The trajectory · energy

Clean energy: momentum meets a reversal

This one cuts two ways at once, which is why it belongs here. The physical story is a decade of fast growth: wind and solar rose from under 1% of U.S. electricity to nearly a fifth of it, and in 2024 the two together passed coal for the first time. The policy story is a sharp 2025 reversal: the federal government repealed the clean-energy tax credits, moved to halt wind, and pivoted back to fossil fuels. The line below keeps climbing, because projects already under way finish; the reversal is aimed at what comes after.

Wind + solar as a share of U.S. electricity generation (including rooftop solar), by year. In 2024 they overtook coal for the first time.

What changed in 2025

A dated ledger of the federal reversal. Nearly all of it cut against wind and solar; two moves cut the other way.

Jan 2025	Offshore and onshore federal wind permitting halted Against
Jan 2025	“National energy emergency”; expanded oil, gas, and LNG; Paris Agreement withdrawal ordered Against
May 2025	Four executive orders to quadruple nuclear power by 2050; geothermal kept its tax credits For
Jul 2025	Reconciliation law repeals the wind and solar tax credits (projects must begin construction by mid-2026) Against
Sep 2025	Federal electric-vehicle tax credit ended Against
Dec 2025	Residential rooftop-solar credit ended Against

The wind halt did not fully hold: in December 2025 a federal court, in a suit by 17 states, vacated the January permitting freeze as “arbitrary and capricious,” and stalled projects resumed construction, and the government dropped its appeal in June 2026, leaving the vacatur in place.

The fork ahead

The repeal barely dents 2025–26, which run on projects already financed. Its effect is on the 2027-and-beyond buildout, and independent modelers, who disagree on the size, all point the same way. These are projections, shown as a range, not measured outcomes:

New clean-power buildout cut by roughly half versus the prior law; about 300–340 gigawatts of wind and solar now expected to go unbuilt by 2035 (Princeton REPEAT, Energy Innovation, Rhodium).
U.S. power-sector emissions projected ~310–570 million tons a year higher by 2035 than if the incentives had stayed.
Average household energy bills projected ~$80–280 a year higher by the early 2030s.
Already observed (not a projection): about $68 billion in announced clean-energy investment was canceled between January 2025 and mid-2026.

Read the line and the reversal together, and mind the boundaries. This is the power sector only: transport, heat, and industry are dirtier and move differently. “Wind + solar” (~19%) is a narrower basket than all carbon-free power (~42% with hydro and nuclear); this chart plots the former. The share keeps rising in 2025–26 because generation from pipeline projects still comes online, so the policy reversal shows up in the future slope, not today's number, which is the whole point of charting both. The projections are uncertain and vary about twofold between forecasters. And much of the buildout is driven by markets and states, not Washington: wind and solar are now the cheapest new power in most of the country, which is why the physical line has its own momentum regardless of federal policy.