US President Donald Trump accidentally makes big what he actually wanted to make small – very, very small.
May 2, 2026, 10:06 p.mMay 2, 2026, 10:06 p.m
Does he still have perspective? Trump’s policies have unintended consequences.Image: Alex Brandon / AP
This is certainly not how Donald Trump imagined it. He loves fossil fuels, talks about “beautiful, clean coal,” wants to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and thus achieve “global energy dominance.” On the other hand, he calls wind energy “expensive, unreliable, ugly.” Solar energy “destroys farms”. For him, both together are the “fraud of the century,” which is now over under his leadership. “The days of stupidity are numbered.”
Trump is therefore called the “apostle of fossil fuels” by William Rensch, an expert at the US think tank CSIS. However, what is now emerging worldwide in the energy system is a «incredible irony».
The irony doesn’t end, but begins with the fact that Trump failed in any way to stop or even slow the renewable energy boom in his first year in office. On the contrary: “The fraud of the century,” as he calls it, has set records for the century. Several.
The think tank Ember reports on these records in its annual global report Electricity generation. In 2025, solar, wind, hydro and other renewable energy contributed more than ever before: more than a third for the first time. Coal, on the other hand, lost share as a result and fell below a third, “for the first time in history”. This means that the renewable energies demonized by Trump accounted for a larger share than his beautiful, clean coal – and this “for the first time in 100 years”.
Yelled at the advisors for hours
The solar energy figures in particular, if he were to study them, could cause Trump to once again “yell at his advisors for hours,” as he recently did, according to the Wall Street Journal. Because it’s booming, booming, booming. In 2025 it will have increased by 30 percent. More than any power source ever before. This means that it has generated eleven times more electricity than 10 years ago. Or to put it another way: 1000 percent more.
In doing so, it has almost caught up with another energy source preferred by Trump, the Nuclear energy. Trump has signed an executive order that aims to reverse the industry’s alleged overregulation. It was time for nuclear, said Trump and promised “We will make it very big.” But only solar energy will become very big. Ten years ago it produced ten times less electricity than nuclear energy. In 2025 it will have almost caught up.
That was 2025. A bad year for the “apostle of fossil fuels”. But it doesn’t get any better, it just gets worse and worse from year to year. The “fraud of the century” continues unabated. This has to do with the end of a long wait.
The solar industry had to wait a long time for cheap batteries. “Now they’re finally here,” says an Ember analyst. Batteries were around three times cheaper in 2025 than three years earlier and can now deliver competitively priced electricity in a package with solar energy. A turning point has been reached: Solar energy no longer only supplies electricity when the sun is shining, as its critics have always complained – when packaged with batteries, it now also supplies electricity at night. According to the analyst, this makes solar and batteries “unstoppable Power». In other words, solar can continue to boom unhindered.
Trump is becoming China’s biggest export promoter
Trump’s advisers can only hope that their boss doesn’t notice. Otherwise it could get loud again in the White House. Trump will hardly be appeased if you explain to him that he is only increasing the boom in renewable energies with his ill-advised Iran war. And that Trump is playing into China’s hands. Of all people, China, the USA’s great geopolitical rival, which Trump has already said is committing the “biggest theft of the world” against the USA Story.»
Also expressed in a Trumpian superlative, it will become “the biggest export promoter the country has ever had” for China. The think tank Ember has examined how Chinese exports of solar panels have developed. The March numbers would provide a first glimpse of how the world is reacting to the energy price crisis that Trump’s Iran war triggered in late February. What is shown in China’s export figures can actually be found “incredibly ironic”.
China has so many in March Solar panels sold abroad like never before: 100 percent more than in the previous month, 50 percent more than in the previous record month. 50 countries bought record national quantities, including Italy and France, Australia and India – and also the USA itself. Another 60 countries bought more than usual in the past six months, including Germany. But Trump, China’s best export promoter in history, has achieved even more.
China also sold more batteries and electric cars than in the previous month. Together with solar panels, this total export of renewable technologies grew by 70 percent and also reached a new record level. Batteries, for example, were diligently purchased by the European Union in order to save solar energy in the evening hours. The world has clearly sought shelter from the energy crisis caused by Trump and found it in China.
The USA and China represent opposing visions
This means that China and the USA are drifting apart in terms of energy policy. They increasingly represent opposites Visions. China is becoming the world’s first electric state even faster. Clothing, furniture and kitchen appliances used to be the big three product categories that drove growth. Now there is increasingly the «new three», batteries, electric cars and solar panels. The USA wants to be the world’s largest petro-state, at least under Trump. They are already the largest producer of fossil fuels and want “global energy dominance” to reach.
Drawn into geopolitical constraints: Burning oil facilities in the United Arab Emirates.Image: keystone
In between there is a world that has been shown twice in five years that wind power is not expensive and unreliable, as Trump claims. Rather, it is fossil fuels that have been used as a means of blackmail. First of all, Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to bring the whole of Europe to its knees with his gas. Now Iran is blackmailing everyone by blocking the Strait of Hormuz World.
The world increasingly wants to protect itself against this. Like Egypt, which today only generates 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energies. But we want to get to 45 percent as early as 2028. Among other things, it wants to build a gigantic wind farm in its own desert. Expert Rensch from the CSIS think tank remarks mockingly that this is “undoubtedly much to Trump’s chagrin.” (aargauerzeitung.ch)