No one’s letting Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski forget that she voted for President Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. Seconds after she took the stage at National Clean Energy Week on Wednesday, a protester yelled at her and said she’s a “climate criminal.”
“You were the tie-breaking vote for the Big Beautiful Bill,” the protester yelled. “You have doomed us all.”
Murkowski didn’t entirely rebuke their chants. In her remarks, she acknowledged that the bill created many obstacles for wind and solar energy, which help to generate power for rural communities in her state, while shifting some of the blame for tamping down clean energy production to the Trump administration.
“This is not necessarily the happiest year on record for clean energy,” Murkowski said. “You’ve lost policy support at the federal level. Not really sure on any given day what the day is going to hold, what orders may be given, what projects may be impacted…It’s not just unfortunate. I think it’s unfair. I think it’s certainly counterproductive, and yet this is where we are.”
Murkowski later called out one “impacted project” by name: Revolution Wind, which the Trump administration halted construction on last month. She also advocated for an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, which many clean energy-supporting Republicans favor. The Trump administration has seemed to spurn the strategy by targeting solar and wind energy.
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“The worst thing that we can do is take the resources off the table,” Murkowski said. “Nothing good will come from halting already permitted, nearly complete projects.”
The saving grace that will get renewables back on the table, she said, will be rising energy prices. Because renewable energy is the cheapest form of power and the fastest to deploy, Murkowski said “nothing changes minds and policies like rising prices.”
Clean energy tax policy experts that spoke on a panel after Murkowski’s speech echoed that sentiment.
“The best news, given all the headwinds that the sector faces, is that [energy] demand is growing,” climate change policy consultant Joe Britton said. Rising prices will “catch up with” Republicans “and consumers are pushing back,” he said.
And like Murkowski, Britton said that the Trump administration breaking promises and rescinding permits hurts the renewable industry and the country’s ability to meet rising energy demand as a whole.
“The value of the permit itself for this sector is diminished, because if the permit can be yanked, if it’s not going to be defended in court, if [grants and] loans are going to be pulled back,” Britton said, “those are all really concerning elements in this marketplace.”