A Donald Trump appointee at the Forrestal Building bodes well for oil, natural gas and nuclear power, but renewables will remain robust contenders, analysts say.

Drillers and nuclear energy advocates are excited about the prospect of new Republican leadership at the Department of Energy in hopes of policies that could extend a lifeline to threatened nuclear power plants and boost oil and gas developers struggling with low fuel prices.

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“That is an area that has enjoyed bipartisan support,” said Dan Reicher, who led DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under President Clinton and served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “Energy efficiency has also tended to be fairly bipartisan.”

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Though Trump will appoint DOE’s new leader, Congress will have its hand on the rudder, and it’s not certain what direction it will point the agency. “It’s very much a function of the Congress to set the authority and the focus areas of the Energy Department,” Reicher said. “Funding for the regulatory programs, setting efficiency standards — what’s going to be the fate of the funding for that?”

Yet even without climate change as a motivator, the United States still has good reason to continue developing clean energy systems. “There’s a lot of money to be made in clean energy, from the sale of products globally to the development and finance,” Reicher said. “I don’t want to see us give up the economic upside of these industries, many of which the U.S. invented and many of which the U.S. government through the Department of Energy originally funded.”

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