warmer temperatures
are leading to more rock fall across the Alps as
permafrost melts. If you liked this episode, please take a
moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify. Share this episode with a friend or with
(31:00):
the lobbyist. This episode was produced by Oscar boyd Our.
Theme music is composed by Wonderly Special Thanks to Jessica
bec Samersati, Mosses Andam and Shawan Wagner. I'm Akshatrati back soon.
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week one Big
Beautiful Climate mess. On July third, the US Congress passed
President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, a huge package of
(00:23):
economic and tax legislation that's meant to reorganize American society.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The bill gave.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Tax breaks to corporations and to the richest Americans while
cutting into budgets for medical programs, food aid, and, most
importantly for this show, clean energy spending. The US Office
of Budget Responsibility estimates that the bill, which we'll call
O Triple B, will cut four hundred and eighty eight
billion dollars in clean energy spending over the next ten years.
(00:52):
And that's only the government spending part. The four hundred
and eighty eight billion dollars were supposed to be matched
many times over by private and investment, which may not
happen now. As a result, it is a dire prognosis
for the US, which only just started to take its
climate goals seriously. So has the US given up on
green tech? Jiggershaw doesn't think so.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
The moment that we're in is the exact same moment
that the fracking industry was in in twenty fourteen. When
the Saudi Arabians decided to declare war against the fracking
industry in the United States, and the fracking industry didn't
cry in their beer. They came out of that stronger
than they went into that battle. But I think at
the time all of the stock analysts and all of
(01:35):
the big newspapers were saying the fracking industry was dead.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Jiggershaw spent the last two decades in the clean energy
industry in the US, and most recently he was the
head of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office. He's
also a previous guest on Zero when he came on
to announce a nine billion dollar loan to Ford Motors
to help the company build out its electric vehicle battery manufacturing.
So I got to ask him, what does the passing
(02:00):
of the O Triple B mean for the US's climate goals,
whether US climate innovation is now dead in the water,
and what does the bill's passing mean for US China
clean tech competition. Welcome back to the show, Jigger.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
It's great to be back. It's always interesting times that
we live in.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Well, let's start with the headline, because President Trump's one big,
beautiful bill has now become an act, and according to
the Office of Budget Responsibility, it means four hundred and
eighty eight billion dollars worth of clean energy spending that's gone.
Much of it was linked to President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
And of course you served under the Biden administration. So
(02:43):
let's look at the big picture first and we'll come
to the nittigrity later. Biden set out a goal that
the US will cut its emissions in half by the
end of the decade relative to two thousand and five levels.
Do you think the O Triple B has killed any
hope that the US will meet those goals.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I think that the people who voted for the O
Triple B believe that they intended to kill those goals.
I think that that we've seen this before, right, So
I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I mean, this is
obviously a huge setback for our industry, right, And you
would say that this is the first time that a
(03:22):
sitting president has gone to war with clean energy. But
I think at the same time, when you think about
where our industry was in twenty seventeen when Trump first
came into office, it was quite nascent, right. I mean
solar panels were not necessarily fully bankable, like battery storage
was a gleam in people's eye. Today, I would suggest
that you know, we are now in a place where
(03:44):
Pakistan is deploying you know, twelve gigawatts of solar a year, right,
and you see many other countries doing the same thing
around the world. I think you've got you know, folks
who are installing balcony solar at record levels in Germany.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Battery storage has clearly saved the Texas grid every single day,
and as a result, like the O trouble, b has not.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Touched battery storage.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
And so I would suggest to you that one the
industry has to recognize that it has now gotten targeted,
and so it needs to invest the money required to
actually defend itself. Right. So, today the clean energy industry
the United States invests double the amount of CAPEX that
the oil and gas industry does each year. And that's
(04:25):
a big number because remember the US is the largest
producer of oil and gas in the world. So I'm
not referring to a small industry, but we're double the
amount of capax every year that the oil and gas
industry do, and we spend one twentieth of the amount
of money on influence and political power, and so as
a result, we have very little of it. And so
(04:46):
I think for a long time people thought, but we're
cute and furry and beautiful to hold like no one
hates clean energy. Well, there are people who actually hate
clean energy, right, And so I think we all need
to acknowledge the humble nature of what's happened here and
recognize that this is all solvable. Right, that we can
(05:08):
build political power, we provide a huge amount of local benefits.
