Trump's Hostility to Solar Fights the Cheapest, Fastest Power America Can Build as Data Centres Push Demand Up

I’ll concede the obvious first. The US solar industry runs on Chinese supply chains, it grew up on tax credits, and some of the farmland arguments against giant solar fields are real ones that rural counties make for themselves. A President who wanted panels made in America and fewer subsidies would be on defensible ground. Much of what his trade officials have done on polysilicon and dumped panels sits on that ground.

But the President’s war on solar goes far past trade. It treats the fastest-growing source of American electricity as an enemy.

Not a policy disagreement. Not a budget choice. An enemy.

Ask what’s actually getting built

Look at what the grid is adding. The Energy Information Administration expects 43.4 gigawatts of new solar in 2026, 51% of all new generating capacity. Batteries add another 24 gigawatts. Natural gas adds 6.3. In the first half of this year, solar and storage made up 70% of new capacity, and utility solar generation rose 21.6%.

Then look at the alternative the administration prefers. GE Vernova, the biggest maker of gas turbines, has a backlog and reservations of about 116 gigawatts, with customers talking about deliveries in 2032 and beyond. Nuclear restarts and new reactors are welcome, and this administration has pushed them hard. None will be big before the 2030s.

Data centres need power now. The machine that can deliver it this year is a solar farm with a battery. Who benefits from slowing that down? Not the household paying EIA’s projected 18.2 cents a kilowatt-hour this year, nearly 5% more than last.

Ask what the government did

The President told the country in August 2025: “We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar.” His agencies followed. Interior required the Secretary’s personal sign-off on solar decisions on federal land and ranked projects by “capacity density,” a test designed so that solar loses. The Bureau of Land Management listed the 6.2-gigawatt Esmeralda 7 complex in Nevada as cancelled. USDA stopped funding solar on productive farmland. EPA cancelled the $7 billion Solar for All programme, meant for about 900,000 lower-income households.

In April a federal judge blocked the Interior permitting rules for the companies that sued. In September another judge ruled that EPA had illegally terminated Solar for All. EPA’s administrator had called it a “boondoggle.” The court called it unlawful.

The tax law did the rest. The residential solar credit ended on 31 December 2025. Utility projects lose their credits unless they started construction by 4 July this year or come online by the end of 2027. Treasury then tightened the rules for what counts as starting, until a court restored the old test, as covered in our tax credit post. Residential installations are forecast to fall 23% this year.

Ask who the critics are

I’d discount the solar industry’s complaints if they stood alone. They don’t. Princeton’s REPEAT Project estimated the 2025 tax law raises household energy bills by about $280 a year through 2035. And in February Interior itself quietly cleared six large solar projects to resume review, including one in the same part of Nevada it had shelved. Even the department carrying out the policy has found parts of it hard to defend.

The part I still reject

The administration’s best argument is reliability: solar doesn’t run at night, and the grid needs firm power. True. That’s why batteries are now being installed at record pace alongside solar, and why the honest answer is to build gas, nuclear and storage as well, not to block the cheapest option while the others wait for turbines.

Tariffs on Chinese polysilicon can be defended as industrial policy. Blocking American solar farms on American land can’t be defended as anything but a preference.

Voters will notice the bill before they notice the reason.