alt Hacker News> While the Trump administration has been hostile to renewable energy, there’s only so much it can do to fight the economics. A recent analysis of planned projects indicates that the US will see another 43 GW of solar capacity added in 2026—far more than the 27 GW added in 2025. That will be joined by 12 GW of wind power, with over 10 percent of that coming from two of the offshore wind projects that the administration has repeatedly failed to block. The largest wind farm yet built in the US, a 3.6 GW monster in New Mexico, is also expected to begin operations in 2026.
Hopecore. Onward. The horrors persist, but so do we.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
https://web.archive.org/web/20260225073026/https://www.eia.g...
Those offshore wind farms are getting completed mostly because they were so deep into development when Trump tried to cancel them, with a ton of sunk costs. So the companies were able to make the decision to go forward because the extra costs of delays and lawsuits were still cheaper than abandoning the build entirely.
Future offshore wind farms now need to add in the expected costs and project risks of this sort of illegal government action when they make the decision at the early stage.
Trump is likely to have delayed off shore wind in the US by at least 4 years, and may be many more. This will cost ratepayers a lot, and set the US behind most other countries in the world.
Agreed on solar and batteries being mostly unstoppable, though. The Trump administration has not yet figured how to misuse the courts to block those. Their better influence is through PUCs and utility execs, that are likely to bend to the will of Trump.