The U.S. clean energy industry is so over tax credits.  

The passage of the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act ─ extending President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and decimating former President Biden’s 2022 renewable energy tax credits ─ was a shock to the system and already is slowing the growth of solar and wind in the United States. 

But slowing down was not at all on the minds of the 37,000 industry professionals ─ and 1,325 exhibitors ─ who descended on Las Vegas Sept. 8-11 for RE+, the largest renewable energy trade show in the country. 

What I heard, at more than one session over the four-day conference, was that if the industry had to lose the federal incentives, it could not have happened at a better time. Trump’s scorched-earth war on renewables may be a political reality, but the exploding growth in electricity demand from data centers, manufacturing and electrification is driving economic and technological change at a scale and speed well beyond the president’s control. 

New figures from industry analyst Wood Mackenzie show that U.S. utilities currently have 17 GW of new electricity projects under construction specifically for large loads like data centers. An additional 99 GW of large-load projects are “committed,” meaning they have interconnection agreements, contracts or other solid financial arrangements. 

Solar and storage made up 82% of new generation coming online in the first half of 2025.   

“So, we’re in this state where there’s sort of two truths, two experiences, two realities,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which sponsors RE+ with the Smart Electric Power Alliance.  

While the politics may remain “intensely chaotic and intensely unpredictable, there’s opportunity for entrepreneurship; there’s opportunity for innovation; there’s opportunity for success,” Hopper said during an industry update Sept. 10. “The market will take over politics, and we will ultimately win.” 

Bifurcated Realities

I experienced a similar sense of bifurcated realities at RE+ as I attended panels and workshops and cruised the trade show floor.  

Politics remains the industry’s Achilles’ heel. Leaders have yet to let go of their quixotic belief that at some point, they will be able to break through the ideological noise in Washington, D.C., with facts, figures and common sense.  

A panel on how to frame clean energy policies for conservatives basically replayed many of the talking points I have been hearing at energy conferences for the past year or more, even before Trump was elected for a second term.  

Eric Goodwin, vice president of business development at OMCO Solar, a steel company that manufactures solar tracking systems, talked about keeping a focus on jobs and drawing Trump’s attention through targeted use of social media. 

Heather Reams, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a right-leaning clean energy advocacy group, argued that, the OBBBA notwithstanding, the industry must continue to engage with congressional Republicans. Like Hopper, Reams called for a shift in priorities, from tax credits to innovation.  

Tom Starrs, vice president of regulatory affairs at EDP Renewables, and Isaiah Menning, external affairs director of the American Conservation Coalition, both stressed the importance of building local support in rural areas where solar and wind projects often face opposition.  

As always, the views and voices expressed here were authoritative, thoughtful and pragmatic, and unlikely to have any major impact. The problem is we have a president and administration that have little to no interest in facts that in any way counter their own skewed, fossil-fueled vision of what American energy policy might look like.  

They are equally uninterested in any kind of constructive dialogue with the renewable energy industry, as witnessed by the almost complete absence of representatives from the Department of Energy at RE+, from Energy Secretary Chris Wright on down.  

PERC vs. TOPCon   

Had Wright been there, he would have seen an industry that is vital, optimistic and determined to out-innovate, out-AI and outlast Trump and his backward-looking energy policies.  

Artificial intelligence was everywhere, with a small army of startups rolling out new products that can cut times and cost to design virtual power plants and microgrids, review contracts or local ordinances, promote home electrification and send robots to inspect solar panels out in the middle of nowhere.  

Solar and storage companies from China and India also were highly visible on the trade show floor, many of them figuring out how to work around Trump’s tariffs and comply with OBBBA’s stricter domestic content requirements.  

SolarSpace, a top Chinese manufacturer of solar cells and panels, is partnering with several American investors to build a solar manufacturing plant, according to John Van, a sales manager. While he was reluctant to provide details or name names, he said the new plant is scheduled to go online by the end of the year, and half of its initial 2 GW of panel capacity already is sold.  

