The Paradox Of American Technological Leadership In Renewable Energy

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OPINION:
Seen from a journalist’s perspective, thriving in a developing nation,
dependent on first-world technology

In a previous article, I explored how three American technology companies — AWS, Bentley, and Rockwell Automation — are providing the core technological solutions for the global renewable energy industry. My reason for writing that piece, and this one, stems from a profound irony.

I have always believed that technology, and by extension science, has a unique ability to break down walls and connect societies. The reason is simple: evidence — the truth — is the bedrock of science. While technology can be misused to spread falsehoods, the technology itself, grounded in the unchangeable principles of physics, chemistry, and biology, is always honest.

This honesty of technology presents a fascinating paradox within the current political climate. In an era of “America First” rhetoric, these American companies have never been more committed to solving global challenges first. They understand that true technological leadership in the 21st century comes not from building walls but from building the invisible infrastructure that makes everyone else’s renewable energy projects actually work.

What emerges from this technical landscape is a compelling contrast. At a moment when American politics increasingly turns inward, American technology has never been more globally integrated. The automation systems managing solar farms in India run on the same Rockwell architecture as those in Iowa. The digital twin simulating a wind farm in Denmark was developed using the same Bentley platform optimizing operations in Texas.

This global reach is a quiet but powerful force, transcending political discourse through practical, on-the-ground solutions.

This represents a form of “America First” that predates and transcends contemporary political rhetoric — an approach that achieves American technological supremacy precisely by solving everyone else’s problems first. The engineers developing these systems in Milwaukee, Seattle, and Philadelphia aren’t constrained by national boundaries in their thinking. They’re designing for the planet’s energy transition, knowing that American leadership in this space depends on global deployment and validation.

The talent driving these innovations reflects this global integration. Walk through the R&D centers of these companies and you’ll find engineers from Nigeria working alongside colleagues from Norway, and data scientists from India collaborating with automation experts from Ohio. This isn’t corporate diversity theater; it’s the practical recognition that planetary-scale challenges require planetary-scale intellectual resources.

AWS’ cloud infrastructure serves renewable energy operators from Brazil to Bangladesh using the same fundamental architecture. Bentley’s digital twin platforms model infrastructure projects across six continents with identical precision. Rockwell’s automation systems control critical infrastructure in countries that view America as both partner and competitor.

The Fragility Of Excellence

Yet this remarkable achievement in American technological leadership exists within a broader ecosystem that extends far beyond private industry. The renewable energy dominance achieved by companies like AWS, Bentley, and Rockwell didn’t emerge in isolation — it was built upon decades of foundational research conducted by federal agencies, international scientific collaborations, and the kind of long-term, evidence-based thinking that transcends political cycles.

Consider the critical supporting infrastructure: NASA’s Earth observation satellites provide the climate data that makes renewable energy forecasting possible. The Department of Energy’s national laboratories conduct the materials research that improves solar panel efficiency. The National Institute of Standards and Technology develops the cybersecurity frameworks that protect the digital infrastructure controlling our power grid. These agencies don’t operate in isolation, they collaborate with international partners, share data globally, and recruit talent from around the world.

This creates a vulnerability that few in the renewable energy sector fully appreciate. The same global, science-based approach that made American renewable energy technology dominant depends on maintaining institutional cultures that prioritize expertise over politics, evidence over ideology, and long-term strategic thinking over short-term political considerations.

When key scientific and technological agencies begin operating under different principles — when political considerations supersede scientific ones in appointment decisions, when international collaborations are viewed with suspicion, or when evidence-based recommendations are overruled by political preferences — the entire foundation supporting American technological leadership becomes unstable.

The renewable energy sector should be particularly concerned about this dynamic. The optimization algorithms that manage smart grids rely on weather forecasting models developed by NOAA. The materials science breakthroughs that improve battery efficiency emerge from DOE laboratory research. The cybersecurity protocols protecting critical energy infrastructure are developed by agencies like NIST and coordinated internationally.

The Innovation Ecosystem Under Pressure

The challenge isn’t just about individual appointments or policy decisions — it’s about maintaining the institutional culture that made American renewable energy leadership possible in the first place. The companies driving the global energy transition succeeded because they could rely on a broader ecosystem of scientific excellence, international cooperation, and evidence-based decision-making.

This ecosystem is more fragile than it appears. Scientific institutions require consistency, predictability, and the freedom to follow evidence wherever it leads. They depend on being able to attract top global talent, collaborate internationally, and think in decades rather than news cycles. When these conditions are compromised, the effects ripple through to the private sector innovations that depend on this foundational work.

The irony deepens when we consider that renewable energy represents perhaps the greatest validation of American scientific and technological capabilities in generations. Solar panel efficiency improvements, battery storage breakthroughs, and grid management innovations all emerged from the intersection of public research and private innovation. This success story could serve as a model for American competitiveness across multiple sectors.

Instead, the very institutional culture that enabled this success faces pressure from political approaches that prioritize different values — loyalty over expertise, political alignment over scientific credentials, domestic considerations over global collaboration.

The Real American Export

This technological architecture has always been America’s most effective form of soft power.

It’s not achieved through military projection or economic coercion, but through the simple reality that the world’s energy transition increasingly runs mostly on American intellectual property. Even if the panels are made in China, the very core of the technology came from New York inventor Charles Fritts, who created the first solar cell. When Henry Ford deployed the conveyor assembly line, he introduced a crude form of automation. Now every predictive maintenance routine, and every cybersecurity protocol embeds American assumptions about how complex systems should operate, showcasing the ingenuity and forward-thinking nature of the nation’s scientific community.

The question facing the renewable energy sector is whether America can maintain this leadership while simultaneously undermining the institutional foundations that made it possible.

Can the cloud computing companies continue to provide the cloud infrastructure for global renewable projects if America retreats from international scientific collaborations? Can automation companies maintain its automation leadership if the federal agencies supporting advanced manufacturing research lose their scientific credibility? Can infrastructure technologists push their digital twin technologies remain cutting-edge if the country’s approach to immigration makes it harder to attract global engineering talent?

America First

To me, America first is what the world has always known and continues to need — the one that invents solutions before problems become crises, that thinks in decades rather than election cycles, and that measures success not just in market share but in megawatts of clean energy deployed globally. The renewable energy sector’s continued dominance depends not just on private sector innovation, but on preserving the broader institutional culture that makes such innovation possible.

The paradox of American technological leadership isn’t just that it succeeds by solving global problems first — it’s that this success requires the very qualities that current political rhetoric often dismisses: international collaboration, evidence-based decision-making, and institutional expertise developed over decades of careful cultivation.

America holds crucial advantages in the control systems, software platforms, and digital infrastructure that make renewable energy projects viable at scale, even when the hardware comes from elsewhere. Whether these advantages can be sustained and expanded may depend on whether America can remember what made that leadership possible in the first place.