Comment: How Trump is unintentionally driving the energy transition

US President Donald Trump manages like no other to set the tone before the start of the World Climate Conference. After his election victory two years ago, there was initially hardly any other topic in Azerbaijan other than the question of whether the USA would become a total failure in the struggle for more climate protection worldwide, as was the case in Trump's first term in office.

At the start of the climate conference in Turkey this year, Trump is once again setting the tone. His defeat in the US midterm elections gives cause for cautious optimism. Even if no climate policy reversal is expected during Trump's remaining term in office, the election result does change the political balance of power in Washington. And shows that his course is not unchallenged. The second reason: Despite Trump's focus on fossil energies, the expansion of renewable energies has also accelerated in the USA, and worldwide anyway.

With his foreign policy, Trump has involuntarily made himself a driver of green politics. The Iran War and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz have driven up fossil fuel prices and exposed the risks of oil and gas, leading to shifts toward green energy around the world. Yes, in some cases coal also became socially acceptable again. And fossil power generation is far from being off the table globally. But the global energy transition has developed a technological and economic dynamic of its own that cannot be reversed politically, even by stubborn petrostates.