A year ago, Donald Trump assumed the presidency for a second time and immediately got to work dismantling the climate progress that Joe Biden’s administration had made. Among other sweeping efforts, the White House boosted fossil fuels over renewables, tried to stop states from reducing emissions and adapting to climate change, and paused wind projects despite rising demand for electricity. Later, in July, the administration succeeded in gutting the clean-tech incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, which among other things were meant to expand wind and solar. That landmark legislation was the most ambitious climate action the United States had ever taken.
Experts say the administration’s moves have done real damage to the nation’s ability to fight climate change. But they also stress that strong countervailing forces — including falling prices for renewables, surging demand for electricity, and aggressive campaigns by states and cities to slash emissions — continue to drive the transition to clean energy. The result is a growing tension between federal policy and market reality, one that is likely to define U.S. climate and energy outcomes for years to come.
“A lot of this will have mounting consequences in the time ahead,” said Julie McNamara, an associate policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “I still fundamentally believe that renewables will continue to be the thing that utilities across the country will be turning to, because they just make sense. But the administration is making that decision harder than it should be, costlier than it should be, and slower than it should be.”
Going green now makes better economic sense than fossil fuels. Look at Texas, which, despite being the nation’s largest oil producer, has embraced clean energy. Its many wind and solar operations generate far more renewable electricity than any other state — nearly double that of the next highest, California — because it’s a cheaper and more reliable way of juicing the grid. Indeed, over the past decade, the price of onshore wind has fallen 70 percent, solar panels by 90 percent, and batteries — essential for storing energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining — by even more than that. Trump has a famous disdain for wind in particular and successfully paused five offshore projects last year, but this week, federal judges ordered projects off Rhode Island and New York to restart. “It is, I think, appropriate to call what the Trump administration is doing around its attacks on renewables a real and true scandal,” McNamara said. “It is coordinated, it is across agencies, and it is actively discriminating against wind and solar.”
Still, market forces are a major factor in driving states to decarbonize, despite federal policy roadblocks. California, for instance, added nearly 70 percent more battery storage in 2024 than the year before, and generated 4.4 percent more renewable electricity over the same period. “The fact that renewables tend to be more cost-effective solutions is something that’s really going to hopefully promote their development moving forward, as we’re looking to add more and more capacity,” said Sarah Gleeson, climate solutions research manager at Project Drawdown, which recently launched a platform that tracks the effectiveness of climate-friendly interventions like heat pumps, e-bikes, and renewable energy. “Something that’s very frustrating is that the current administration is actively working against that by canceling new wind and solar projects, by actively promoting the expansion of fossil fuels.”
The country’s growing electricity needs are further incentivizing the rollout of renewables. The growth of data centers in particular is straining the grid, and without sufficient clean energy, utilities are relying on fossil fuels to meet the demand. The Department of Energy also has issued emergency orders delaying the retirement of coal-fired power plants, at an enormous cost to ratepayers. According to a new report, the country’s greenhouse gas emissions rose by 2.4 percent in 2025. The authors, though, attribute that more to the proliferation of data centers, plus colder temperatures requiring more heating, than to the Trump administration’s fossil-fuel boosterism. But they expect that those policies will increase future emissions.
As demand for electricity grows, renewables are meeting much of the challenge. According to a report released Thursday by the energy think tank Ember, solar power generation in the U.S. grew 27 percent in 2025, meeting 61 percent of that rise in consumption. In some places, that figure was much higher: In Florida, the growth of solar exceeded the growth of demand by a wide margin, and across the Southwest, Northwest, Southeast, and in California, photovoltaics met about all of the increase.
Ember also reported in October that worldwide, wind and solar are meeting or even exceeding the additional requirement for juice. “We’ve hit these economic tipping points where solar is just simply the cheapest new form of generating more electricity,” said Nicolas Fulghum, a senior data analyst at Ember. “The age-old question for power system experts is always: When is solar growth kind of slowing down? And every year, the assumption is this is the year that it happens, and then it never happens.”
Beneath these larger market forces runs a steady current of smaller — yet highly impactful — climate campaigns. Even as the IRA’s clean-energy credits evaporate, for instance, states continue providing their own incentives. Maine, for example, is going all-in on electric heat pumps, which move warmth from even frigid outdoor air into a home. In 2023, the state blew past its goal of installing 100,000 devices two years ahead of schedule, and plans another 175,000 by 2027. As federal incentives go away, Maine is providing up to $9,000 for its residents to install heat pumps.
States, cities, and industries are doing so many things to fight climate change, and adapt to what’s coming, that the federal government simply can’t counter them all, experts say. Communities are planting gardens to lower urban temperatures and increase food security. Startups are growing animal products in bioreactors to slash the high emissions from the meat industry. Positive tipping points are creating runaway change to, for example, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. And utilities are starting to use those EVs as a vast network of backup power, thus helping meet all that extra demand on the grid.
Ultimately, the states and cities that don’t commit to the clean transition risk getting left behind, experts say. The Trump administration can slow that change, but it can’t stop it. “We have seen numerous states step up across the country and reiterate that they are still committed to that long-term view,” McNamara said. “It is undeniable that a competitive economy is a clean economy going forward.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is trying to kill clean energy. The market has other plans. on Jan 16, 2026.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.