I’ve been waiting for a solid analysis of the new US climate policy, and it finally arrived. Yesterday, my phone pinged with a new episode of The Green Blueprint podcast. What caught my attention? Jigar Shah - now the former director of the US Department of Energy Loan Programs Office - was one of the guests. I hit play.
Three Key Takeaways:
💰 Money Talks, But Who Pays More? The US clean energy industry invests $500 billion a year but spends just $200 million on lobbying. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry invests $200 billion annually yet pours $4 billion into lobbying. That’s a 20x influence gap.
🏛️ IRA's Silent Republican Support Despite calls to scrap the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), every single provision has at least three Republican supporters. They won’t say it out loud, but they’re backing it behind closed doors.
⚡ Conflicting Energy Goals The new administration has two stated objectives:
Make oil, coal, and nuclear the foundation of American energy independence.
Cut energy costs for Americans by half.
There’s just one problem: solar power, even without subsidies, is already twice as cheap as gas. These goals directly contradict each other.
The Real Impact: Paralyzing Uncertainty
The confusion coming from Washington is freezing business activity. The White House signals a total rollback of the clean energy transition, while industry facts on the ground say otherwise. No one knows what’s coming next, and as a result, everything is on hold.
Listening to the podcast was surreal for me.
Having spent most of my life in Russia, I recognized the pattern instantly. Before every government shake-up, business activity in Russia would grind to a halt. Not because we didn’t know who was in charge, that was always 100% certain, but because no one knew who in the new cabinet would control what, which industries (read: which firms) would benefit, and who would be left in the cold.
Musk’s “Competent Government” Comment
Then, I remembered Elon Musk’s now-infamous post:
📌 “This is what a competent government looks like.”
The photo? Russian officials arriving in Saudi Arabia to negotiate with the US over Ukraine.
At that moment, it all clicked.
In Russia, uncertainty isn’t a bug - it’s a feature. Keeping people in the dark about the government’s next move consolidates control over resources and provides plausible deniability when things go wrong. With total control over police, courts, and media, this strategy becomes an iron grip on power.
And that’s what Musk meant by “competence.”
That’s the ideal the new US administration seems to aspire to. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.
But Here’s the Good News
The US is not Russia. This administration doesn’t have:
🔸 Total media control - as much as they try, X (formerly Twitter) is nowhere near as dominant in the US as Russian state media in Russia.
🔸 A grip on the courts - Jigar Shah noted that waiting 10 days before reacting to news helps filter out noise, especially as US courts push back against government overreach.
🔸 A police force that can be weaponized into a full-time Gestapo.
In Musk’s eyes, the US still has a lot to learn from Russia. Thankfully, it’s not there yet, and hopefully, it will never be.
Ignore the DDoS Attack
This administration’s tactics remind me of Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks—flooding a system with bogus requests until it crashes. The flood of political noise is designed to confuse, distract, and paralyze decision-making. Chaos is strategy.
But, as The Green Blueprint episode made clear, the facts on the ground tell a different story.
So, stick to the facts, ignore the noise, and carry on.