Just as President Biden experienced the limits of federal power to accelerate the clean-energy transition, President Trump is learning the limits of big government to stop it. In America, market forces still eclipse political theater, especially when the outcome means cheaper power, better tech, and lower risk.
While too many politicians, blinded by big oil donations, willfully deny clean energy’s benefits and forward progress, investors at every level agree that the energy transition makes economic sense as fossil fuels rapidly wind down. Clean power just crossed a historic threshold: In 2024, 96% of new energy added to the U.S. grid was from renewable energy and more than 40% of the world’s electricity came from low-carbon sources, driven by record renewables growth and a solar surge that has doubled output in three years. That’s the market—not politics—pricing the future in real time.
When the cheapest, fastest-to-build electrons scale this quickly, capital follows. Even though Trump has told the International Energy Agency (IEA) to fix their numbers, they continue to confirm that global demand for oil is dropping as the internal combustion engine becomes obsolete and renewables outprice fossils. As the IEA recently reported, renewable energy will overtake coal to become the world’s top source of electricity by 2026 — “at the latest.”
As one would expect in an economy transitioning to cleaner energy, financing and deals from banks for fossil-fuel projects are declining. Bloomberg recently reported that funding provided by the top six U.S. banks to oil, gas, and coal projects fell 25% so far this year. Big banks may have left GFANZ (Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero) due to political pressure, but their investments tell a different story.
Hedge funds are also rotating out of oil and back into renewables because the risk-adjusted math has flipped. Some of the savviest investors in the world, these funds have been net short oil stocks for seven of the nine months since October 2024, while unwinding bearish bets on solar. When the sharpest risk managers on the Street stop leaning into oil beta and start letting solar run, everyone should pay attention.
And it isn’t just big investors that want to invest sustainably. According to a recent Morgan Stanley survey, 76% of 401(k) participants already use or want sustainable options—with return expectations as the top motivator. The only impediment to more sustainable investment among the 100 million retirement savers in America is that most either don’t have a sustainable option in their plan, don’t realize their plan offers these choices, or that they don’t know what they own—gaps we can fix by expanding plan lineups, education, and using tools like As You Sow’s Invest Your Values platform.
It’s time to get back to building the future
It’s a testament to the intelligence of American investors that they understand a cleaner energy future is not only profitable, but creates the future they want to live in. All despite years of persistent and well-coordinated propaganda by fossil-fuel funded culture warriors and politicians at every level of government. Markets seem to be absorbing the “Drill baby, drill!” noise and continuing to fund and invest in a sustainable future. Whether peak demand for oil — the point at which there’s more supply than demand — arrives this year or later in the decade, the political growth thesis for dirty energy is going the way of Blockbuster. Financial performance tells us as much.
The anti-ESG showcase fund DRLL, launched by Vivek Ramaswamy to support his political ambitions, has lagged the market since inception and has been negative over the last 12 months, even as the S&P 500 (SPY) posted 19% gains in the previous 12 months. Once again, attempts to use other people’s money to make a political point fails spectacularly — and at a cost to investors who fall for false political narratives detached from market realities.
In 2023, I wrote that political efforts to roll back progress would “crumble against the wall of economic reality.” The same cost curves that powered the last rally are still bending: cheaper solar and storage, better capacity factors, maturing supply chains, and a capital stack (tax equity, infrastructure funds, green bonds) that keeps filling even as emotional rhetoric swirls.
It’s time to stop fretting about an imagined end to clean energy finance and get back to the business of building the future—grid upgrades, storage, efficiency, clean generation, low-carbon materials, and procurement that matches long-term corporate strategy. Investors from pension committees to index providers to hedge funds have already moved their money to capitalize a more profitable future.
While the political winds may seem strong, market forces are a hurricane in comparison and will inevitably prevail over politics. This is because voters and investors want the same thing: cheaper, cleaner, less volatile energy—and credible plans to deliver it. It’s where capital is flowing. It’s where companies are executing. And it’s where responsible shareholders like us will keep pushing—quietly when we can, loudly when we must—until the transition that smart money knows is coming is the economy we live in.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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