Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and/or follow us on Google News!
Last Updated on: 18th April 2025, 12:13 pm
If you have worried that the US road to renewable energy will halt under the corrupt Trump administration, you do have cause for concern. But there is also hope. A series of newly released analyses indicate that, yes, the US renewable energy transition will slow down, but forces already in place are too strong to stop it completely.
Renewable energy, often referred to as clean energy, comes from natural sources or processes that are constantly replenished. The global shift toward renewable energy sources is not just a fleeting notion. The road to renewable energy is taking us to new ways of producing and consuming energy and provides a cleaner, more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels.
The Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO2025) explores potential long-term energy trends in the US. This publication comes from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) as part of its mandate to prepare an annual report that contains trends and projections of energy consumption and supply. The Bloomberg NEF New Energy Outlook 2025 says that strong fundamentals underpin growth in renewables and electric vehicles (EVs).
The consensus of the two publications is for rising renewable electricity generation, even in scenarios where Trump’s deregulatory agenda is successful. Both predict coal, natural gas, and oil consumption will all decline in the coming decades, as renewable power generation rises and more people use electricity to power their cars and heat their homes. Total US electricity demand is expected to rise by roughly 50% by 2050 consistent with projections for increasing electricity demand due to expanding artificial intelligence and data center projects.
Trump Stumbles Out of the Energy Gate with IRA Reductions
The Trump administration has promised to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In one of its first executive orders, Unleashing American Energy, the administration put an immediate pause on all IRA funds. Some of those funds have since been released, like the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Possible funding recipients have been warned to eliminate language that invokes “Biden-era DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals.”
Joseph DeCarolis, the EIA administrator under former President Joe Biden, said in an interview, “It’s pretty clear that electricity demand is increasing and more end use demands are being met with electricity. Much of that was incentivized with the Inflation Reduction Act.”
The AEO2025 report also follows increased electrification in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 climate law that provided billions of dollars in tax credits and grants for new clean energy systems. An example of the IRA success through tax credits are solar farms, which are the least expensive source of new power generation. Domestic and overseas investors are scrambling to support new solar projects in the US. In fact, globally, last year, 92.5% of new power capacity came from renewables, and 77.3% of that was from solar.
Repealing the IRA could cost state economies billions of dollars, cause them to miss out on thousands of jobs, and raise energy costs for consumers. That’s the conclusion of a report from the nonpartisan energy and climate policy think tank, Energy Innovation. Fully repealing the IRA would have significant results by 2035; it would:
- decrease GDP by $250 billion;
- result in 1.3 million fewer jobs;
- burden households with $35 billion in increased spending on energy, or $240 per household;
- impact over $520 billion in new clean investment; and,
- vanish more than 334,000 new jobs created in the two years since the law’s passage.
Investments in large scale clean energy projects last month fell to their lowest level since the passage of game-changing clean energy tax credits, amid increasing project cancellations and growing market uncertainty as Congress begins debate on repealing the tax credits and other incentives.
A federal judge has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop “unlawfully suspending or terminating” $20 billion in climate grants, prompting the agency to appeal the order. Another federal judge temporarily blocked the Department of Energy’s plans to cut $405 million in annual research funds from universities. A third federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately resume disbursing funds from the 2022 IRA climate law and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The “Make America Pollute Again” Movement
The EAI is an offshoot of the Department of Energy, and the US Department of Energy wasn’t too happy with its own agency’s findings, reflecting contradictions from Trump administration. “Today’s report from EIA reflects the disastrous path for American energy production under the Biden administration — a path that was soundly rejected by the American people last November,” DOE spokesperson Andrea Woods said in a statement. “By unleashing energy that is affordable, reliable, and secure, this administration is ensuring America’s future is marked by energy growth and abundance — not scarcity.”
Despite the interest of overseas investors in pursuing renewable energy opportunities in the US, on April 8, Trump issued another order aimed at force-feeding more coal back into the nation’s power generation profile. The Associated Press ran the story under the headline, “Trump signs executive orders to boost coal, a reliable but polluting energy source.”
While the US is increasing its manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries, China remains the main supplier to the US market, and the costs of those batteries are set to soar with the latest round of tariffs. In other words, the US has now decreased its manufacturing potential instead of elevated it. The proposed Trump administration promise of new coal-fired generating stations that will be coming soon fails to mention the time from planning and permitting to construction and activation takes 5 to 7 years. Oops!
The Trump administration is doing the bidding of Big Oil to try to defeat clean energy production. For example, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is seeking to stop a New York offshore wind farm that is already under construction. Burgum posted on X that he wants the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to “immediately halt all construction activities on the Empire Wind Project until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
Empire Wind would push power to half-million homes on the New York City electrical grid. The attempt to overturn it will make the Trump administration look even more feckless.
Meanwhile, private sector funding is still operative, though the chaos instigated by the Trump administration upon US energy policy has had a definite impact. The organization E2 tracks major clean energy projects around the US, and their latest monthly report notes a sharp downturn, so that the road to renewable energy power sources seems much longer than it did just last year at this time.
Whether you have solar power or not, please complete our latest solar power survey.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy