Four CEOs discuss the impact of a potential Donald Trump victory in the November 2024 election.
AES Corp CEO Andrés Gluski :
No, it’s not slowing down our signing of contracts. What we really had is a situation that we had, to some extent; foreseen a couple years ago where it’s really there’s a shortage of renewable power for datacenters in many markets.
So, what’s the biggest concern of our clients is actually time to power, can you get me the power on time to power datacenters. And that’s their main constraint. So, no, there has been anything holding us down or, quite frankly, a major issue of conversation with them. I do think we have to step back and say, “Look, ITC investment tax credits, production tax credits, they’ve been around for 32 years.”
Second, there’s been a tremendous amount of investment related to the Inflation Reduction Act. And 85% of that investment has gone into republican districts. Today, there are eight million people working directly or indirectly in renewables in the U.S. So, a total dismantling is highly unlikely in any scenario, whether there are some changes around the margin; sure
Nexans CEO Christopher Guérin:
Regarding President Trump impact, I have many times the question, we need to acknowledge, difficult to answer, of course, but we need to acknowledge 1 thing is that when we’ve decided – when we decided to invest $150 million in Charleston to upgrade our capacity to turn it subsea for offshore wind farm connections, it was under Donald Trump’s presidency.
And what we’ve seen as well is that under President Trump’s mandate, we’ve seen a positive acceleration of all the permit on everything, which is regards to administrative release offshore wind farm development.
So there is the speech, but there is as well the reality that the state are – the owner of the project and are still willing to invest massively in coming years in U.S. So I don’t see a slowdown with all the commitment that New York State took recently, New Jersey, Massachusetts, is Donald Trump is winning in coming months.
Nextracker President Howard Wenger:
So demand is healthy for trackers and for trackers with domestic content. We’ll start there. We have firm orders for domestic content in a wide range of domestic content, typically between 40% all the way up to 100%. Now, we’re taking orders and we actually have an order for 100% domestic content tracker. And customers are not equivocating with respect to placing those orders. They’re not waiting for additional guidance. The guidance came out from Treasury. It’s very clear it’s favorable for trackers and for Nextracker. And we as we’ve discussed previously, stood up over 20 facilities with manufacturing partners to deliver domestic content with an annual capacity of over 30 gigawatts.
First Solar CEO Mark Widmar:
Firstly, with the November election fast approaching, the solar industry is again facing an uncertain policy environment.
The impact of this uncertainty became more apparent as the second quarter progressed. We have observed increasing constraints on access to capital, both for early stage solar technology companies seeking to finance the next stage of their growth as well as for the established companies looking to build domestic manufacturing capacity. Our financing parties wait to make investment decisions until they have a clear view of the policy picture. This uncertainty has also impacted developers evaluating risk and returns within project pro formas and which comes at a time when, as mentioned earlier, some oil and gas and power and utility developers are contemplating the pivot from renewables to prioritizing fossil projects.
While we cannot predict the outcome of the November election or what a Republican suite would mean for renewable energy industry and trade policies, we can help inform policymakers across the political spectrum of the significant economic and strategic benefits of promoting and securing a robust domestic solar energy manufacturing base and how policies, such as 45X of the IRA, significantly contribute to the economic life of our nation’s communities, particularly those located in traditionally red states. According to an economic analysis commissioned by First Solar and conducted by the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, our investments are already delivering tangible value by creating jobs and raising wages for American workers.
Our existing facilities, combined with our expansions in Ohio and new facilities in Alabama and Louisiana, are expected to see us support over 30,000 direct, indirect, and induced American jobs by 2026 and $2.8 billion annually in labor income. Our growth trajectory and long-standing commitment to investing in local supply chains is estimated to support 7.3 jobs nationally for every First Solar job created and is expected to add over $10 billion annually to the country’s economic output by 2026.
