Trump’s ​‘big, beautiful’ law was supposed to kill clean energy. It didn’t.

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One year ago, President Donald Trump got his Fourth-of-July wish. Republicans rammed a massive tax and spending bill through Congress before his preferred July 4 deadline, allowing Trump to sign it into law during a showy holiday ceremony at the White House.

Alongside huge cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs aiding America’s neediest residents, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed large swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act — the only significant piece of climate legislation the U.S. has ever managed to adopt.

That law would have marshaled as much as $1.2 trillion to transition the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy, largely through tax credits that make it cheaper to build wind turbines and solar panels. But Trump’s big bill sunsetted those incentives; as of Saturday, they will no longer be accessible to clean energy developers unless they have already hit certain construction benchmarks.

Still, despite the tax credits’ looming demise, and the Trump administration’s myriad other attacks on clean energy, developers have continued building renewables at a stunning pace over the past year. More than 90% of the power plants brought online in America in 2025 were solar, wind, or battery farms, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And the agency projects that these clean resources will account for 93% of new additions to the power grid this year.

There’s a simple reason for clean energy’s unstoppable rise: America needs more energy fast, and only renewables and batteries can deliver it.

After decades of staying flat, energy demand is surging. Big Tech firms are building new data centers that use as much electricity as small cities. Homeowners are switching to electric stoves and heating. People are swapping gas vehicles for electric ones.

Meeting this new demand requires building more supply: more power plants, batteries, poles, wires, and transformers that can produce, store, and transport more electrons. And as gas power faces yearslong supply-chain delays, clean energy is the only thing that can be built quickly and cheaply enough to keep up.

It’s not as if clean energy will escape unscathed from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — or from the Trump administration’s continued clean energy onslaught.

Over the long term, the disappearance of tax credits will take its toll: One estimate suggests the U.S. will build less than half as much clean energy between 2025 and 2035 as it would have with the incentives in place, with the biggest hit happening in the latter years of that range.

In the near term, the Trump administration’s blockade on federal permitting for wind and solar projects, its payouts to cancel offshore wind leases, and other attacks are having a real negative impact.

This past year has proven that clean energy can roll with some punches — and also that the Trump administration is prepared to keep on taking swings at the industry.

Clean energy news to know this week

Independence nay: The U.S. Supreme Court rules the president can fire regulators at independent federal agencies, including FERC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (E&E News)

Another wind payoff: The Trump administration says it will pay Duke Energy $129 million to abandon its offshore wind project off North Carolina, which the utility says it will reinvest in gas and nuclear power projects. (New York Times)

Farming the sun: Solar opponents in Ohio have used alleged threats to agricultural land to derail projects, but a new report makes clear that arrays only take up a fraction of a percent of prime farmland both in the state and beyond. (Canary Media)

Permitting plateau: Trump administration policies holding back clean energy permitting are putting 92 GW of projects at risk, representing $121 billion in investments, a new Wood Mackenzie report finds. (Reuters)

Sunrise, sunset: Connecticut passed a law that authorizes the use of plug-in balcony solar panels, expands the state’s community solar program, and extends solar incentives, while also instituting new restrictions on solar development. (Canary Media)

Steel’s clean opportunity: It’s been a year since Japan’s Nippon Steel acquired U.S. Steel, but former steelworkers and other residents in Northern Indiana are still waiting to see if the acquisition turns into clean, job-creating investments. (Canary Media)

Grid funding disconnect: A Government Accountability Office audit finds Puerto Rico has only received about 25% of the $14 billion it was allocated for grid repairs and a solar and battery buildout after 2017’s Hurricane Maria destroyed much of the island’s energy system. (Associated Press)