And you know, I would say, this is the first
time in my lifetime that so many elected officials deliberately
tried to sabotage their own constituents in service to a
party leader. So we'll see how durable this war against
clean energy really is.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So I spoke to one analyst and he basically put
it in the simplest way. He said, the clean energy
part of this bill is more about cultural issues than
economic ones. At a time, as you noted, rest of
the world is doubling down on clean energy, this bill
will pull the US back from investing in it. His
read was that the US is actually acting like a
(05:50):
petro state, not a country that wants to dominate on energy?
Is that a fair read?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
You know, I find that people have a lot of
these hot takes, and I think it's important to start
with just saying what I did before, which is that
we were targeted as an industry and as a result,
and we were unprepared for that targeting and so we
lost that. Being said, right, we have an affordability crisis
in the United States. Right, what this bill has done
is stripped seventeen million people have medicaid. If you look
(06:18):
at the way the president has operated our economy, we
started his administration with a two percent average tariff on
all incoming goods the United States. Today, our average triff
is fifteen percent, and with all the announcements happening as
we speak, that number might be twenty five percent. That
is generally on the back of poor people, right, And
(06:38):
so that means a bunch of people are going to
spend an extra eighteen hundred dollars five thousand dollars per
year on stuff, depending on what they're buying. And so
you could imagine how quickly this will change within a year.
That if a year from now, people's electricity bills are
up nine percent, because of all these bad decisions, you
could imagine them reversing them very quickly after the midterm elections, right,
(07:02):
And so I want to make sure that people recognize
this for what it is, which is a stunning defeat
of the clean energy industry and a wake up call
to the fact that yes, we have extraordinary solutions and
they are by far the easiest way to reach energy
dominance and to reach affordability for consumers. But we did
(07:24):
not do the work to make sure that everyone understood that.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
So let's get into the details, and I'll just list
a few things because they're worthy of noting. We know
that ev tax credits that were taken off seven five
hundred dollars off the sticker price of a car, those
are going away later this year, a whole bunch of
incentives that would have made it cheaper for people to
electrify their home. But rooftop solar those are going away.
(07:50):
But there are some tax credits for clean energy that
have been protected. So when you look at the bill,
is there any good news for climate tech in there?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, So let's be very specific about what's in the bill,
because I think that people get very confused. We are
going to have a boom in residential solar this year
as people try to install solar before the twenty five
D tax credit expires at the end of the year. Right, So,
everybody I know of that I've talked to is fully
sold out through the end of the year. Right there,
they're working as hard as they can. For the large
(08:22):
scale projects or this is commercial and utility scale projects,
all of the companies who've already started construction of projects
will be given the ability to finish them, you know,
within twenty twenty seven without any additional foreign entities of
concern language, any of the other poison pills don't apply
if the project's already under construction, And so that takes
(08:43):
us all the way through twenty twenty seven, right So
I just want to make sure that we're crystal clear
that like solar and wind are going to have bumper
years this year, next year, probably in twenty twenty seven
as well. Then there's a drop off. And so this
is you know, what you call a cold water approach
to phasing out subsidies. Right now, you've got a lot
(09:04):
of less mature sectors that have been given much more runway,
and batteries are included in that so I think that's
a good new story. And the vast majority of the
battery developers are all solar and wind developers, those divisions
of their companies will grow while the other divisions of
their companies might go slightly flat. Then you've got a
huge pusher on nuclear, which I think has largely been
(09:25):
started by the Biden administration, and I think that currently
the Trump administration is sort of just using the work
that we did. I don't think they've actually done their
own work yet, but I'm hopeful that they will. Right
they have promised to streamline regulations and make it easier
to do stuff, But when I talk to investors, their
spreadsheetsn't haven't resulted in any reductions and costs in the spreadsheets,
(09:47):
So we'll see whether that comes through. I think enhanced
gild thermal is on its way. I think that was
already on its way with the Geothermal Liftoff report that
we wrote and all the other things that we've done.
