Trump Should Be Held Accountable For Defunding Renewable Energy Projects

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Years of US climate action have been decimated in a mere few months. Renewable energy in the US had tripled over the last decade with solar, wind, and geothermal becoming more and more mainstream. Now the Trump administration is defunding renewable energy projects that have been designed to moderate our warming world.

For those concerned about the climate crisis, a new analysis points to the loss of almost $8 billion in renewable energy investments. These aren’t just small scale solar farms or a couple of wind turbines on a hill. No, they include 16 large-scale factories and other projects that were canceled, closed, or downsized in the first three months of 2025. Ninety-five clean energy projects have been delayed, threatened, or cancelled since Trump’s re-election, putting more than 60,000 jobs and $71 billion in investment at risk.

And it’s not just the projects in planning and construction phases that have been affected. Any US federal agency that has any type of relationship with clean energy/ climate/ conservation/ weather/ renewable energy has been threatened, harassed, and cut. The Environmental Protection Agency faces a 54.5% proposed cut. The massive changes in US research are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the US, with Europe and Canada among the top choices for relocation.

Trump and his coteries of Yes Sirs argue that ignoring climate will lower energy costs for consumers, help the economy, and secure “energy dominance” for the US. It’s a whole lotta BS.

At a recent CleanTechnica plant-based potluck, I sidled over to Steve Hanley, our intrepid reporter. I bemoaned the Trump tariffs and sneered at the idea that they would return manufacturing to the US. Steve reminded the gathering group that former President Joe Biden already was working to return manufacturing to the US — it was called the Inflation Reduction Act. CleanTechnica’s CEO Zachary Shahan concurred, reminding us how the Inflation Reduction Act  — “the biggest policy in history focused on reshoring manufacturing capacity in the United States” — led to numerous new factories in the solar, battery, and EV industries.

Thomas Friedman described in a New York Times editorial that “President Trump is focused on what teams American transgender athletes can race on, and China is focused on transforming its factories with AI so it can outrace all our factories.”

A monthly survey released by the Institute for Supply Management outlined how companies reported higher prices, fewer new orders, and declining employment  due to uncertainties over the tariff environment. A shortage of electrical components such as transformers, circuit breakers, and switchgear has persisted for 54 consecutive months, according to ISM. And that’s hampered efforts to keep up with rising electricity demand from data centers.

The tariff transformation will absolutely affect the global transition to green energy. The exact impacts of defunding renewable energy projects will become all-too-clear as the weeks go by, but certainly it will take companies years to readjust their supply chains. In the meantime, the business push is on to raise prices on energy, automobiles, and consumer goods.

Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly try to undermine US progress toward a zero emission economy through defending renewable energy in its various iterations. It’s time for all of us to take bold action to hold the Trump Administration accountable.

Meanwhile, Renewables are Feeding Everyone’s Hunger for Energy

What the Trump administration fails to acknowledge is that renewable energy has slashed harmful greenhouse gas emissions, made the nation’s energy system more resilient, and prevented thousands of premature deaths from power plant pollution, according to a report by Environment America.

• The amount of solar energy produced in 2024 – enough to power 28m homes – was nearly eight times higher than a decade earlier. Solar power production increased 27% from 2023 to 2024.
• Wind produced even more energy – enough to power 42m homes in 2024. The amount of power from wind has more than doubled over the past decade.
• Wind, solar, and geothermal energy accounted for 19% of all retail sales of electricity last year, according to the federal data used to produce the report.
• The amount of utility-scale battery storage in the US grew 63% from 2023 to 2024 – and a more than 80-fold increase over the past decade.
• Nearly 3.3m electric vehicles were on US roads at the end of 2023 – a 25-fold increase from 2014.
• More than 1.5m plug-in electric vehicles were sold in 2024, an increase of more than 7% over the previous year.
• Nearly 300,000 new electric vehicles were sold in the US during the first quarter of 2025 – an 11% increase over the same period last year.
• The number of electric vehicle charging ports grew to more than 218,000 at the end of 2024 – six times more than there were in 2015 and a 24% increase from just the year before.

“The growth of these clean energy technologies is now clearly benefiting people in all 50 states, and they’re really providing the building blocks of a clean energy system free from dirty and inefficient fuels,” Johanna Neumann, senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, which is led by Environment America, told The Guardian. “And the more that we can accelerate the progress that we’ve seen, the better it’ll be for our health and for our environment.”

Defunding renewable energy by the Trump administration doesn’t have to be an end game. Want to find out more about the growth of renewable energy and other clean energy technologies in your state? Click here for a state-specific fact sheet summarizing the data from Environment America’s State of Renewable Energy dashboard.

Trump Doesn’t See What How the World is Embracing Global Renewable Growth

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s Global Energy Review, the world’s appetite for energy rose at a faster-than-average pace in 2024, even though Trump’s delight in defunding renewable energy projects takes over domestic news headlines. In turn, there is a higher demand for all energy sources — from oil and gas to renewables. The agency found that renewables accounted for most of the growth in global energy supply, making up 38%.

Global Renewables Watch (GRW) is a first-of-its-kind “living atlas”, which works to map and measure all utility-scale solar and wind installations worldwide using AI and satellite imagery. Launched by Microsoft, Planet Labs, and The Nature Conservancy in 2022, GRW allows users to evaluate clean energy transition progress and track trends. Its findings are:

• The world’s solar land coverage has tripled over the past seven years.
• Onshore wind turbines have more than doubled, with 375,000 online as of midway through 2024.
• The US and China lead in total wind turbine installations, while European countries lead per capita.
• More than half of Europe’s wind turbines are concentrated in five countries: Germany, Spain, France, the UK, and Italy.