The Future of Solar: Balancing Uncertainty and Opportunity Under the New Administration

by: Jon Semingson

There is understandably a lot of concern across our market about what may happen under the new administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump said he would repeal the IRA, dismissed climate change, and called renewable energy part of the “Green New Scam”. He is also an ardent supporter of oil and gas and has promised aggressive tariffs on imports from China and other countries. Given the solar and energy storage supply chain’s reliance on materials from China, this could be very bad news for solar and energy storage.

These are all legitimate reasons for concern and the market seems to agree: Solar stocks have taken a beating since election day with some down as much as 50%.

Reasons for Optimism:

I tend to be a “glass half full” optimist.

It may be difficult for the President to repeal the IRA completely. Companies have already invested Billions of dollars in new US-based manufacturing facilities including solar modules, cells, batteries, racking, and tracker components. Most of these factories are in red states. Repealing the entire IRA would need support in Congress and many Republicans have already come out supporting the manufacturing tax credits. The IRA has been a huge success in driving investments in manufacturing and creating jobs.

There is over 116GW of large solar and energy storage in the EXISTING pipeline. Not all of it will be built for all of the usual reasons (Financing, Interconnection, etc) but, a pipeline that large will not disappear overnight just because there is a new administration.

The ITC was extended during the last Trump presidency as well, so it seems unlikely that he would try to end it.

Utility load growth is still increasing and no generation source can be built as quickly or as cheaply as PV and PV+ storage. Solar has been the least expensive new-generation technology for several years. At the end of the day economics win. Data Centers are already trying to find solutions since many utilities can’t support the new load they add to the grid. We will see data centers powered by PV + storage microgrids because the economics support it.

There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about how the new administration will affect the solar and storage markets. At the same time, we have reasons for optimism.

Over the last 15+ years, we have driven the cost of a solar module from $6/watt to .30 (and below at times). Solar has been the fastest-growing source of new power generation for several years. We are a resilient group of dedicated people who continue to grind and push the market forward.