I think the oil and gas industry are very interested
in investing in that space. I would suggest that they're
actually not being ambitious enough in the enhance shield thermal
based on the private sector side, I think that this
administration desperately wants to help them more, and they're not
(10:09):
being more vocal about how they might be able to
receive or utilize that help, right, So I think there's
some communication challenges there. There was a huge amount of
additional resources provide to hydro power, and we have thirty
seven thousand megawatts of old hydro that is going to
be retired over the next five to eight years, right,
(10:30):
So relicensing all that hydro, putting in next generation technology
could get fifty percent more power output out of all
of those existing sites, right, So it's a huge source
of clean, firm power that could come forward. There was
an extension of the fuel cell tax crits, which I'm
not quite sure is amazing, but it's great. There's some
good stuff in there, right, and around the commercialization of technology.
(10:51):
But I do think that the intention of this, which
I think will remain to be clear, is a phase
out of tax credits for mature technologies and more of
a focus on immature and commercializing technologies.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
There's also some tax cards being given to bring in
biofuels into sustainable aviation fuels. Yeah, what do you make
of those?
Speaker 3 (11:13):
You know, we wrote a lift off report at my
insistence that we published right before we left office, and
so to summarize it, basically says the EU refuses to
allow any crops to be used in their SAF production. Right,
so to the extent that you're making SAFF, you're making
it for the EU. They will not allow coren ethanol
to be used in any of that SAFF. So I
(11:33):
don't really understand why you would do it. I think
the Japanese program does allow for these sort of feedstocks
and so, but I think you could dwarf the Japanese
market pretty quickly by the existing plants that we've already
funded right out of the Loan Program's office. And so
I'm a big fan of biomethanol for shipping. I do
think that clean hydrogen is largely going to go into ammonia,
(11:54):
which is what we always predicted at the Loan Program's office.
So I think a lot of these clean fuels what
do you call it fights that people were having the
last four years, are trying to resolve themselves as to
you know, like which feedstocks go into saff, which feedstocks
go into shipping? You know, which feedstocks go are the places?
And so we're trying to figure all that stuff out.
(12:15):
In the US is clearly blessed with an extraordinary agriculture industry,
but I think, as you also know, agriculture is not
devoid of climate impacts. And so I do think that
from a climate perspective, we're going to all have to
be a lot more thoughtful about whether this is really
serving us well on the climate side, or whether this
(12:35):
is really just a push.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
And speaking of the Loan Program's Office, last time you
were here on zero almost exactly two years ago, you
were talking about the nine point two billion dollar loan
to Ford to build batteries for electric cars. How much
of the progress you made at the LPO will be
undone by this bill or what has been done by
the Trump administration so far.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I think it depends on what you mean by under
I would say that to date they have not undone anything. Right,
so all of the loans that we issued have been
honored to date, none of them have been unfairly rescinded
or whatever you would suggest. I do think they've been
slow to close the loans that I had laid for
them to close, and so I'm shocked at how long
(13:19):
it's taken for them to take the wins that we
gave them. If you look at the O Triple B,
it has more resources for loan Program's office. That's very specific,
right to relabeling the seventeen oh six program, which was
Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program into like the Energy Dominance Financing
or they've relabeled some other stuff. So so they have
(13:42):
a lot of resources, and so the resources that they
have remaining could match our production. So they could do
another one hundred and eight billion dollars worth of loans
over this next four years, presumably in their preferred sectors
like you know, nuclear or geothermol or or these other areas.
But you know, to date they have not shown that
(14:03):
they have a clear mandate around where to put that money.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You had about four hundred billion dollars count here and
there when initially we talked about it. There has been
certain amount of rescinding happening, right, three point six billion
dollars for the Title seventeen Loan Guarantee Program, three billion
dollars for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing, five billion dollars
for the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program. So current loans that
(14:28):
you have given out, those haven't been rescinded, But there
are future loans that could have been given out under
those programs that are gone now.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, but I don't think it really matters all that much.
I mean, this is all money that was set aside
to do certain things. Right, it was very clear that
elections have consequences and they were not going to do
those certain things, and so having the money sit there
and them not putting it out the door, it doesn't
make any sense. And so they've rescinded it. Fine, and
they've provided an additional billion dollars of new money for
things that they do want to do. So they took
(14:55):
some away, they put some more back in, and they
can give us the Loan Programs Office more money in
the funding bills that there will be passing later this year. Right,
So that part I'm not concerned about. I do think
that they have the resources to do the same amount
of loans that we did, but in their preferred sectors.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
We'll be back with more of my conversation with Jiggashaw
after this break, and Hey, if you're finding this episode insightful,
please take a moment to rate and review the show
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback really matters and
helps new listeners discover the show. Thank you. Coming back
(15:42):
to the politics of it, and I think you put
it well, which is that, Look, the clean energy industry
in the US doesn't spend much, very small fraction one
twentieth of what the oil and gas industry spends on lobbying.
