How Trump Did the Impossible: Getting Solar and Oil Lobbyists to Unite
- Rick Perry’s plan to bail out coal aligning disparate groups
- ‘I haven’t seen the industry this rattled in a long time’
In his 20 years of promoting renewable energy in Washington, Gregory Wetstone has made common cause with a range of special interest groups:- environmentalists, power utilities, even a handful of natural gas producers. But President Donald Trump’s efforts to bail out the coal industry led Wetstone, the head of the American Council on Renewable Energy, to find a surprising new partner: Big Oil.
Within hours of Energy Secretary Rick Perry releasing a proposal to overhaul the country’s power markets to advantage unprofitable coal and nuke plants, Wetstone was busy pulling together a team of unlikely allies, including solar installers, oil refineries and natural gas drillers, all of whom were worried that the plan would raise electricity costs and undercut their fuel source in the power markets.