Green Energy — News & Analysis

Clean energy still booming in 2025 — but forecasters warn slowdown is imminent (December 29, 2025)

December 29, 2025 — Despite the Trump administration's sweeping anti-renewable campaign, 2025 ended as a record or near-record year for U.S. solar, wind, and battery storage installations, driven by a construction rush to beat the IRA's tax credit expiration deadlines and by surging electricity demand from AI data centers that created powerful market incentives regardless of federal policy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projected utility-scale solar output would grow by about one-third in 2025, with 2026 adding nearly 20 percent more, and the country was on track to add a record amount of power capacity from solar, wind, and battery plants combined.

The resilience was partly explained by inertia: projects take years to plan and build, meaning much of 2025's additions were in the pipeline long before Trump took office. It was also driven by a sector racing against its own expiration clock. Developers were breaking ground as fast as possible to meet the July 2026 construction-start deadline for surviving tax credits, creating an unusual surge that masked the steeper cliff ahead. "It is not climate goals or imperatives primarily driving the need to build out renewables," said one energy analyst. "It is literally, 'What are you able to get on the grid as quickly as possible?'" — demand for electricity from data centers was growing faster than utilities could source it.

Forecasters were consistent, however, that the current boom was a last gasp before a significant contraction. BloombergNEF projected a 23 percent drop in new wind, solar, and energy storage additions through 2030, with onshore wind down 50 percent from prior projections. In states without their own clean energy mandates, electricity prices were forecast to surge as federal incentives disappeared and cheaper renewables were no longer built at the pace the market otherwise would support — directly undercutting the administration's stated goal of cutting household energy costs.