Perspectives

In the first hours of Trump’s return to the White House, a flurry of executive orders signaled significant shifts for what felt like every industry, including clean energy and climate policy. For greentech startups, these changes might seem daunting and discouraging, but there is a path forward.

Our key message for founders is simple: don’t panic. The landscape is changing, but opportunity still exists for those who adapt quickly and intelligently.

Three Critical Strategies

1. Understanding the Policy Landscape

Policy navigation is now your most critical, competitive tool. This goes far beyond casual monitoring – it requires a comprehensive approach:

• Develop a dedicated policy tracking system – or consider hiring a dedicated consultancy for this.
• Monitor federal agency and congressional communications, including proposed bills.
• Track legal challenges and court interpretations of new policies.
• Identify potential policy windows and strategic pivot points.

Your goal is not just understanding current regulations but anticipating potential shifts and their impact on your business before they become mainstream knowledge. This means cultivating relationships with policy experts, attending industry briefings, and creating an intelligence network that can rapidly interpret and respond to regulatory changes.

2. Know Your Goals and Audience

Successful greentech startups in this environment will be those with laser-focused objectives and a nuanced understanding of their audience.

This takes two forms. First, define your precise technological value proposition and map that against specific stakeholder groups, i.e., investors, policymakers, and industry partners. Second, analyze each stakeholder’s potential concerns and motivations and think through how your current offering addresses each of those. You need to demonstrate how your technology solves real-world problems while aligning with the administration’s economic and innovation priorities.

3. Strategic Messaging Refinement

Based on that analysis, consider how you need and want to adapt your messaging, if at all. Depending on the goal, we recommend pivoting where possible to messaging that reflects what is being voiced by the government and federal agencies. From what we’ve seen so far, this means American competitiveness and national security. Examples could include emphasizing U.S.-based and/or U.S.-grown technological innovation and the job creation potential in areas that are crucial to American industry. Even better would be to highlight these aspects in the context of AI, in line with the recent Trump executive order, which aims to “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance” in areas of “human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” We also recommend that you first consider testing your message among elite policy audiences to measure how it resonates with them, so you can adapt it if necessary ahead of broader engagement.

Practical Implementation: Agricultural Innovation

Let’s take a closer look at how this could play out at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), for example. Brooke Rollins is Trump’s nominee to lead USDA, and she brings with her perspectives and priorities developed earlier in her career, including from her time in the first Trump administration leading the Office of American Innovation. This could present an opportunity for greentech in the agriculture space to highlight its innovation and competitiveness wins such as precision farming techniques that use AI and drought-resistant crop development technologies. The focus is on technologies that demonstrate clear economic advantages: reducing costs to farmers, improving crop resilience, and enhancing agricultural productivity through smart solutions.

The Bottom Line

The second Trump administration doesn’t spell the end for greentech, but it does demand smarter, more strategic positioning. Your technology’s economic and innovation potential matters more than ever.

Need a roadmap for navigating this new landscape? Our team specializes in helping greentech startups transform policy challenges into strategic advantages – drop us a line at contactus@trilligent.com.