What We Know About Trump’s Impact on Clean Energy

U.S. clean energy has taken a major hit but not a fatal one.

Biden’s climate legacy has taken serious hits but more has survived than we feared.  There’s a general impression that Trump has wiped out Biden’s ambitious climate statute and with it brought the energy transition to a halt.  It’s become clear that the situation is a lot more complicated than that.  Politico has unearthed new evidence about funding under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. That new evidence complements some of the other pieces of the puzzle.

The key takeaways:

• Biden-era tax credits for clean energy took the biggest hits, although some survived and phaseout periods helped moderate the damage.
• On the other hand, Biden-era direct funding laws remain almost completely intact.
• Trump has squashed new wind projects, but solar has hung on and new battery storage is thriving.  Hybrid cars are doing really well, though EV sales were harmed by repeal of tax credits.
• Models indicate that a good chunk of  the emission reductions projected after Biden will happen despite Trump.

Here are more details about the situation in the U.S.  Note that the global situation is quite different. For instance, EVs and plug-in hybrids are projected to be almost a third of all 2026 new car sales globally.  The U.S. car industry is being left almost hopelessly behind.

Tax credits.

Trump told Republicans in Congress to wipe out the tax credits in the IRA. He got most but not all of this. Tax credits for consumers were basically eliminated, including those for purchasing electric vehicles.  Congress did eliminate credits to companies producing solar power, but not immediately.  Instead, it provided a phaseout that has allowed a good number of new solar projects to go forward.  Some other tax credits have remained intact. Those included tax credits for advanced manufacturing, for geothermal energy projects, and for battery storage projects.

The numbers from Politico indicated that $115 billion in tax credits remain intact, although a much larger amount, about five times as much, were either repealed or phased out.  We don’t know at this point, however, how many projects qualify for credits under the phaseouts.  There was a big rush to beat the deadline for the solar phaseouts, so that could be significant.

Spending.

 Here’s where the Politico story is especially informative.  Out of $145 billion in IRA spending on clean energy, about a third has been cancelled.  (The government has admitted that these cancellations were deliberately directed at Blue States, which may lead to judicial reversals.) Some has already been spent, but most of the rest is still available through grant programs that have not been cancelled.

Spending under an earlier Biden law that’s generally called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act has been basically unaffected by Trump. As part of a large spending effort, this law provided money for rail ($66 billion) and mass transit ($39 billion), as well as $7.5 billion in funding for zero and low-emission buses and ferries,  $7.5 billion to build charging stations for electric vehicles, and $6 billion for energy storage.  It also provided $65 billion to expand the capacity of the nation’s electricity transmission system.

The situation on the ground.

I recently posted about current data on clean energy use. The headline news from a recent Rhodium report isn’t bad: In the second quarter (Q2) of 2026, “clean energy and transportation investment in the United States totaled $75 billion, a 22% increase from Q1 2026 and a 4% jump from Q2 2025.”  Considering Trump’s effort to summon all the power of the federal government to destroy clean energy, that’s better than you might expect.

What seemed most surprising is the role of consumer activity, which accounted for more than half the total. One possibility is that consumers have been spooked by the Iran War, inflation, and possible rate hikes due to AI data centers. Those worries may be leading them to go for hybrids and EVs, home batteries, and rooftop solar, as forms of self-protection.

Future prospects.

I also posted recently about efforts to model the future effects of Trump’s policies on clean energy.  There are only a couple of models available. Trump’s rollbacks and assault on the Inflation Reduction Act have not been as cataclysmic as feared. At least not yet.  Many of the projected emission reductions that would have happened in a world with the IRA and Biden’s climate regulations intact will continue to happen to despite Trump. (At least through the time he’s in office. His policies could have a greater bite in the 2030s unless they’re changed.). The models come from different sources — an MIT researcher and the Rhodium firm — using different methodologies.  The models also have implications about the next steps in climate policy.  Both models highlight the critical need to rip down barriers to clean energy and transmission build out.

Bottom line.

Trump has done major damage, but it’s still not a total disaster. Trump would like us to believe that he’s wiped out what he calls the Green New Scam.  Fortunately for the future of the planet, that’s only partially true.

Biden Administration, Climate Change, Federal Climate Policy, Inflation Reduction Act, Transportation, Trump Administration