Solar booming despite Trump

The proof continues to mount that clean energy, solar in particular, is an economic no-brainer: Why Solar Power Is Booming Under Trump.

Despite the Trump administration’s pivot away from renewable energies, solar continues to dominate new energy additions in the United States. Newly released data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows that at the close of last year, solar energy additions were the single largest form of new energy capacity installations for the 28th straight month, starting in September of 2023. In fact, in spite of a broad rollback of Biden-era clean energy incentives since Trump resumed office in January of last year, renewables represented a whopping 88 percent of energy additions in 2025, with utility-scale solar alone counting for 72.6 percent of U.S. electricity additions.

The author refers to a “pivot away from renewable energies”, and later “a policy climate that is considerably cooler for solar photovoltaics”, but to me that’s pulling punches. The Trump administration is overtly – to the level of illegality in all the cases that have gone to court – hostile to clean energy. Further, they’re pouring millions into propping up the dirty, ugly coal industry, from mining the stuff to burning it for power. Yet solar continues to grow!

Which is great, but imagine how it could have been. If these greedy fossil-fuel monsters weren’t able to have things their way, think of how much faster this transition could be going. Solar being “88 percent of energy additions in 2025” is great, but it should be 100%, and it should be even larger absolute numbers. Still, this is good news for what it says about the clean energy growth even under a hostile regime. Elsewhere, and, one hopes, in a future United States, acceleration will continue.