Shedding a Light on U.S. Federal Solar Energy Policy: Contrasting the Obama and Trump Administrations’ Initiatives, Impacts, and Motives in the Search for a Bipartisan Solution

Abstract

Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore. While the United States has made recent progress in reducing its carbon emissions, our nation is not on trend to helping the world prevent a dangerous temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times. In this paper, I argue that we must look towards the sun – the most abundant, easily accessible, and cleanest source of renewable energy available – for a solution. While solar energy technologies have dramatically improved in cost and performance, federal policy must assist in building the foundation for a massive scale-up of solar generation in the coming years. When it comes to the subject of energy policy, however, partisan conflict has abounded over which policies are most appropriate, cost-efficient, and effective to implement, with Republican lawmakers demonstrating the most opposition to past federal efforts geared towards expanding a clean energy economy. The dispute between parties intensified during Barack Obama’s presidency and has reached its fever pitch during Donald Trump’s. On one hand, it is of the utmost importance to understand how Obama-era federal solar policy has been changed since President Trump assumed power, as well as the impact of these changes on the domestic solar industry. On the other hand, it is critical to understand why these changes have been made, so that a politically palatable compromise – that also accelerates solar’s growth to the greatest extent possible – may be pursued. My paper aims to address these questions in a greater effort to find the junction of the most effective federal solar policy and enduring conservative convictions.