E2 Report: Trump Uncertainty May Nullify $8B in Clean Energy Projects in Early 2025
Many decarbonization advocates have warned that President Trump’s freezes on Inflation Reduction Act spending and other governmental grants for clean energy development may not be temporary impediments but could dramatically derail sustainability initiatives across the commercial and industrial energy transition.
One recent stat indicates that they may be right, although some of the cancelled deals involved companies that were already on the way out.
Environmental policy non-profit group E2, which tracks clean energy project investment, has released a new tracking report warning that nearly $8 billion in planned projects were cancelled in the first quarter of 2025. Some of the withdrawal of clean energy investments was likely due to uncertainty over tax credits and incentives and was triple the financial impact of cancelled projects over the previous 30 months, according to E2.
Some good news: About $1.6 billion in new solar, electric-vehicle infrastructure and transmission equipment factors were announced last month alone. Those include plans by Tesla to invest $200 million in a battery manufacturing factory near Houston.
“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,” Michael Timberlake, E2 communications director, said in a statement. “If this self-inflicted and unnecessary market uncertainty continues, we’ll most certainly see more projects paused, more construction halted, and more job opportunities disappear.”
E2 calls itself a national nonpartisan group of business leaders, investors and professionals from various economic sectors. It was co-founded by Nicole Lederer, who serves on the Natural Resource Defense Council, and serial entrepreneur Bob Epstein, who founded companies such as Sybase, New Resource Banka and GetActive Software.
The cancelled investment may have negatively impacted on the hiring of 7,800 potential new clean energy jobs this quarter, according to the report. On the other hand, the positive $1.6 billion investment in March involves 10 projects which could create at least 5,000 new permanent jobs, according to E2’s report.
During the Biden Administration, two massive pieces of legislation were passed through Congress and signed by President Biden—the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Altogether, they created more than $300 billion in potential incentives for developing decarbonizing energy projects across the U.S.
Once he took office in January this year, however, President Trump announced an executive order putting a freeze on any energy grants related to the Inflation Reduction Act. Since the IRA was an act of Congress, it’s not certain that Trump’s actions imperil the tax credits, but the specter of a Republican reversal of the IRA may have created uncertainty for non-fossil energy project developers.
Although the freeze might have been temporary, one dramatic move by Trump’s order was revoking several of President Biden’s own executive orders on implementation of the energy and infrastructure provisions within the IRA.
Among the good news of new clean energy infrastructure projects announced in March, the E2 report shows the $120 million investment by ABB on grid equipment manufacturing in Mississippi and Tennessee, as well as the $200 million Tesla battery storage site in Texas. Other investments by Schneider Electric, Mission Solar and Shinsung were listed.
Cancelled or downsized clean energy projects include investments by Philadelphia Solar, Proterra, Lightning eMotors, Microvast, Orsted, Siemens Gamesa and Canoo.
Some of these losses are not exactly surprises. Lightning eMotors agreed to go into receivership in late 2023, while fellow EV startup Canoo filed to Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation earlier this year. Proterra, which was building EV buses, also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and later had its powertrain manufacturing line sold into the Volvo Group.
