Las Vegas Sun: Trump administration is blocking cheaper energy for American families

As energy prices continue to climb, it’s increasingly clear that President Donald Trump doesn’t care about affordability for the American people.

Trump’s disastrous decision to launch military strikes against Iran without any coherent strategy for securing the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes — has rattled global markets and sent energy traders scrambling. The result has been predictable: higher gasoline prices, higher transportation costs and mounting fears of another inflationary spiral for working families.

But as damaging as Trump’s Middle East gamble has been, it is only one front in a broader assault on affordable energy. Under Trump’s direction, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has spent the past 18 months systematically sabotaging clean and renewable energy projects that could help stabilize prices and reduce America’s dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets.

Programs that helped families weatherize homes, install efficient appliances and lower monthly energy costs have been gutted. Infrastructure grants for projects designed to bring lower-cost electricity to struggling communities, including rural Nevada communities, have been slashed. Permits for wind and solar facilities capable of powering millions of homes have been delayed or frozen outright, including projects that were only weeks away from completion.

If Burgum’s testimony last week before the House Natural Resources Committee is any indication, the administration’s hostility toward clean renewable energy is rooted in little more than breathtaking greed and dishonesty. We should not be confused on this issue: Hostility to renewable energy is hostility to the prosperity of American households in favor of slavish duty to oil companies.

During the hearing, Reps. Susie Lee, D-Nev., and Jared Huffman, D-Calif., pressed Burgum on why the administration continues blocking renewable projects despite soaring energy demand and rising costs. Burgum responded with a statement that would have sounded outdated a decade ago: Solar facilities, he complained, are ineffective because “when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity.”

Huffman delivered the obvious rebuttal with devastating precision.

“Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter in the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of,” Huffman said. “It’s a battery. China has figured it out. That’s why they’re cleaning our clock on clean energy.”

Of course, Doug Burgum knows what a battery is.

As a former fossil fuel company executive, he is well-versed and fully capable of understanding modern energy storage technology. What the exchange revealed instead is something far more troubling: Burgum and Trump are deliberately downplaying the viability of renewable energy because acknowledging its success threatens the profits of the fossil fuel interests they serve.

Battery storage technology has transformed renewable power generation over the past decade. Massive utility-scale battery systems now store solar energy during daylight hours and release it after sunset, helping stabilize electrical grids and reduce reliance on expensive natural gas peaker plants. China has surged ahead in battery manufacturing and clean-energy deployment while the United States under Trump retreats backward into oil dependency.

That retreat is hitting Nevada especially hard.

With summer rapidly approaching and temperatures already reaching triple-digit highs, Nevadans are staring down the prospect of record-breaking cooling bills. Yet Burgum’s Interior Department has effectively ground the permitting process for renewable energy to a halt using five internal departmental orders.

According to Lee, those directives impose layers of political review and bureaucratic interference that have stalled more than 90% of Nevada’s planned new energy capacity. Last month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the orders and allowed projects to proceed while litigation continues. But rather than reconsider a policy that is hurting consumers and renewable energy businesses alike, Burgum has vowed to appeal the ruling.

The uncertainty alone is already causing damage. Investors are backing away. Developers are delaying construction. Projects that would lower long-term electricity costs and create jobs across the West remain trapped in legal and regulatory limbo.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies continue collecting enormous subsidies while Americans pay more for gasoline, electricity and home cooling.

The hypocrisy could hardly be more glaring. Trump and Burgum claim to champion “energy dominance,” yet they are actively suppressing the cheapest and fastest-growing forms of new electricity generation in the country. They speak endlessly about helping working Americans while undermining the very technologies that could reduce household energy costs.

Nevadans understand what is at stake. As Lee pointed out in the hearing, Nevada has some of the most valuable solar potential in the world. According to a 2024 report by Gov. Joe Lombardo’s Office of Energy, since 2011, clean energy projects have led to more than $14 billion in capital investments and created more than 18,000 high-paying jobs in the Silver State.

To provide a comparison, consider that from 2011 to today, significant capital investment projects on the Las Vegas Strip have included the construction of Resorts World, Fontainebleau, the Sphere, Allegiant Stadium, T-Mobile Arena, the Las Vegas Convention Center West Hall and the Formula 1 paddock. The combined capital investment for all those projects was approximately $14.2 billion — almost identical to the amount spent on clean energy projects during the same time frame.

Moreover, in addition to driving investment in the state, clean energy projects help diversify the state’s economy and save local Nevadans money on our electric bills. Blocking these projects is not merely shortsighted policy, it is a direct assault on Nevada’s economic future.

The remarkable element in all of this is that the U.S. power grid requires all sources of power contributing. This is not an either-or argument. We need them all if we are going to keep up. Trump’s policies and Burgum’s foolish obedience will help set America’s power grid further behind and make it significantly less resilient. The countries weathering the current oil shock caused by Trump’s catastrophic failure on the Strait of Hormuz are those with a multisource grid.

What Americans are witnessing is not simple incompetence. It is governance designed around protecting entrenched fossil fuel profits regardless of the cost to consumers. Trump’s foreign policy recklessness is driving up global energy prices. Burgum’s obstruction of renewable energy is preventing America from building a more stable and affordable alternative.

The administration is not failing to solve the energy crisis. It is actively making the crisis worse while asking American families to pay the price.