By AUDREY STREB
Investors have been pivoting away from the green energy industry since President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, according to data from BloombergNEF.
Green energy investments were down 36% — $20.5 billion — in the first half of 2025 as compared to the second half of 2024, according to BloombergNEF. While former President Joe Biden pushed for green energy technology through billions in government subsidies, loans and grants, the Trump administration has cracked down on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar and favored reliable energy sources like nuclear, coal, oil and gas.
“Investors aren’t fleeing renewables because of Trump, they’re fleeing because the free ride is over. For years, the industry survived on mandates, subsidies, and regulatory favoritism while delivering unreliable power at inflated costs,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Trump is simply restoring market fairness and ending the climate cartel’s grip on energy policy. If renewables can’t compete without billions in taxpayer handouts, that’s not a market, it’s a racket.” (RELATED: Billions In Green Projects Up In Smoke As Trump, GOP Slice Up Dems’ Climate Largesse)
America has subsidized expensive, intermittent, and hazardous wind projects for over 30 years.
Under @POTUS, we are investing in RELIABLE energy sources that actually support our electrical grid!
— Secretary Doug Burgum (@SecretaryBurgum) August 24, 2025
Though green energy investments have grown globally, investors are drawing back in the U.S. due to the shifting political landscape, the firm stated. Developers rushed to lock in eligibility for green energy tax credits as part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) at the end of 2024, according to BloombergNEF.
Trump campaigned against Biden’s climate agenda and push for green energy technology that he’s dubbed “the green new scam.” Now the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is phasing the tax credits out and Trump has moved to yank federal support for the wind and solar industry and railed against the green energy technology on numerous occasions, though the administration claims it is taking a realistic approach to the energy resources.
“What we’re doing is not ending renewables,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Politico on Aug. 19. “The previous administration thought wind, solar and batteries were going to power the world. They’re not going to power the world. So, you just got to look at them in a more realistic context.”
Trump has moved to halt several wind projects in the past several weeks, all while carving out more opportunities for oil and gas leasing on federal waters that Biden had severely minimized.
“Mirroring what Presidents Obama and Biden did to the fossil fuel industry, President Trump is using the regulatory process to make it more uncertain and difficult for investors in wind projects to earn financial returns. Congress couldn’t kill off the Green New Scam in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, so President Trump is doing it on his own administratively,” Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute told the DCNF. “This is perfectly fine as investor in the context of a wind project is just a euphemism for subsidy seeker.”
