Gregory Pitner had done all the research, crunched all the numbers. The nanoelectronics researcher from San Jose, California, knew that he wanted solar panels installed on his home. The only question was timing: Should he do it now? Or perhaps in a few months, when it was warmer? Maybe if he waited, the price would go down. Maybe he’d get a better quote.

Then President Donald Trump announced his decision to impose tariffs on solar panels imported from China. Pitner and his wife knew, from reading media reports, that the price of panels could soon rise. “It was a forcing function for us to make a decision,” he said. “We knew that if we had waited longer, we would have been impacted, and we were not sure how it would have affected us.” Pitner also knew that a huge financial incentive for installing solar panels was on the verge of expiring: the Investment Tax Credit, which covers 30 percent of the installation cost.

Today, 17 panels sit on Pitner’s roof, soaking up sunlight that charges his electric car and helps power his family’s home. “Trump’s tariff helped us make our decision, and move quickly,” he said, as did uncertainty over whether Congress would renew the tax credit. But his decision mostly had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with saving money. “This was a financial investment for me,” he said. He’s calculated that the energy his $16,000 system produces should pay for the system’s installation within five years.

Environmental advocates and journalists (me included) have a habit of describing Trump’s presidency as a major blow to renewable energy. But the reality is far more complicated. Yes, the Trump administration has adopted an aggressively pro–fossil fuel agenda and has pushed policies that are undoubtedly harmful to renewable energy. But that doesn’t mean he’s destroying the industry altogether, nor that he has the ability to do so. From solar to wind to geothermal energy, the renewables industry is withstanding Trump—and in some cases, it’s doing better than ever.

Pavel Molchanov, an energy market analyst at the financial firm Raymond James, is adamant that Trump isn’t killing renewables. “There is no effort by the Trump administration to wipe out renewable energy,” he said. “That’s not the effort, that’s not on the agenda.” He sees Trump as pro-fossil fuels, and anti-government spending—but not necessarily anti-renewable. “There are differences in emphasis between, for example, what we saw during eight years of Obama, and what we are seeing today,” he said. “But those are questions of degree, they’re not issues of life and death.”