The Best Strategy for a Clean Energy Future: Grassroots People Power

In 2022, the Sierra Club helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act—the biggest clean energy and climate investment in US history. It proved something this organization has always known: When grassroots people power meets disciplined strategy, we can bend federal policy toward justice, survival, and progress.

Now, emboldened by the oil and gas industry, President Donald Trump and his allies have moved with speed and spite to choke off clean energy progress and revive the same fossil-fueled economy that pollutes our environment, increases our energy bills, and puts our health and safety at risk. This administration’s all-out war on renewable energy is not merely a difference in policy. It’s an attempt to rob us of our future—of our chance to build healthier communities, provide stable jobs, and ensure a livable climate.

Trump’s EPA has even stopped factoring in health impacts and the value of human life when regulating air pollution, basing its calculations entirely on industry compliance costs. It’s that same ethos—a disregard for life, the planet, and the health and pocketbooks of regular people, all to increase polluter profits—that is driving the administration to block every clean energy project it can.

The Sierra Club is fighting back in state capitols, courtrooms, utility commission meetings, and community gathering spaces. And we are scoring some crucial victories, especially in court, as we’ve challenged the administration’s illegal stop-work orders for offshore wind projects, its freezing of billions of dollars in clean energy investments, and its efforts to roll back electric-vehicle charging infrastructure. We’ve also had success in promoting climate-conscious investing with our Sustainable Finance campaign, and our research is helping develop frameworks for states to prevent rising bills and environmental harm from data center proliferation amid the artificial-intelligence boom.

We will continue to fight. And we will continue to win many of those fights. But we must also be honest about the challenges we are facing and the ones ahead: We cannot spend the next chapter only trying to restore what we had in the last one. If we strive to merely reclaim what’s been taken, we will always be playing defense. Our job is to create something new, larger, and durable enough to outlast any one administration.

That means building clean energy the way we build movements: with deep local roots, community leadership, and the resilience to withstand pressure. And that’s why the Sierra Club is such a natural leader when it comes to organizing and advocating for renewable energy projects at the local and state levels. Our grassroots strength is second to none. We have powerful national campaigns, chapters in every state, and a network of committed volunteers and supporters who won’t back down and won’t stop climbing no matter how steep the fossil fuel industry and its political allies make the hill.

The Sierra Club is helping lead efforts to deploy solar, wind, and battery projects—ones that create good jobs. Even as fossil fuel interests push to strip cities and counties of their right to choose cleaner buildings, transportation, and air, we are undeterred and continue to build power across the country. We know that renewable energy and transmission projects are most successful when communities have the opportunity for feedback. Research has shown that meaningful input as early as possible helps developers and communities find common ground. This is where the Sierra Club shines, with members across the country ready to engage. The answer is not to slow down. It’s to build cleaner, cheaper, and faster to lower consumers’ bills, protect air and water, and meet the urgency of the climate crisis.

The next wave of climate action will be won state by state, community by community—in public utility commissions, county boards, statehouses, and city halls. That’s where we stop new gas plants, modernize the grid, expand renewables, and secure rules that put people ahead of polluters.

The future isn’t waiting. Neither are we.