But in the thinking of the Inflation Act and of
the Biden administration, there was always this goal that if
(16:05):
you bring both red states, Republican led states, and Democrat
led states together and you provide these tax credits going
to all states, and especially in the IRA much of
it was going more than the majority was going to
the Republican side, that that is what will hold these
politicians to account and they won't cause self harm by
(16:26):
rescinding these things. So where did that fail and what
lessons do you take from it for the clean energy industry?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I think there are two different questions, right, So I
think we need to be very careful about what we're
concluding in these data points, right. I mean, President Trump
is a very unique individual. Like when you think about
his poll numbers and his actual voting numbers, he really
won the working class in a very big way. But
more than that, since twenty seventeen, he has remade the
(16:57):
Republican Party so that he is the only dominant force
that everyone should fear him. When you have that much
power over individuals, then they do things that are blatantly
in disregard for their constituents. And so whether it's out
of fear right, fear for their family, fear for reelection,
fear for whatever it is, that does not invalidate the
(17:19):
thesis behind the Inflation Reduction Act. When you think about
twenty plus people on the Republican side in the House
that signed the letter, plus you had four or five
Republican Senators that were genuinely looking to try to save
all the incentives. And so when you think about where
this whole thing landed, right, it is terrible for the
clean energy industry, and it was so much better than
(17:44):
it could have been, right, And so I don't think
that we should take from this that this is not
a durable solution.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
In a million years, no one would.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Have suggested that elected officials would actively sabotage facturing facilities
in their community. No one would have guessed that, right,
this is the single largest assault on working class people
that we've had in I don't know, like since Ronald
(18:13):
Reagan was promising to do that in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
We're also in this period where the US and Europe
and the Western world in general is seeing electricity consumption
rise at a level that it hasn't seen in decades.
Much of what would have happened under the IRA would
have enabled the rollout of clean energy, but crucially, it
would have rolled out cheap electricity to these data centers
(18:36):
that are consuming huge amounts of it.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
How do you.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Think ut triple B affects the scaling up of data
centers in the US.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
I think that the economic development story in the United States,
right is something that's very strong, and it's one that
the utilities want to support. It's the governors want to
support their utilities in getting those things done. And you know,
I mean, at least in rhetoric, the President of the
United States also wants to make sure we win the
AI race and all that stuff, right, So I think
(19:08):
that we're going to win that race. I think what's
going to likely occur is we're going to move much
faster than even I imagined into the you know, distributed
capacity procurement. You know that Spark Fund is doing in Minnesota,
the virtual power plant programs that are being done across
the country. I think what you will see in this
moment is an enormous deployment of demand flexibility enabled by
(19:32):
the batteries that you know got full subsidization within the ultriple.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
B Well, the battery manufacturing supply chain though does not
have the same credits left.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
No they do.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
They still get the.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Forty five x credit local content.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
No local content, they don't, so they no longer have
to buy lithium or graph height or battery separators or
whatever from local companies. But there's a production credit. So
for every megawat hour of batteries that they made, they
got a payment. They still get those and most of
the existing battery manufacturing facilities in the US or EV
(20:09):
battery manufacturing facilities, so they will continue to be put
into evs. And then you know, I think some of
the battery manufacturing facilities that were built a little more
slowly are converting themselves into utility scale battery manufacturing facilities,
so making LFP batteries, making batteries that are for utility
scale applications, and so that conversion is happening now.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So BLOOMAGAINIFS modeling shows that manufacturing capacity increase in battery
making in the US is going to be much lower
because a lot of the electric vehicle battery manufacturing is
not coming online. But overall, trying to actually build out
a supply chain in the US for batteries is going
to be a harder challenge than it was before the
(20:53):
U Triple B. Is that not right?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, that's right. So battery manufacturing was on track to
reaching four hundred gigo wa hours worth production in the US.
