Renewable energy generation is surging across many of the country’s red-leaning states, positioning some to outpace their bluer peers in a national drive toward grid decarbonization.
Their emerging leadership in the area in some ways defies the political battle lines that have been drawn on energy in recent years. On the federal level, Democrats have been the primary champions of renewable energy development, while Republicans have been more skeptical of efforts to bolster the sector — if not outright opposed to it. President Trump, for his part, has made moves to claw back clean-energy investments implemented under the Biden administration and suggested he will pursue “a policy where no windmills are being built.”
But even as Republican-led states have demonstrated a similar antipathy toward the kind of climate-driven policies embraced by many of their more Democratic counterparts, a number of them have fast grown into hubs of wind and solar power production.
Renewable markets have emerged “even in places where talking about climate change may be untenable,” Sarah Mills, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for EmPowering Communities, told The Hill.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.
