President Trump’s first executive actions put the wind industry on ice, undermined the transition to electric vehicles, and paused funding for EV chargers. But so far Trump has done little — if anything — to stymie the country’s fastest growing clean energy technology: solar.
This isn’t a huge surprise. On the campaign trail, Trump blasted former President Biden’s climate and clean energy policies from every angle, consistently criticising wind energy and promising to “end the EV mandate.” But any time solar came up, Trump admitted that he kind of, sort of liked it.
“By the way, I’m a big fan of solar,” Trump said at the presidential debate in September, before complaining about how much land solar farms take up. The following month at a roundtable in Miami, he said “I like, you know, some applications where you have it on a roof or you have it on something,” before launching into familiar complaints about land use.
This raises the question of whether the president might include solar farms in his plan to “unleash American energy.” More solar capacity was added to the grid last year than any other energy source, after all. As of September, it made up 78% of all new capacity additions. Rooftop solar is also one of the quickest and most direct ways for consumers to lower their energy bills, so the technology fits well within Trump’s agenda to lower energy costs.
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The Solar Energy Industries Association did not respond to my email requesting an interview, but the trade group is evidently trying to make this case to the new administration. “It’s clear that we will not reach President Trump’s vision for American energy dominance or technological innovation without continued solar and energy storage growth,” Abigail Ross Hopper, the group’s president, said in a statement published after the inauguration.
Solar’s exclusion from Trump’s day one orders might be viewed optimistically as an implicit endorsement of that position, Harry Godfrey, a managing director at Advanced Energy United, told me. Other clues, however, are not so encouraging, he said.
For example, in Trump’s executive order declaring an energy emergency, he excluded solar from his definition of “energy” or “energy resources” that will get expedited approvals. Solar was not mentioned in any of his energy-related actions on Monday.
“If we’re facing a real energy emergency, and we need to address this, shouldn’t it be an all hands on deck activity?” Godfrey said. “That’s obviously bigger than just solar,” he added.
Godfrey also observed that solar may not have gotten off completely unscathed. Trump froze all federal funds allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for 90 days, which could affect any money remaining in solar-related programs.
Naveed Hasan, the vice president of North American strategy for the solar company Sungrow, told me he’s less worried about the IRA freeze, as it’s only temporary. “From what I understand, the funds still have to be spent. They cannot be just completely cut through an executive order — that’s going to require the reconciliation process, going through Congress.”
It’s likely too early to draw any big conclusions about how solar development will fare under Trump. It’s unclear whether his administration or the new Congress want to make changes to the tax credits available for clean energy, including for solar panels, for example.
The president has also not yet revealed the full extent of his plans to increase tariffs on goods from China, which could hurt solar’s cost competitiveness. On Tuesday night, Trump said he was considering imposing a 10% tariff on Chinese goods beginning in February, which is far below the 60% he promised on the campaign trail, but doesn’t mean he won’t increase it later. The announcement followed a memo he sent to various agency heads on Monday which included a directive for the U.S. Trade Representative to “consider potential additional tariff modifications … particularly with respect to industrial supply chains and circumvention through third countries.”
Then there’s Trump’s plans to ramp up oil and gas production and clear hurdles for new fossil fuel plants and exports, which could indirectly hurt the market for solar. “That’s the major concern we have,” Hasan told me. “I think that could definitely impact the demand for renewable energy if those fossil fuel projects are considered more economical or more attractive for financiers.”
Ming Yang blades, waiting in the wings. Visual China Group via Getty Images
