You wouldn’t know it from listening to Donald Trump or Scott Pruitt, his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, but many Republicans in Washington are supportive of renewables and yearn for a day when that no longer puts them at odds with their party or its donors.

Robert Powelson, a Trump-appointed commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC), gave a barnburner of a speech this week at ACORE’s Renewable Energy Policy Forum, going so far as to “personally thank” the audience for the country’s remarkable progress on renewables – with more than 140GW of wind and solar now in the ground.