The solar industry became a target in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, when his administration cut key federal tax credits, subsidies, and investments in solar power, as well as broader green technology initiatives.
The Republican president’s skepticism toward low-carbon energy, rooted in a combination of economic, aesthetic, and ideological objections, is well-known. At the World Economic Forum held in January 2025, Mr. Trump boasted of terminating former Democratic President Joe Biden’s “ridiculous” and “wasteful” Inflation Reduction Act – which, among other spending to support renewable energy, offered tax incentives to encourage solar power.
Yet as America’s demand for electricity rises – expected to grow at a 2.8% compound annual growth rate over the next 15 years – some Republican influencers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who are still among the president’s most ardent supporters, are encouraging him to adopt a more pragmatic approach to solar.
Why We Wrote This
America’s rising demand for electricity is putting focus on where that energy should come from. As President Donald Trump has sought to elevate fossil fuels, one fast-growing renewable energy source is attracting support from an unlikely place: political conservatives.
The reason is simple supply and demand, they say, though Mr. Gingrich mixes in a touch of nationalism. Failure to meet the electricity demands of industry would slow business growth, just when futuristic technologies such as artificial intelligence are starting to boom. To remain competitive with China in AI, he says, America needs to expand its electric power generation by using every energy source available.
“History tells us that energy scarcity is the biggest threat to the American economy,” Mr. Gingrich wrote in a recent opinion column in the right-leaning website, the Daily Caller.
“We need more of everything. Intentionally excluding vital energy sources, fuel-based or renewable, reduces supply and drives up prices. This harms families and businesses. This is not abstract economic theory. It is common sense.”
Solar grows, despite setbacks
Historically, America’s power grid has always been a pragmatic concern, though people at opposite ends of the political spectrum often disagree on how to ensure Americans get the power they need.
The debate over climate change disrupted all that.
In 2016, America, under President Barack Obama, joined 192 other nations and the European Union in signing the Paris Agreement to substantially reduce carbon emissions by 2030. Americans were divided: Conservatives said the agreement would damage America’s economy, while liberals cited the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is primarily caused by human activity. How and whether to use low- and zero-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar – moving away from fossil fuels – were at the heart of that partisan divide.
But today, even amid disagreements, after a decade and a half of expansion, solar power accounts for 8.5% of the U.S. electricity generation mix, up from 0.1% in 2010. That is still well behind fossil fuels, which make up more than half of the U.S. energy mix. Fossil fuels have a powerful lobbying presence, spending about $150 million a year to advocate for oil, gas, and coal businesses. Even so, in 2024, wind and solar power together overtook coal for the first time in electricity production, with wind and solar at 17% and coal at 15%.
“I don’t view energy as an ideological issue, but that’s what it’s been turned into,” says Eric D. Larson, a senior research scholar at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University.
“I think that maybe a concern is that if demand is outstripping supply, prices will go up,” Professor Larson says. “And rising prices translate into votes, typically. But also, there is the recognition that if we want to stay ahead as a country at the cutting edge of technology, and AI is going to be a big part of that, we need power.”
A boon to “red-state America”?
At the moment, there is little evidence that prominent Republicans touting solar will influence President Trump to change his mind on solar energy. His 2025 tax-and-spending bill, which phased out solar subsidies, passed the House along party lines, 218-214. Those entrusted with implementing Mr. Trump’s energy policies are led by Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright, the founder and former CEO of Liberty Energy, a major fracking service company. He has called solar panels “a parasite” that provides only intermittent power. In a Feb. 17, 2026, panel discussion, Mr. Wright showed no signs of wavering.
“We got off track because of a wild misunderstanding, an exaggeration” about climate change, Mr. Wright said at a conference at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. Climate change, he said, “is a real thing, but it has gotten so ridiculously out of whack that we have policies that have just driven up energy [prices, and] driven deindustrialization and made our countries geopolitically weaker.”
Even so, a small number of Republicans with influence in the White House are publicly advocating that President Trump adopt it as part of “America First” policy and give solar energy another chance.
Danielle Villasana/Reuters
Conservative podcaster Katie Miller – wife of Mr. Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller – recently made the case for solar energy on social media. Ms. Miller, a former aide to Elon Musk, has been publicly promoting solar energy and has noted that her former boss’s company, Tesla, produces solar panels. She has stated she does not have a paid partnership with the clean energy groups she sometimes cites.
“Solar is now the dominant source of new U.S. power capacity and is on track to surpass coal in total installed capacity before the end of 2026,” she wrote. “70 GW of new solar capacity is scheduled to come online in 2026–2027 → a 49% increase in operating solar capacity from the end of 2025.”
Ms. Conway, a pollster and former Trump senior political counselor, conducted a February 2026 poll of 1,000 registered voters in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Texas, on behalf of the pro-solar advocacy group, American Energy First. Her findings: “Solar power enjoys broad, durable, and increasingly intense public support,” including among Trump voters.
Eight in 10 respondents agreed when asked if “solar energy should be used in the U.S. to strengthen and increase our energy supply?” Three-quarters of self-identified Trump voters agreed.
More than two-thirds of the new solar plants built over the past five years are in states that the Republican Party carried in 2024, including Texas, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Utah, and Arkansas, according to a report by Wood Mackenzie on behalf of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Artificial intelligence is booming, “and if you look at where they are building data centers, it’s in red-state America,” says Mark Fleming, president and CEO of Conservatives for Clean Energy in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the Carolinas, the combination of AI data centers and solar and wind farms has contributed to the property tax base. “It’s been a lifesaver for rural counties,” Mr. Fleming says, and that has brought more conservatives to the clean energy cause.
Neil Auerbach, founder and CEO of the Hudson Sustainable Group and senior adviser to the conservative-leaning American Conservation Coalition, says that ideologues on both sides of the aisle miss the point. America’s economic competitiveness depends on “abundant, affordable power today.”
“With the 2026 midterms approaching, the political stakes are clear. Voters will reward leaders who present credible solutions to keep the lights on and bills down,” Mr. Auerbach wrote in a recent opinion column. “Ideological purity, whether hostility toward fossil fuels or toward renewables, will not deliver affordable energy. An all of the above approach is not ideology; it is economic realism.”
Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, says that whether you are worried about climate change or not, solar energy is a “one of the easiest and fastest ways to get power. That is one reason why the administration shouldn’t be rolling its eyes at solar power.”
