The U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP31, is bringing two weeks of intense debate over energy and climate policy to Antalya, Türkiye. In the United States, 2026 has seen a fierce political battle over energy policy in the wake of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The Democrats’ sweeping gains in Congress could offer some grounds for optimism ahead of the Antalya summit, although a return to Washington’s commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 remains unlikely under the Trump administration.
In January 2026, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement took effect, while Trump announced plans to pull the country out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Neither move came as a surprise.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump declared back in 2017, arguing that combating climate change would impose an unnecessary burden on American workers, businesses and taxpayers.
Pittsburgh, a longstanding Democratic stronghold, was hardly likely to embrace Trump’s message. The more striking development came elsewhere in Pennsylvania, where Democrats made significant gains in last week’s midterms, just two years after the state helped return Trump to the White House. The party’s victories in congressional races and its capture of the state Senate marked a significant political shift in one of America’s most closely contested states.
The results also reflected a broader backlash against Trump’s policies, particularly his military offensive against Iran, which contributed to rising energy costs and intensified pressure on American households. A president who had promised to bring prices down was now facing growing public frustration over the cost of living.
An October Pew Research Center survey found that 74% of Americans were very concerned about gasoline and energy prices, up from 43% in January, before the conflict with Iran. Joe Biden’s administration also faced harsh criticism over high gasoline prices during the 2022 midterms, when gasoline was actually even more expensive after adjusting for inflation. Yet even this comparison does little to favor the current administration: Biden was blamed for high prices in 2022; Trump is now accused of failing to bring them down.
“Whoever takes their seat in Congress this coming January will know that delivering lower energy prices is essential to winning reelection in 2028,” said Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, speaking on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC), one of the world’s largest annual energy industry events.
“Affordability arguments are going to become the most compelling ones even for the clean energy agenda. My own view, and this might be the greatest thing about this midterm outcome, is that the extremists on both sides didn’t do so well, and there is a real momentum behind the pragmatism in the U.S. in general."
Ahead of the midterms, market strategists saw clean energy as one of the sectors that could benefit from a strong Democratic showing. However, while these midterms could mark a turning point, a full restoration of Biden-era federal climate policies remains unlikely unless Democrats win the 2028 presidential election.
When Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law in August 2022, it marked one of the biggest U.S. government efforts to fight climate change, boost clean energy and create American jobs. The idea was straightforward: offer tax breaks and other financial incentives to make solar and wind power more attractive, encourage Americans to buy electric cars, support hydrogen and carbon capture technologies, and make homes more energy efficient.
But much of that agenda came under fire in 2025 when Trump approved the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), rolling back major clean-energy incentives. The move strengthened the Republican Party’s reputation for being hostile to climate action, an image reinforced by subsequent efforts to weaken environmental regulations and restrict renewable energy development as part of Trump’s broader energy offensive.
Throughout 2026, climate activists in the U.S. faced one setback after another as the Trump administration pressed ahead with its efforts to roll back environmental protections.
Between March and June, the Interior Department moved to cancel offshore wind leases. One of the biggest developments came on June 17, when the government reached a settlement involving four leases held by Invenergy, worth around $765 million.
Coal also received a boost. In February and June, Trump issued orders aimed at expanding the use of coal-fired electricity for military and national security purposes.
In September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced another controversial move, targeting restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. The administration argued that rolling back climate regulations would save businesses trillions of dollars.
“Biden was very much interested in reindustrializing the United States and strengthening its industrial base, something Trump is equally keen on,” Thomas O’Donnell, a Germany-based American energy and geopolitics strategist and founder of The Global Barrel website, said.
“The problem is that, as we have learned in Europe, and particularly in Germany, the whole idea of reindustrializing a country and making it more competitive through green technology doesn’t work,” O’Donnell explained. “You can install wind turbines and solar farms, but you still need reliable energy. Otherwise, prices will soar. Solar and wind power are expensive to connect to the grid, and you still need to build an entirely separate backup system, based on natural gas, for days when there isn’t enough sun or wind.”
As one of the biggest dividing lines between Democrats and Republicans, energy policy is certainly not going to disappear from the political debate, especially over the next two years of a divided U.S. Congress.
“Trump’s energy abundance arguments are not going to go away, and the real question here is whether Democrats will learn to love fossil fuels over time,” Kempe said.
There is still room for optimism in Antalya. “Even without the U.S., the corporate sector has largely remained a stalwart in deploying renewables and managing emissions, including through participation in consecutive COPs. Despite how much Washington’s green agenda has changed, the reality of what companies are doing for the climate is much more important,” Kempe concluded.
For COP31, the U.S. midterms offer a reminder that Washington’s energy debate is far from settled. Their results have clearly shown that affordability, rather than ideology, will increasingly shape U.S. energy policy. Washington may have walked away from Paris, but its political choices will undoubtedly continue to influence the global climate agenda.
