Renewable Energy Is Starting to Spend Big on Elections. It’s Working, Too
Solar Power The fossil fuel industry has some competition The fossil fuel industry has long been a campaign finance powerhouse, using its clout to help put sympathetic politicians — including Donald T...
Solar Power
The fossil fuel industry has some competition
The fossil fuel industry has long been a campaign finance powerhouse, using its clout to help put sympathetic politicians — including Donald Trump — into office. The renewable energy industry isn’t as accustomed to throwing around its weight in the political arena. It appears that has started to change, and the industry recently claimed a victory that left many political observers stunned.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) lost his primary election at the beginning of this month, with Politico reporting that a political action committee backed by solar industry executives played a pivotal role in his loss. The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent about $2 million in the race. Ogles, who was endorsed by Trump, was one of the Republicans behind efforts to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, and now he’s been ousted.
The same group waged successful campaigns earlier this year against Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in his bid for Texas attorney general, and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who lost the Republican gubernatorial primary in South Carolina. Like Ogles, Roy and Norman fought against the climate provisions of the IRA.
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC isn’t alone. Energy industry experts say that as the renewable energy industry has grown in recent years, it’s started to become more political, partially because it knows it has to.
“The return on investment for political action is enormous,” Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, tells Rolling Stone. “If you can defend a tax credit, it brings billions of dollars to your industry.”
Stokes says the industry started getting more involved in politics when the Inflation Reduction Act passed. Hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for renewable energy was approved, which significantly grew the industry and raised the stakes. She notes that hundreds of clean energy manufacturing facilities were propped up by the IRA.
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“People are going to want to defend billions and billions of dollars of investment — this is a big industry,” Stokes says. “The corporate tax credits mostly survived, and they’re also the biggest part of the law.”
Trump returning to office and putting a target on the back of the industry was a wake-up call, and the industry now realizes that it needs to do what it can to affect favorable political outcomes for itself. The industry is now spending tens of millions of dollars per year on political efforts — including around $64 million in 2024 alone, a major increase from a little over $13 million in 2020.
“Spending has gone up roughly fourfold since 2020,” says Bentley Allan, an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. “Renewable energy has always been involved in politics … but all of this really got supercharged by the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Allan says some of the numbers miss the bigger picture. It’s not just the solar and wind companies becoming more active; it’s also industries that are closely tied to renewables.
“You also have to think about battery and EV manufacturers — firms that aren’t strictly renewable but are part of a broader climate coalition, and that coalition is becoming more politically salient,” Allan says.
In terms of how this money is being spent, some of it appears to be payback for past actions — as we saw with Ogles, Roy, and Norman. If you’ve damaged the industry and stand to damage it again in the future, it’s going to punch back. Beyond that, the industry appears to be trying to shift the narrative in its favor and defend its existing funding and tax credits.
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“It’s kind of a warning to other members that if you get on the wrong side of this industry, you’re going to face consequences,” Stokes says. “I also think they’re focused on defending the policies that are allowing the industry to thrive right now.”
Allan says that any industry that experiences a lot of growth is going to become more politically active, especially if the industry feels like it’s under threat, as is certainly the case for renewables as Trump continues to attack it any way he can.
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The administration’s efforts to kneecap the renewable energy industry haven’t stopped it from growing, though, especially through solar power. Allan says he thinks batteries are going to keep booming, too, and that this growth will likely lead to even more political influence.
You can only bully an industry for so long before it will decide it’s time to fight back. Just ask Andy Ogles.