According to online magazine Fast Company: "A year after President Trump took office, clean energy is still growing in the U.S.
In 2025, nearly all new power added to the grid came from solar, wind, and batteries. In September, for example, solar made up 98% of new capacity".

Revolution wind has successfully fought off two stop-work orders on their project off the coast of Rhode Island by filing injunctions.

Strange days indeed.

Yes.

and yet fossil fuels still dominate.... 84% of primary energy in 2025.

Go figure.

mhaze,

No one's disputing that fossil fuels still dominate total primary energy. That's a stock measure built up over decades.

The point - which you're sidestepping - is that almost all new electricity capacity being added is now non-fossil. Those two things can be true at the same time, and for a long time.

Transitions don't show up first in totals; they show up in marginal additions. "84% today" tells us where we are. "98% of new capacity" tells us where the system is heading unless something intervenes.

So yes - go figure. That's exactly how infrastructure transitions work.

"No one's disputing that fossil fuels still dominate total primary energy."

Oh good. Some reality enters the room.

Rather funny to be crowing that things are changing despite Trump when he's barely had time to make the changes he was elected for. Apparently transition takes time except that Trump should have changed things overnight.

We'll see what the energy mix looks like after a decade of nuclear builds attached to AI centres has occurred as well as the effects of the new vehicle regulations and the falling price of primary fossil fuels in the US.

mhaze,

I don't think anyone's suggested Trump should have "changed things overnight". My point was the opposite: infrastructure transitions are slow, and what we see in 2025-26 reflects decisions locked in years earlier.

That's why total primary energy today and marginal additions today can tell different stories without contradiction. One is a legacy stock, the other is a leading indicator.

If, over the next decade, policy shifts toward nuclear, AI-linked demand, or cheaper fossil fuels change what gets financed, that will show up first in new builds - exactly the same mechanism at work now.

So yes, transitions take time. That's the explanation for why nothing here is especially "strange".

WTF?

mhaze - the thing that is interesting about companies such as Revolution Wind is that they are refusing the White House stop-work orders and are pressing on ahead by using injunctions through legal processes.

On his first day in office in 2025, Trump issued orders to pause permitting for wind and solar projects on federal land and, specifically, all offshore wind. His administration further imposed new, stricter "project density" requirements for renewable projects on federal lands, which made it harder to get permits.

These efforts have led to the cancellation or delay of hundreds of gigawatts of new renewable energy projects but a number of companies are successfully pressing forward.

The simple reality is Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" isn't causing the fossil fuel industry to meet increased needs. They seem uninterested. That has been left to renewables even though they are swimming upstream against a legislative current.

"A major shift occurred with the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (enacted in 2025), mandating additional lease sales, particularly in the Gulf of America. The first such sale under this act, Lease Sale Big Beautiful Gulf 1 (or Gulf of America Oil and Gas Lease Sale), was held on December 10, 2025. It offered ~81 million acres, received high bids totalling around $279-372 million (with accepted amounts in the $300 million range), and awarded hundreds of leases/blocks covering over 1.6 million acres. This was the first offshore lease sale since 2023 and marked the start of a mandated series of 30 sales in the Gulf."

That has nothing to do with the point being discussed, mhaze.

The issue on the table is whether ageing coal plant delivers superior reliability compared to high-renewables systems in the Australian NEM. On that question, SA now runs a grid of approximately 75% wind and solar and is now one of the most secure energy systems in the market.

Meanwhile, Queensland's coal fleet continues to suffer repeated high-impact failures despite massive reinvestment.

US offshore leasing policy doesn't address that empirical comparison at all.

WTF?
Right on queue mhaze, unable to add to the topic, deflects away.

mhaze's example, of course, is a complete nonsense.

Natural gas supplies about 43% of electrical generation in the U.S.

The Gulf of Mexico supplies around 1-2% of the U.S. natural gas. While this percentage will increase over time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the overall decline in natural gas production to continue.

I know that in mhaze's mind he can probably contort those numbers into natural gas taking up new electrical production.

The market says otherwise.

WTAF says..."The simple reality is Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" isn't causing the fossil fuel industry to meet increased needs. They seem uninterested."

"They seem uninterested."

I show data that proves they are very much interested and he and his word salad side-kick scream "no fair" and demand that I stop showing data that proves their fondest fantasies are....well fantasies. Pretty funny.

mhaze,

You're still talking past the point that was being made. The question was about time horizons and marginal signals, not whether fossil fuels dominate today or might regain ground in the future.

No one's argued that fossil fuels are "uninterested", or that Trump's policies have already reshaped the energy mix. The argument has been that large infrastructure systems respond with long lags, and that marginal additions move first while totals change slowly.

That's why it's possible for fossil fuels to dominate primary energy today and for most new capacity being added to be non-fossil - without contradiction, fantasy, or anyone needing to "scream".

If future policy, prices, or AI-driven demand tilt the market toward nuclear or gas, that will show up first in what actually gets financed and built. Until then, pointing to today's totals doesn't really address why this thread sat quietly in the first place.

WTF specifically said the fossil fuel industry was uninterested in responding to Trump's efforts to expand.... "The simple reality is Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" isn't causing the fossil fuel industry to meet increased needs. They seem uninterested."

I specifically responded to that one comment. Do try to keep up.

Sure, mhaze, you responded to that specific wording.

The broader point being discussed, though, wasn't about anyone's motives or interest levels, but about time horizons and marginal signals versus total stock. Narrowing it to a single sentence doesn't really address why the same distinction keeps being raised.

Do try to keep up.

"Sure, mhaze, you responded to that specific wording."

Red letter day. JD backs down.

No, I didn't, mhaze.

//JD backs down.//

Read the rest of what I said.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/862518643076747

For better understanding ! The Trump Tarifs etc.

Indyvidual,

I'm afraid Beck's commentary there will only serve lead people further astray. It's not analysis so much as narrative immunisation.

His "I see patterns" claim gave me a bit of a chuckle, because the part of our brain responsible for pattern recognition is over-active in conspiracy theorists - which causes them to see patterns that aren't there.

Beck's move is to reclassify every consequence - market instability, ally backlash, diplomatic fallout - as proof that a hidden strategy is "working". That makes the story unfalsifiable. If things go well, Trump is a genius. If things go badly, it just means the rot was deeper than we thought and the stress test succeeded.

That isn't pattern recognition, it's post-hoc meaning-making. Real strategy produces testable expectations, trade-offs, and constraints. This produces only reassurance that whatever happens was always the plan.

You don't need a conspiracy to explain why institutions built for stability react badly to deliberate destabilisation. And calling chaos a stress test doesn't turn it into one - it just relabels the risk after the fact.

We've seen this kind of retrofitting of strategy to Trump's impulsive behaviour and dangerously disorganised thinking a few times before on OLO, and my response to it on those occasions was still as valid as it is here:

Trump has no idea what he's doing, which is why his faithful have so many different theories as to what it could be.

He's a child who never fully developed into an adult.

John Daysh,
Invest somewhere else with less pollution & much less trying to defend the economic & environmental folly !