I’m throwing this here sted Environment, as there are significant economic repercussions from these sorts of policy shifts.

Replacing a coal-powered furnace would have eliminated 1m tons of greenhouse gases from the local environment every year, according to Cleveland-Cliffs. It would also have saved the company $450m every year through “efficiency gains and reduced scrap dependency”, and created 1,200 construction and 150 permanent jobs in the town of 50,000 residents who have struggled for decades with manufacturing losses.

But last month, the Cleveland-Cliffs CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, announced the plan was on hold. He claimed the lack of development in hydrogen fuel – in part a result of the Trump administration’s freezing of a host of Biden-era spending plans – and the Federal Reserve’s refusal to lower interest rates – also a byproduct of Trump administration policies – had forced the company to throw out the project as initially devised.

These are the sorts of projects I covered until Trump took the throne.

At $7bn, the Biden-era project to support the development of seven regional clean hydrogen hubs across the US is reportedly in jeopardy, with the Department of Energy in March considering ending four of those projects located in Democratic-leaning states.

Look, I’m not going to say hydrogen makes a lot of sense at this point, given the power demands of electrolysis and difficulties surrounding storage. But if we can solve both of those through research and iteration, there is a flaming metric assload (i.e., 10% larger than the flaming Imperial assload) of hydrogen hanging out on Earth ready to assist in decarbonization.

My main concern is that not looking into all energy options will set us back not just the duration of Trump’s term but decades and possibly generations (however many we have left) while other countries push ahead on research. This is not a nationalist concern – my entire electrical grid was made in China – but rather a reaction to the brain drain we’re already seeing happening akin to 1930s Germany.

And, I mean, really? J.D. Vance’s hometown?