Firms Cancel $8 Billion in Renewables Investment on Trump Policies
Tsvetana Paraskova

Rising market and policy uncertainties forced companies to cancel $8 billion in investments in U.S. clean energy projects in the first quarter of the year.

In a dramatic surge in cancellations of projects amid the chilling effects of the Trump Administration’s trade policy and attempts to repeal part of the green energy incentives, companies have withdrawn $7.9 billion in investments since January, clean energy business group E2 said in a monthly update this week.

The value of the canceled investments in the first quarter alone was more than three times the total investments canceled over the previous 30 months, E2’s project tracker showed.

Companies have grown increasingly concerned about the future of certain federal tax credits for clean energy as well as the implications of President Trump’s trade and tariff policies on the supply chain for green projects.

As a result, 16 new large-scale factories and other projects were canceled, closed, or downsized in the first three months of 2025, “amid escalating market uncertainty and as Congress begins debate on repealing the tax credits and other incentives,” said the E2 business group.

This would affect an estimated 7,800 clean energy jobs that were canceled over the past three months—a number higher than the combined number of jobs lost to cancellations in the whole 2022-2024 period.

Announcements of green energy investments haven’t stopped entirely. Businesses in March announced more than $1.6 billion in investments for new solar, EV, and grid and transmission equipment factories across six states.

However, the cancellations this year vastly outnumber any pledges for new investments, and the rate of cancellations has increased dramatically since President Trump’s inauguration.

In February and March alone, 13 projects and over $5 billion in connected investments were canceled or downsized— including Bosch canceling a $200 million hydrogen fuel cell factory in South Carolina and Freyr Battery canceling a $2.5 billion battery factory in Georgia.

Republican congressional districts, which have benefitted the most from Biden’s clean energy tax credits, also are seeing the most cancellations. More than $6 billion and over 10,000 jobs have been canceled in Republican districts so far, E2 said.

“Clean energy companies still want to invest in America, but uncertainty over Trump administration policies and the future of critical clean energy tax credits are taking a clear toll,” E2’s Communications Director, Michael Timberlake, said in a statement.

“If this self-inflicted and unnecessary market uncertainty continues, we’ll almost certainly see more projects paused, more construction halted, and more job opportunities disappear.”

The Trump Administration’s scorn toward clean energy is sending chills in the industry and while projects under construction are progressing, commitments to new plans are falling off a cliff.

For example, despite a relatively stable short-term pipeline of U.S. wind power projects under construction, the five-year outlook of America’s wind capacity additions has been significantly limited due to the Trump Administration’s energy policies, Wood Mackenzie said in a report last week.

The energy consultancy slashed its five-year forecast of new capacity installations to just 45 gigawatts (GW), down by 40% from the previously expected gross additions of 75.8 GW, due to U.S. policy changes and heightened economic uncertainty.

“Current projects that are under construction will likely complete, but announced projects will face greater challenges as developers reassess their strategies and project economics,” said Stephen Maldonado, research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

But this week showed that even projects under construction in President Trump’s most-hated sector – offshore wind – are not spared.

The Department of the Interior ordered the suspension of construction works at the Equinor-led Empire Wind offshore project in New York, saying the project may have been approved by the previous administration without an appropriate environmental assessment.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Tsvetana is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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