Trump's ‘big, beautiful’ law was supposed to kill clean energy. It didn't.

A year ago, President Trump signed a law that repealed much of the Inflation Reduction Act, the main federal law that used tax credits to make wind, solar, and battery projects cheaper to build. As of this weekend, those tax credits are gone for developers unless they had already started construction. Despite that, clean energy has kept growing: more than 90% of new power plants built in the U.S. in 2025 were solar, wind, or battery projects, and the government expects a similar share this year. The reason is simple demand — data centers, electric heating, and electric cars are pushing electricity use up fast, and renewables and batteries are the only options that can be built quickly enough to keep pace, since gas-power equipment faces long supply delays.

This doesn't mean clean energy is unaffected. One estimate suggests the loss of tax credits could cut new clean-energy construction roughly in half over the next decade, with the steepest drop later on. The administration has also blocked some permits for wind and solar projects and paid companies to cancel offshore wind leases, including a recent $129 million payout to Duke Energy to drop a project off North Carolina.

For homeowners, this is mostly background context: it explains why your region's power supply is still adding mostly solar, wind, and battery capacity even as federal support shrinks. It does not change any current home energy-efficiency rebate or incentive on its own, but it's a sign that the broader shift toward electrification — heat pumps, electric vehicles, home solar — is continuing despite policy headwinds.