DEEP DIVE: 2025 Clean Energy Outlook: A Deregulated Environment Under Trump

As the United States prepares for a change in administration come January 2025, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to make some major changes in the climate regulation space in the first 100 days of his second term in office. With the anticipated rollbacks of a number of Biden initiatives, it will ultimately be up to shareholders, global trade partners, or deliberate corporate choices to pressure companies to maintain climate initiatives and goals.

Post-Election Market Response

Despite the uncertainty of what exactly climate policy under a second Trump term may look like, the 6 November 2024 stock market likely revealed what the world expects from a second Trump administration. Nearly all markets, including oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil, saw an uptick in stock price. But renewables businesses, like Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy, saw the opposite, going down several points immediately following the election and it’s been on the decline since.

“Markets are an immediate sort of animal spirit reflecting what we have right now,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, in a live interview with Foreign Policy.

Although the trends we’re seeing in the stock market are likely a short-term response to Trump’s election, it is indicative of which industries investors project Trump’s administration will benefit — and it likely will not be renewables.