Now that US President Donald Trump has emerged in full flower as a butt-ogling, noise-bleating presence on the 2026 campaign trail, climate advocates are all the more certain that his attempt to throttle back on the nation’s wind and solar industries will ultimately fail. Trump does not hate all forms of renewable energy, though. For example, he has been supporting the marine energy industry all along, perhaps because much of it is hidden under water. Go figure…

Marine energy refers specifically to devices that harvest the kinetic energy of tides, currents, and waves. That’s an important distinction because wind turbines, both offshore and onshore, have earned the wrath of Trump ever since the early 2000’s, when he lost a legal battle against an offshore wind farm that allegedly spoiled the view from one of his golf courses in Scotland. Unlike wind turbines, marine energy devices are barely visible above the surface of the water, so the view-spoiling argument loses quite a bit of steam against them.

That helps explain why the US Department of Energy continues to pour taxpayer dollars into marine energy R&D, even while Trump systematically tries to destroy any and every wind turbine in sight (see more Trump v. wind turbines here).

As for potential competition against President Trump’s allies in the fossil fuel industry, no worries. Marine energy is a newly hatched global industry, and it lacks the supply chain and workforce needed for rapid scale-up before it can make any significant contribution to the renewable energy transition.

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