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The global energy transition reached a new milestone in 2025. Renewable energy surpassed coal as the world’s leading source of electricity. Solar and wind power installations grew quickly enough to meet the entire increase in global demand between January and June. This scientific breakthrough stands out as the most important of the year, according to the journal Science, which published its list of the most outstanding innovations of 2025 this Thursday.
The prestigious publication added a forceful editorial that constitutes a full-fledged condemnation of the anti-renewable energy and pro-fossil fuel policies implemented by Donald Trump. Beyond the environmental and health problems this policy causes, the magazine emphasizes the economic paradox it represents for U.S. interests, as the U.S. is “failing to benefit from its own innovations.” That’s because a significant portion of the technologies that have driven this growth in renewables worldwide were developed in the United States, notes the editorial. But it is China that perfected and now manufactures them, reaping the profits. This country, Science notes, supplies 80% of the world’s solar cells, 70% of its wind turbines, and 70% of its lithium batteries.
Trump has implemented a policy of halting renewable energy development in the US and incentivizing fossil fuel extraction instead. “While the rest of the world is buying China’s cheap renewable technology, the United States is doubling down on fossil fuels” the magazine explains, calling it a “poor decision” to have given up the “business opportunity” of exporting components for solar and wind farms to the rest of the world. “China’s revenue from exporting renewable technology is nearly as high as what the US makes now by exporting fossil fuels, but the income from selling renewables is increasing much faster because of high global demand.,” the editorial warns.
The article in Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and based in Washington, D.C., comes after a long list of executive orders issued by Trump since January to boost oil and gas extraction, lower environmental standards to benefit fossil fuels, and curb renewable energy projects. It is also published just a couple of weeks after the release of the United States National Security Strategy, in which Trump outlines his foreign policy priorities.
In that document, which relentlessly attacks the European Union, the Trump team proposes as its main objective restoring American energy dominance based solely on oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power. It’s worth remembering that the fossil fuel sector generously financed Trump’s return to the White House and that even his current Secretary of Energy is a former executive in the fracking industry. In international forums, the Trump Administration is allying itself with petrostates to defend the fossil fuel sector. And at the last climate summit, held in Belém, Brazil, in November, a majority of countries failed to support a call to move away from oil, gas, and coal—the main culprits of climate change.
The energy dispute between China and the United States is gaining even more relevance with the expansion of artificial intelligence, whose data centers, key to supporting AI, require vast amounts of electricity. While China is preparing to power them with renewable energy and incorporate fossil fuels only as a backup, the U.S. is betting on an energy model stuck in the past, warns Science.
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