What’s significant here is that SolarSpace and other Chinese and Indian companies are producing solar cells and panels that are more efficient and durable than cells and panels currently being manufactured in the U.S. The American industry still is using PERC (passivated emitter and rear cell) technology, while the rest of the world has moved on to TOPCon (tunnel oxide passivated contact) and HJT (heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer) technologies. (The links connect to fairly wonky descriptions of the technologies.) 

TOPCon and HJT panels are more expensive, but more efficient, which means projects using these technologies may not need as much land ─ a core issue for solar projects in rural areas. But rolling out these advanced technologies in the U.S. has stalled, in part due to legal disputes over intellectual property and patent ownership.  

U.S. producers also have stuck with PERC because they can manufacture more panels at lower prices, despite their lower efficiency and durability.  

In other words, Trump’s tariffs and domestic content requirements are not advancing the onshoring of solar manufacturing or fostering U.S. competitiveness, while Chinese and Indian firms are figuring out the business models that will enable them to enter the U.S. market and potentially offer better products.  

The Interoperability Challenge

What one could see and hear at RE+ ─ at least what I’ve written about so far ─ is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, what’s visible above the water line. The changes needed to respond to current system challenges ─ political, economic and technological ─ can happen only when you drill down to explore the patterns, trends, behaviors and attitudes that lie below, according to Matt McDonnell, managing partner of the Current Energy Group, a policy and analysis outfit. 

McDonnell was one of the speakers at a half-day workshop Sept. 8, laying out a holistic, “systems thinking” approach to grid planning and design, sponsored by the GridWise Architecture Council, commonly called GWAC.  

“What are the assumptions and beliefs that people hold about the system? How do we really, really challenge some of these things that we take for granted … conventional wisdom, the way things have always been done?” he said.  

Part of working toward such fundamental changes in the electric power system means nudging regulators and other industry stakeholders “down this iceberg model stack to really be challenging some of these underlying features that are below the surface often in proceedings.” 

Taking the example of grid resilience following extreme weather events, traditional patterns and thinking might focus on grid upgrades or “hardening” that “drives up costs while often offering suboptimal performance,” McDonnell said. “Poles keep getting rebuilt and ice storms come through and keep knocking them down.” 

Should the focus be on grid reliability or “energy service reliability?” he said. “Is what we really care about the poles and wires staying up all the time, or do we care about customers having access to energy even during extreme weather events?” 

GWAC sees this kind of systems approach as integral to developing flexible and interoperable energy services that will allow individual buildings or groups of buildings ─ like data centers ─ to interact with the grid, from distribution up to transmission, to improve reliability and cut costs for consumers.  

The proliferation of grid-edge technologies has created an “interoperability challenge,” said Shawn Chandler, a director at consulting firm Guidehouse. Distributed generation and computing power can be combined “to get all that sensing and all that information into a hybrid, decentralized system that brings together … system distribution operations, customer service, market operations and regulators.” 

“If you can do that, then all your information flows are leading to the same outcome, which is [that] we want the most optimization, and most importantly, we avoid what I would call unintended consequences,” he said. 

Ultimate Inertia

The language may be a bit abstract and jargony, but the connections to the industry’s current debates on how to meet demand growth are immediate and clear.  

Under Trump’s drive to stand up new fossil-fueled and nuclear generation ─ at the tip of the iceberg ─ is the basic assumption that the need for new power can be met only with traditional, 24/7 dispatchable forms of generation. 

What drives such assumptions is the deeply engrained industry desire for quick and simple solutions that require little change in business or regulatory models, an approach that increasingly is untenable.  

Radical and rapid growth in electricity demand presents complex challenges that call for new and complex solutions.  

The factors under the waterline here include backed-up supply chains for natural gas turbines, with delivery times of three to five years or more. Building out new plants, natural gas pipelines and transmission lines could mean ongoing utility bill increases for consumers, an unintended consequence and political minefield for any candidate for public office. New approaches to affordability will be critical. 

Technology may move faster than policy or regulation, but the ultimate inertia in the system is rooted in human attitudes and behavior. What I saw at RE+ is that clean energy is moving fast and more than ready to embrace the complex challenges ahead. Trump or anyone else holding on to simple, outdated solutions will be left in the dust.  

Livewire Columnist K Kaufmann has been writing about clean energy for 20 years. She now writes the E/lectrify newsletter.