I still think we're going to reach that target, to
be clear, but I think what's happening is for the
plants that were were being built more slowly, they have
an opportunity today to convert them to serve the utility
scale battery market and not the electric vehicle market, and
(21:17):
all of those conversions are being made. So I think
we'll still get to four hundred gig what hours, but
it'll be a bigger mix between of utility scale versus
electric vehicle batteries. But the electric vehicle batteries will still
be I don't know, two hundred and seventy gig what
hours or so. So that's why I'm saying like, I
don't think we know how this is going to play out.
I feel like the O Triple B was so randomly
(21:39):
constructed that you know that, I think people are still
trying to figure out exactly how they're going to implement
all these provisions.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
So on evs. The projections before or Triple B was
that the US would have reached half of new sales
being EV's by twenty thirty. That's now dropping, according to
Borghini f estimates, to thirty seven percent. Fast forward fifteen years.
Let's not worry about what is going to happen tomorrow.
(22:08):
But given the rest of the world is speeding up
on EV transition, It's not just China, it's also India,
It's also Europe, even Africa. You're seeing two whelar electric
vehicles take off. Do we end up in this situation
where the US still remains the place where the gas
guzzler is king and everybody else is you know, zipping
(22:29):
around in EV's breathing clean air.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
We don't, no.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I mean, this is what I'm saying is that I
feel like all of these prognostications are done on models
that were built by you know, sort of human beings
who had assumptions. Right, The way that the US market
has been moving and will move is to plug in
hybrid vehicles. We were never going to be all electric vehicles.
Both my in laws and my parents just bought a
(22:55):
plug in hybrid vehicle. They're both the same exact one actually,
and it was thirty three like miles or thirty four
miles electric. Almost all new models are heading towards forty
forty five miles electric for these plug and hybrid vehicles,
and I think the vast majority of people, I think
are going to move to these thirty forty mile plug
and hybrid vehicle batteries. And my parents, I mean, they
(23:18):
get that light that shines that says your gas is
getting stale because you haven't used it in two months, right,
So it meets one hundred percent of their needs. And
I put in a level too charger for them, but
they won't use it. So they'll they just plug it
into the wall using Level one because it's only one
of a thirty four mile range and they're like it
works fine, Like we don't need that. So I think
(23:39):
you will see that America because of the long distances
that we drive. Like what you will find is the
vast majority of people will find comfort with a plug
in hybrid, and then they will solve their range anxiety
by just using gasoline when they go beyond that period,
and that will still result in ninety percent of that
family is vehicle miles traveled going to zero mission.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So if we split the energy transition into these mature
technologies and these maturing immature technologies, we looked at how
much of the tax rates for the mature technologies are
being taken away. On the maturing side, we talked through
nuclear geothermal, maybe some bio fuel for saff but those,
as you said, are not being done thoughtfully. There's no
(24:23):
real proactive nature to try and build those out. Sitting
here outside the US, it does feel like the US,
at least under Trump, will have given up on competing
with China on the mature technologies. Right, You're going to
have some solar and some batteries and they'll grow, but
(24:43):
really that supply chain is not going to get built
in the US in the next four years. You're going
to have to depend on foreign entities. Maybe you're welcome, Uckshut,
You're welcome.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
For a long time, everybody was yelling at me for
the IRA being too low and you're stealing all of
our companies and all of our opportunity. I have now
given it back to you. You must now continue the mission.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Do you think I mean from the US perspective, do
you think four years down the line, say another president
comes in and say it's a climate friendly one, We'll
look at what happened and say, yes, we can still
compete with China.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Look, I think that the thing that people got wrong before,
and I think what they're getting wrong now is that
while I loved serving the last four years within the
Biden administration, we were always private sector led, government enabled.
I think people thought that that was a throwaway line,
but it really wasn't. Everything in the United States is
(25:44):
driven by the private sector. And if you look at
this next week, there's a big conference in Detroit of
all the major venture capital funds and others who voted
for Trump, and they are all talking about putting up
tens of billions of dollars into reindustrialing our country. And
so they're looking to pick up all these projects and
to continue to build them right. And so we'll see
(26:06):
which ones succeed in which ones don't succeed. In what
they decide to do and what they don't decide to do.
