US Clean Power Growth to Hit Record This Year Despite Trump
(Bloomberg) -- US clean energy installations are forecast to hit another record this year — and account for the vast majority of new power additions — despite facing policy opposition from the Trump administration, according to a trade industry report.
The nation’s power sector is expected to add about 60 gigawatts of solar, battery storage and wind capacity in 2026, the American Clean Power Association said in its annual market assessment published Tuesday. That is up 20% from over 50 gigawatts deployed last year. The trade group’s forecast is near the top end of the range given by consulting firms including BloombergNEF, S&P Global and Wood Mackenzie, the report said.
Many of the clean energy projects now nearing completion had started years before President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. Since then, the Trump administration has moved to halt or slow the building of solar and wind farms through measures including the ending of lucrative federal tax incentives and permitting delays. Administration officials have broadly criticized both wind and solar power, casting the emission-free renewables as dependent on government subsidies, as well as the additional infrastructure needed to compensate for their intermittent electricity generation.
The trade group said its forecast is on the optimistic side and assumes that the federal government’s ongoing permitting and authorization challenges will be overcome. The country is seeing a surge of electricity demand from AI data centers and clean energy remains one of the fastest and cheapest sources of new capacity, according to ACP.
“With electricity demand surging at a pace we have not seen in a generation, the country will need every megawatt it can build,” wrote ACP CEO Jason Grumet in a letter introducing the report.
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