SEIA releases solar policy targets for Trump presidency

Its policy priorities include reducing the US’ dependence on China for energy transition products, continuing the expansion of the US solar and energy storage manufacturing industries, reforming regulations around project siting, cutting red tape around connecting projects to the grid and meeting the demand challenges of data centres and AI.

“Solar is critical to meeting America’s growing need for electricity and providing power for manufacturing, data centres, cryptocurrency, and AI,” said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper.

“This is a roadmap for the Trump administration and Congress to capitalise on strong federal solar and storage policies and achieve their vision of a dominant American energy sector. Enacting this agenda will give the US control of the solar supply chain and ensure American communities benefit from solar and storage jobs and economic growth.”

“SEIA and its members will be advocating for this agenda throughout the transition and first 100 days of the Trump administration,” the organisation said.

SEIA’s full policy priority document can be read here. While the recommendations are unsurprising and amount to a list of the most well-known concerns facing the US solar industry, there is some question over how the Trump administration and the incumbent congress will act.

In its announcement, SEIA mentions that “the US solar industry grew by 128% under president Trump’s first term in office.”

This time around, Trump has explicitly criticised outgoing president Joe Biden’s energy policy—the chief pillar of which has been the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its US$369 billion in tax credits for renewable energy generation and manufacturing.

Despite hostile rhetoric towards renewables, industry observers have been sceptical over whether an incoming government would be able to – or even want to – dismantle the IRA. Consultancy Wood Mackenzie said that a Trump presidency was “unlikely” to derail the broader US energy transition.

The president-elect has said he plans to introduce harsher tariffs on Chinese goods entering the US, and a broader set of tariffs on anything entering the country. This would raise the prices of solar and energy storage imports and potentially disrupt deployments. On the flip side, advocates for portions of the US manufacturing space say that greater tariffs on imports could support domestic production, which would meet SEIA’s desire to reduce US reliance on China.

Trump is also likely to reduce regulation – or “red tape” – across the board, having created a Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk, a major campaign donor and the world’s richest man, and touted his ambition to “drill, baby, drill”.

It is unclear what impact these regulatory changes will have on the US Department of Energy and, by extension, the planning and grid-connection processes for solar and energy storage projects. However, there is significant market demand for both technologies across the US, particularly in traditionally Republican states where significant investment in solar manufacturing and generation projects has been made

We published a long read following Trump’s election victory that examined the potential pain points that a second term may bring for the solar industry.