{"id":764715,"date":"2026-06-28T00:16:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T00:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/764715\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T00:16:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T00:16:31","slug":"solar-energy-industry-is-booming-despite-trumps-best-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/764715\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Energy Industry Is Booming Despite Trump’s Best Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDonald Trump has been doing everything<\/a> he can to undermine the renewable energy industry and boost fossil fuels. He\u2019s been especially aggressive towards wind power<\/a> \u2014 so much so that the administration recently decided<\/a> to pay nearly $800 million to cancel wind energy projects, which is the third time it\u2019s shelled out taxpayer money to kill a clean energy initiative that had already been in the works.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump has been noticeably less focused on solar energy<\/a>, but he has still attacked the industry and made moves to hinder its growth, along with other sources of clean energy. Last August, the president wrote<\/a> that solar energy, along with wind, was the \u201cSCAM OF THE CENTURY,\u201d and that his administration would not approve any \u201cfarmer-destroying solar.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe industry has been booming<\/a> anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\tSolar is now starting to outperform<\/a> coal in terms of energy production, and according to the energy think tank Ember, it met 61 percent<\/a> of U.S. electricity demand growth last year. The U.S. installed 43 gigawatts<\/a> of solar power in 2025, which was down from a record-breaking 50 gigawatts<\/a> the year before, but that\u2019s still a huge number of installations. New solar was being installed every 59 seconds<\/a> throughout last year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor whatever reason, Trump has a much stronger antipathy toward wind than he does solar,\u201d Ryan Kellogg, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of Chicago, tells Rolling Stone. \u201cEspecially for offshore wind, there\u2019s no getting around the fact that you need a whole slew of federal permits. You need to get the Department of Defense involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith solar, things are significantly easier, Kellogg says. You can buy up some private land and put down a solar farm, and no one\u2019s going to say it\u2019s blocking their view. They might not like it if it is visible, but it\u2019s not a behemoth that\u2019s altering the skyline, which has been one of the president\u2019s many criticisms of wind energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re certainly not as visible as the big megawatt wind turbines, which you can see for miles around,\u201d Kellogg says. \u201cWind turbines generate noise and [shadow] flicker. That\u2019s much less true of a solar facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also a lot more land that can be used for solar energy, Kellogg says. While solar panels can generate energy anywhere there is sunlight, wind farms have to be placed in areas with lots of wind, which is largely<\/a> in the middle of the country or offshore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA lot of folks very much support private property rights, especially in red states where these solar projects get proposed,\u201d adds Gilbert Michaud, an assistant professor of environmental policy at Loyola University Chicago. \u201cIn theory, a farmer should be allowed to lease or sell their land to a private renewable energy developer.\u00a0 Long story short, it\u2019s a lot easier than offshore wind when you\u2019re just building a medium-scale solar farm on leased agricultural land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSolar is also succeeding because of the economics. While the cost of building out wind farms has decreased in recent years, the cost of solar has gone down significantly more<\/a>. Solar will continue to decrease in price as the market grows and the solar panels themselves become more effective at capturing energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump has targeted solar in numerous ways since returning to office. Tax incentives have historically contributed to making solar power cheap, and some of those are being phased out because of the Trump administration\u2019s dismantling<\/a> of the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump signed<\/a> an executive order in July of last year that made it even more difficult for solar companies to obtain tax credits. The administration has also made it harder<\/a> for the industry to work with manufacturers in China, where most solar panels are produced. These actions have certainly affected the industry, as evinced by the amount of new solar installations decreasing from 2024 to 2025.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWithout the tax credits, we\u2019re going to see how renewables stand on their own,\u201d Michaud says. \u201cSolar is still going to grow, but at a decreasing rate \u2014 the curve won\u2019t be exponentially increasing the way it was under the Biden-era credits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless, the solar industry is expanding. It\u2019s not just through big solar farms; millions<\/a> of homes are now equipped with rooftop solar. There\u2019s also increasing interest in what\u2019s called \u201cbalcony solar<\/a>,\u201d which can allow people who can\u2019t install rooftop solar to still generate solar power at home.<\/p>\n

\n\tEnergy demand is only going to increase as massive AI companies continue to build energy-hungry data centers around the country. The solar industry could help meet a lot of that demand, as well.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEnergy demand is growing, and a lot of AI and data center facilities are going into red states,\u201d Michaud says. \u201cIf a state can attract those firms by offering 100 percent renewable energy, that becomes part of a broader economic development strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe future is bright for solar, and not even the Trump administration\u2019s vendetta against clean energy can change this fact. It may be easy for the government to tell Americans they can\u2019t build a set of giant wind turbines, but it\u2019s harder to tell them that they can\u2019t throw up some solar panels and start generating electricity \u2014 especially when they\u2019re already angry about high energy costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has been doing everything he can to undermine the renewable energy industry and boost fossil fuels.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,7882,75,16794,128,8239],"class_list":["post-764715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-controversy","tag-environment","tag-green-energy","tag-science","tag-solar-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}