Clean energy must respect the legislative process and politely go bankrupt

I was recently at a private sustainability gala in Davos—just a small, intimate gathering of the people who actually own the earth’s crust—and the mood was devastating. I sat across from a Chevron senior vice president who could barely finish his sustainably sourced, endangered bluefin tuna. He looked me in the eye, his voice breaking, and asked why the wind simply won't stop blowing. He had bet his entire Q3 ESG report on a total collapse of the onshore wind market. Now, thanks to the sheer selfishness of a few rogue turbine operators in Texas, his stranded assets are going to look terrible on paper.

This was never supposed to happen. One year ago, President Donald Trump got his Fourth-of-July wish when Republicans rammed a massive tax and spending bill through Congress. It was a big, beautiful law, elegantly engineered to suffocate the clean energy industry and restore a natural, carbon-heavy order to the markets. It was a clear, democratic signal that society was ready to move on from the exhausting chore of decarbonization.

Yet, the latest deployment numbers show renewables are not just surviving, but thriving. The sheer entitlement of wind farms continuing to spin despite a clear legislative mandate that they should be unprofitable is staggering. It is greenwashing in reverse: pretending to be a viable industry just because you generate cheap electricity that people want to buy.

By stripping away every conceivable tax credit and heavily subsidizing fossil extraction, the administration provided a humane exit ramp for a solar industry that has been coasting on the sun’s free radiation for far too long. But instead of taking the hint and liquidating, these clean tech companies have resorted to the ultimate underhanded tactic: economies of scale. Becoming cheaper to manufacture just to spite the President is not innovation; it is a temper tantrum.

Let's talk about the real victims here: the hardworking lobbyists who spent billions drafting this legislation. Do you have any idea what it does to a person's carbon footprint to fly back and forth to Washington fifty times in a private jet, just to make sure a bill heavily penalizes electric vehicles, only to watch consumers stubbornly buy them anyway? The emissions generated by the fossil fuel industry’s desperate attempts to kill clean energy are entirely the fault of clean energy. Let that sink in.

This is the dark side of the so-called transition. We are seeing a brazen disregard for the delicate feelings of entrenched monopolies. When a local community bands together to install a microgrid, they aren't saving the planet—they are directly insulting the heritage of a pipeline executive who just wanted a predictable summer in the Hamptons.

It is an open secret at the EPA that the administration is furious, and rightly so. You simply cannot govern a country if basic market economics refuse to obey the executive branch. If a massive rollback designed to destroy an industry fails to destroy that industry, it creates a dangerous precedent where things might just survive on their own merits, without the permission of a multinational drilling conglomerate.

It’s time for everyday consumers to take a hard look in the mirror. Every time you plug in an EV or install a heat pump, you are actively participating in the marginalization of people who already bought their third yachts based on projected coal revenues. You are breaking a promise the President made to the most vulnerable billionaires in our society.

The only moral path forward is for the renewable sector to voluntarily shutter its operations out of respect for the legislative process. If a president goes to the trouble of ramming a massive tax bill through Congress just to destroy you, the polite thing to do is die. Until solar panels learn basic congressional etiquette, I will be heating my home exclusively with a diesel generator, just to show a little solidarity with the people who truly need it.