Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric showed no mercy for climate change policy, but there’s reason to believe energy storage will continue to flourish under his presidency.
It’s not clear that Trump himself thinks much about energy storage. There are few, if any, instances of him mentioning it specifically in public. The 2016 GOP party platform, though, promised that a Republican administration would “find new ways to store electricity, a breakthrough of extraordinary import.” That reference came in the context of grid modernization and resilience efforts.
It’s worth noting that, even under President Barack Obama’s diligent efforts to expand clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, federal energy storage policy is still virtually nonexistent. A bill to give storage an income tax credit like the one solar energy enjoys has been introduced in both houses of Congress, but hasn’t moved very far. When the White House hosted a storage summit this summer, it showcased a collection of ongoing efforts, but did not break much new ground.
The states that have largely driven the expansion of distributed energy resources through strong policy and regulatory action will continue to do so, and their ranks are growing.
“There are a lot of opportunities that will now shift from a federal focus to a more distributed focus, no pun intended, with cities and states in particular,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), one of the most vocal proponents of energy storage on Capitol Hill.
Any industry would be remiss, though, to not seek greater representation in the policy agenda of an incoming administration. For energy storage, this likely means a pivot from messaging around decarbonization and renewables integration to a greater emphasis on the role of storage as infrastructure for a safer, more resilient grid.
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