Chuck Darwin<p>Near the top of Trump’s agenda next year is extending his 2017 tax cuts. </p><p>He will most likely need to reduce spending elsewhere to do that. </p><p>Clean energy tax credits <br>— worth about $350 billion over just the next three years, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation <br>— would be a tempting target. </p><p>The more those subsidies are pared, the more projects would no longer make financial sense.</p><p>Since the election, renewable energy backers have drawn some hope from the knowledge that funding leveraged by the 2022 law has disproportionately flowed toward Republican states, <br>potentially shielding it from cuts. </p><p>Energy demand has also started rising for the first time in a generation with the growth of electric vehicles, heat pumps, new factories and artificial intelligence, bolstering the case for an expansive approach to energy sources. </p><p>And solar energy, in particular, is now one of the cheapest forms of power available.</p><p>“Renewable energy has a certain bipartisan support,” said Nils Rode, <br>the chief investment officer of Schroders Capital, <br>a Swiss firm that manages $97 billion, including wind farms in the United States. </p><p>“Even though there might be risks, we don’t believe it will lead to major changes.”</p><p>Subsidies aren’t the only policy with the potential to affect the flow of money, however. </p><p>Mr. Trump and his team have made it clear they wish to ease the path of fossil fuel projects in ways that could make them more attractive to investors</p><p>His candidate for interior secretary, Doug <a href="https://c.im/tags/Burgum" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Burgum</span></a>, <br>has promised to open up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling. </p><p>Chris <a href="https://c.im/tags/Wright" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Wright</span></a>, the fracking company chief executive whom Mr. Trump picked to lead the Energy Department, could redirect the agency’s vast research agenda and loan programs away from low-carbon electricity. </p><p>At the Environmental Protection Agency, the president-elect intends to nominate Lee <a href="https://c.im/tags/Zeldin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Zeldin</span></a>, who has discussed rolling back rules on power plant emissions, which would weaken incentives for utilities to shift to cleaner sources of electricity.</p><p>All of those actions would increase the return on fossil fuel investments relative to renewable ones.<br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/25/business/energy-environment/trump-clean-energy-finance.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/2024/12/25/busines</span><span class="invisible">s/energy-environment/trump-clean-energy-finance.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare</span></a></p>