Wind and solar power have been under attack during Donald Trump’s second term as president. He has called renewable energy a “joke,” canceled wind and solar projects, and taken actions to prop up coal and other fossil fuels as a way to “secure” the country’s “energy independence.”
But the U.S. will struggle to have enough energy without wind and solar—especially as the tech sector’s growing use of AI demands more power—according to Chuka Umunna, JPMorgan Chase & Co’s global head of sustainable solutions, who spoke with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.
The comments came as JPMorgan announced an initiative to invest $1.5 trillion toward “security and resilience” that includes investments for solar, battery storage, nuclear, and efforts to modernize the energy grid.
The Trump administration has expressed support for expanding geothermal as well as nuclear energy. But Umunna said those won’t be enough to help the country meet its energy demands, and succeed when it comes to AI—we will still need wind and solar as well.
“It’s difficult to conceive of a situation in which they won’t need to tap into those sources of energy,” he said. “We need more energy from all sources.”
Nuclear in particular takes “years to come on stream,” Umunna noted. Projects take an average of seven years, though the U.S. Government Accountability Office says nuclear power plants take 10 to 12 years to plan, license, and build. It can also take up to seven years to build new gas-fired turbines.
Wind and solar, in contrast, are among the fastest (and cheapest) new sources of energy to build, with many projects taking just 12 to 18 months.
Trump has also pushed his fossil fuel energy agenda as a way for the country to solve its “energy emergency” and achieve “energy independence.” But according to Umunna, renewables will actually help the country be more self-sufficient.
The debate about sustainability, and whether or not to deploy renewable energy, is no longer a binary, he said: “It involves complex issues of geopolitics and [economic] competitiveness as well.”
When it comes to green economy stocks, which have seen strong recent gains, investors see an advantage not only from the sustainability angle, but also around “sovereignty, the strategic autonomy thematic,” he added. JPMorgan has identified 150 stocks that benefit from both.
JPMorgan’s Security and Resiliency Initiative is a 10-year plan to finance industries it says are crucial to economic security. It will invest in four main buckets: supply chain and advanced manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and resilience; and “frontier and strategic technologies” (including AI and quantum computing).