Climate Buzzwords Vanish From Corporate Earnings Calls As Trump Puts Green Energy Industry ‘On Its Heels’

America’s top corporations wasted no time in cutting green energy buzzwords out of their vocabularies during earnings calls, a shift experts say points to the exorbitant and unsustainable nature of the renewable energy industry as a whole.

Top companies are discussing renewable energy terms like climate change, global warming, environmental, social and governance (ESG), clean energy and green energy 75% less than they were three years ago, S&P 500 company earnings call transcripts reviewed by Bloomberg Green show. This absence demonstrates that the renewable energy industry is on its way out after the conclusion of the Biden administration, which pushed for green energy projects through initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), experts in the energy policy field told the Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Biden’s Climate Bill Turns Two Years Old)

“This industry is on its heels, and I don’t see a bright future for it,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told the DCNF.

“None of this green stuff makes any money,” Milloy continued. He pointed to EVs as well as wind and solar power, noting that “without the subsidies, those things are not going to be affordable” and that he does not foresee the industry having a “financial future.”

Green energy buzzwords hit their peak during earnings calls at the beginning of 2022, months before the IRA was signed into law, according to Bloomberg. In 2025, talk of renewable energy dropped to its lowest level since the second quarter of 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under Biden’s watch, the IRA gave large payouts to left-wing organizations and routed millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize solar panel projects in some of America’s least-sunny places. IRA-backed industries like offshore wind struggled despite taxpayer cash injections and the bill’s price tag skyrocketed from 2022 to 2024, though the White House had originally claimed that the IRA would “reduce the deficit.”

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In a new @CatoInstitute policy analysis, @JoshLoucks27 and I estimate taxpayers could save between $1 trillion and $2 trillion over the next 10 years (and up to $4.7 trillion by 2050) if Congress repeals the Inflation Reduction Act https://t.co/dtqRiHB3br

— Travis Fisher (@ts_fisher) March 11, 2025

Mentions of sustainability declined more than 50% during the last four fiscal quarters, according to Bloomberg, the time corresponding with President Donald Trump’s election and inauguration.

“The fact that these companies have completely abandoned these pursuits as soon as the government stops forcing them into these ventures, I think that tells you all you need to know about their lack of profitability,” EJ Antoni, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation told the DCNF. Antoni mentioned that under the IRA, taxpayers subsidize ventures that aren’t profitable. Businesses are not required to repay the loan if projects fail, which means that taxpayer dollars are used to fund failed green energy ventures, he explained.

“We’ve privatized the profits, but we’ve socialized the failures,” he added, emphasizing that “unfortunately, the taxpayer is on the hook.” (RELATED: Biden Reboots Obama-Era Green Energy Loan Program That Funded Solyndra And Cost Taxpayers Billions)

US President Donald Trump looks on during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

One IRA-backed project was the C02 pipeline, a taxpayer-subsidized investment in achieving the Biden administration’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The project was effectively killed when the South Dakota governor signed a bill banning government seizure of land for the use of carbon capture in his state.

“It makes perfect sense that S&P 500 companies would slow or pause their sustainability discussions in today’s political climate,” director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, Travis Fisher, told the DCNF. “Trump was elected over Kamala Harris, who had pledged in 2019 to spend $10 trillion on her climate plan and in 2022 was the tie-breaking vote in passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).”

“Unfortunately for US taxpayers, Congress has yet to repeal the trillions in energy subsidies in the IRA,” Fisher said, pointing to a recent Cato analysis showing how the cost of the IRA’s energy credits could reach $4.7 trillion by 2050. Among the priciest provisions of the IRA are the section 45Y and 48E credits, which “will likely cost taxpayers between $70 billion and $180 billion per year in the years just before the GHG target is met,” the analysis states.

“Going into the negotiations in Congress about the coming budget reconciliation measure, the IRA represents trillions that could be taken away from corporate cronies and instead used to cement broad-based, pro-growth tax cuts,” Fisher continued.

Trump announced his “unleashing American energy” plan early March, which called for an end to the Green New Deal and declared “a National Energy Emergency to unlock America’s full energy potential and bring down costs for American families.” On March 20, Trump also signed an executive order calling for “immediate measures to increase American mineral production.”

“The fact of the matter is, things like wind and solar are net losers, and that’s why we use reliable sources of energy like coal, nuclear, natural gas, oil, etc.,” Antoni said. “We use euphemisms, like renewables, for these failed technologies, because if we actually call them by their name, then no one would really want to use them.”

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