But that's the private sector leading. Trump is not going
to stop them from leading, right, Like, if they want
to build something here in the United States, because we
did ninety percent of the work under the last administration
and they want to take it the last ten percent
of the way, they're going to do that, right, And
so like, I just think that people thought that there
(26:28):
was this imperial presidency within the Biden administration and now
an imperial presidency within the Trump administration, and for these issues,
neither is true.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Now.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You know, we could talk about immigration, or we could
talk about other issues, but like, for these issues, neither
was true. Right, This was always private sector led, and
those people continue to do it.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Now.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Have we taken a gut punch, like a you know,
a huge gut punch. Yes, Right after we thought that
we had align the interest of everyone in the political
spectrum around figuring out how to diversify supply chains from China, right,
people are saying, well, we're going to say all the
right things, but we're not going to do all the
right things, and the ult triple be that sucks, But
(27:09):
hopefully it's a wake up call to our industry that look,
these technologies continue to be the way of the future. Right,
If you can't do it in the United States, you
can go to the UK, you can go to the EU,
you can go to Canada, go to Australia. They still
have all their programs in place. They want you to
go there to do that work. And some folks are
just you know, stubborn, So they're going to keep trying
(27:29):
to do it here in the United States and I'm
here for it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
What should the clean energy industry do? You said, increase
political spending for lobbying, which you know, given how much
spending happens in US politics already, especially during the presidential elections,
you're calling for more.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Great, but strategically, although it's not spending that way, right,
it's more about the fact that we have projects in
communities around the country and most of those communities don't
even know that we're there. Right.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
We need to fund the t ball team, we need
to fund the local high school, we need to do
all of the things that you have to do. But
remember the moment that we're in is the exact same
moment that the fracking industry was in in twenty fourteen
when the Saudi Arabians decided to declare war against the
fracking industry in the United States, right, and the fracking
industry didn't cry in their beer. They woke up and said,
(28:19):
all right, let's figure out how to right size our
supply chain. Let's figure out how to get all of
our suppliers to cut their costs, Let's figure out how
to do all these things to continue to stay alive. Right,
And they came out of that stronger than they went
into that battle. But I think at the time, all
of the stock analysts and all of the big newspapers
were saying the fracking industry was dead, right, And so
(28:41):
I think that when you think about all the times
that I have been left for dead on the side
of the road, whether it was in two thousand and
eight after the global financial crisis, whether it was after
the Spanish program collapsed upon itself in twenty nine and
twenty ten and people said people are never going to
invest in Spain ever again, right, whether it's in German
and the manufacturing collapse of the solar panel industry there, like,
(29:03):
there's lots of times that our industry has been left
for dead, and we have risen and being stronger for it.
I think it's important to acknowledge, yes, the clean energy
industry is at war with this administration, and yes, the
clean energy industry has what it needs to thrive in
(29:24):
this moment. But you know, along the way, fifty percent
of our companies may go bankrupt, right the ones that
weren't well capitalized, the ones who weren't run well, et cetera,
may go bankrupt. And then the other fifty percent are
going to probably thrive out of this and take the
rest of the market share and continue to succeed. It
is still the case that our technologies are the best
in the world, and it is the only way we're
(29:45):
going to achieve energy dominance. It's the only way we're
going to unlock all these economic opportunities. But you know,
I think you can hold both of those ideas in
your head at the same time.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, I assume the clean energy industry wants to listen
to this, because right now things do quite dire and
you are still bullish, bullish within the framework of what
is going to be a tough challenge. Thank you, Jager,
of course, thanks for having me, and thank you for
(30:17):
listening to zero now for the sound of the week.
That's the sound of rock fall and the main climbing
route up mont Blanc. For the first time in recorded history,
during this European heat wave in June, the summit of
(30:40):
mont Blanc, at a height of four meters, remained above
freezing for a full twenty four hour period. Warmer temperatures
are leading to more rock fall across the Alps as
permafrost melts. If you liked this episode, please take a
moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify. Share this episode with a friend or with
(31:00):
the lobbyist. This episode was produced by Oscar boyd Our.
Theme music is composed by Wonderly Special Thanks to Jessica
bec Samersati, Mosses Andam and Shawan Wagner. I'm Akshatrati back soon.
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