$90 trillion market opportunity is large enough to attract billions, if not trillions, of dollars in private investments. So why is there a need for spending billions of taxpayer dollars through the Department of Energy?
What Trump Budget Critics Miss: If Energy Technologies Hold Promise, The Market Will Respond
Many of the responses critical of President Trump's "skinny budget" actually show why the President's budget is the right way to go. A good example is a blog post by Jeff Navin, the former Acting Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff at the United States Department of Energy during the Obama administration. Navin is obviously an expert on the Department of Energy's activities and he understands global energy trends, but if the economic opportunity is as big as Navin suggests, then we do not see a need for the federal government to be involved.
Navin is very concerned that the Trump administration will not follow through on the Obama administration's energy-spending commitments. For example, the Obama administration, without the consent of Congress and the American people, committed to double energy R&D as a part of the Paris Agreement. Navin writes, "this budget not only fails to fulfill America's commitment to double our R&D, it makes a significant move backwards."
