It’s been a difficult year for clean energy in America. President Donald Trump entered office in January and promptly stopped the transition away from fossil fuels and toward solar, wind, and batteries in its tracks. Right?
Not quite. In fact, for all of Trump’s paeans to “beautiful, clean coal” and to natural gas, it’s clean energy that has once again led the way this year. Through November, 92% of new power capacity added to the grid in 2025 came in the form of solar, wind, or storage, according to Cleanview analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration data shared with Canary Media.
This year, solar alone accounted for half of new capacity added to the grid through November, while storage made up 31%. Despite Trump’s all-out assault on wind energy — and his pledge that no “windmills” would be built during his term — the energy source has so far accounted for more gigawatts of new electricity than gas turbines have.
It’s worth noting that December is typically the busiest month for new energy deployments in the U.S., so these numbers will look a bit different when the full-year data comes in. It’s also possible that clean-energy deployments are artificially high right now as developers race to complete projects before Trump’s restrictions on lucrative tax credits kick in. And, overall, fossil fuels still generate a much larger share of U.S. electricity than renewables do — even if solar and wind are closing that gap.
Still, the figures underscore the warnings made by energy experts, policymakers, and advocates: The Trump administration is playing with fire by trying to limit the development of solar, battery, and wind energy right when electricity demand is rising at its fastest rate in decades.
These are the quickest sources of energy to deploy. Meanwhile, gas turbines face a supply-chain crunch that is both driving up the cost of some new power plants and making it near impossible to build enough gas facilities to meet new demand, even if climate concerns weren’t a factor.
Should Trump administration policies succeed in drastically slowing down solar, batteries, and wind next year, it’ll only make the mounting energy-affordability crisis even worse.
Great Job Dan McCarthy & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
