When Congress passed the Trump administration policy bill known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in July, it marked a substantial turning point in U.S. energy and industrial policy, which has been caught in the push-pull of partisan politics for more than a decade.

The new law sets a course that encourages fossil fuel exploration and energy production, while significantly curtailing support for mature clean-energy technologies such as wind, solar and electric vehicles. At the same time, it contained incentives for nascent renewables such as clean fuels, fuel cells, geothermal, hydrogen, and nuclear power.

The result is a new American energy doctrine that favors grand technology breakthroughs over the steady rollout of tried-and-true renewable solutions, and is out of step with the strategy pursued by many other major nations. Market forces — particularly increasing energy demand in the tech sector — could replace government incentives as the primary driver of the U.S. energy transition. The net result is almost certainly a slowdown in the country’s progress on limiting carbon emissions and mitigating climate change.

“We're in this frustrating world where we have the solutions, but speed is the critical thing,” said Gunnar Trumbull, a Harvard Business School professor and co-director of its Green Industrial Strategy Project. “Anything that we can do to improve the technologies now, to get the price of them down so the economics become more favorable, that really matters for the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

Trumbull warns against dire predictions for the energy transition or U.S. competitiveness, but does say it is fair to question whether the new policy will effectively combat climate change.

“We know basically where we're going and we know the economics are pushing in that direction,” he said. “Whether we get there fast enough to limit climate change, I think our chances are glancingly small.”