Uncertainty is a dominant theme for clean energy companies five weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term.
Solar panel makers, battery manufacturers and wind developers are navigating rapid policy shifts as Trump promises to slap tariffs on allied nations, repeal clean energy subsidies and, in some cases, claw back federal grants.
Those changes are weighing on the companies’ financial outlook as they report their annual earnings. First Solar told financial analysts this week it is being “highly selective” in booking new panel orders due to “the uncertainty related to the policy environment from the recent U.S. elections.” Albemarle Corp., a lithium miner, is cutting capital spending and is waiting to move forward with the first hardrock lithium mine in North Carolina. And the Portuguese clean energy developer EDP Renewables said it was writing down the value of its American offshore wind projects by €133 million ($139 million).
EDP is assuming its SouthCoast offshore wind project near Massachusetts will be delayed four years following Trump’s freeze on new wind permits and a review of existing ones. SouthCoast received a final federal permit in the waning days of the Biden administration. It is currently negotiating the terms of a power contract with Massachusetts utilities. SouthCoast is a joint venture of EDP and Engie, a French power company.
“That’s a slightly worst case scenario,” EDP chief executive Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade told financial analysts. He said the company is still pushing to get the project “ready to go” and could begin construction sooner, but “we’ve taken the more prudent four-year delay approach.”
First Solar is the largest U.S. maker of solar panels. Its facilities in Ohio and Alabama make it relatively well positioned to survive in a market where the vast majority of solar components are imported and stand to become more expensive under Trump’s promised tariffs. Nevertheless, company executives said they were bracing for higher costs related to aluminum tariffs and the possible repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping climate bill that provides hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits.
“There’s so much uncertainty,” said First Solar chief executive Mark Widmer. While solar projects continue to move forward “they’re running into some obstacles or potential headwinds. Every day, there seems to be something new coming out from the administration that could have some implication or reason that you have to step back and reassess and reevaluate,” he added.
Clean energy investments had already shown signs of softening before Trump returned to the White House. Spending on clean energy and transportation was $70 billion in the past three months of 2024, a 1 percent decline compared with the third quarter, breaking a long streak of increasing investments, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, an initiative of the Rhodium Group and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“It’s a deceleration and a departure from the nearly unbroken streak of quarter-on-quarter growth,” the report said.
Hannah Hess, a Rhodium analyst, said some of the slow down owes to the fact that clean energy spending boomed following passage of the IRA. That growth is now “leveling off,” she said, calling it a “natural slowdown as companies shift from planning new projects to executing on their plans.”
Macroeconomic trends are also at play. The global lithium market, for instance, is oversupplied and prices are low due to electric vehicle sales coming in below expectations. That has a trickle-down effect on companies like Albemarle, which continues to seek permits for its Kings Mountain lithium mine in North Carolina, but is holding off on committing big dollars to the project.
“We want to see prices at a different level or we have to see something different in the market before we pull the trigger, but we’re getting everything ready to go,” Albemarle chief executive Kent Masters said at a recent investor conference.
‘Just let it play out’
This year’s earnings season makes it clear that Trump weighs heavily on companies’ thinking. Many have tried to align themselves with Trump’s domestic priorities, saying they share his goal of creating manufacturing jobs and domestic supply chains. But questions persist about whether the Trump administration will honor federal grants and loans extended to companies under former President Joe Biden.
Albemarle received a nearly $150 million grant from the Department of Energy for its Kings Mountain project. Federal records show the company has received $8 million of that money so far. Masters was asked at BMO’s Global Metals, Mining and Critical Materials conference if the company was worried about receiving the money after DOE announced a freeze on spending related to IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law projects. Masters said he was not concerned. Under the terms of the deal, Albemarle receives funding for hitting certain milestones, he said.
“If they get put on hold, we won’t get the money. But we won’t — there’s no case where we spend money and then don’t get it,” Masters said.
Rivian executives were asked during an earnings call last week about the status of a $6.6 billion loan for the company’s factory in Georgia that was finalized in the last days of the Biden administration.
“We share in the president’s desire to bring jobs back to the U.S.” Rivian Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough told analysts. “Our loan would enable 7,500 new manufacturing jobs in addition to the more than 10,000 jobs that we, as Rivian, have created across the enterprise over the course of the last three years.”
EDP Renewables, for its part, is scaling back development plans due to the combination of policy uncertainty and mounting difficulty in identifying projects that satisfy the company’s profit targets. EDP plans on installing 3.5 gigawatts of renewable capacity over the next two years after installing 3.8 GW in 2024 alone.
“I think what we wanted to do, just given the current market context and uncertainty, was just let it play out a bit,” Stilwell said.
‘Bit of a pause’
Many executives expressed confidence that clean technologies would continue to expand. The need for new power in the U.S. is so great that it is likely to support new renewable energy deployment, despite the regulatory uncertainty, Stilwell said.
Battery makers also expressed confidence that the EV market would grow. Cox Automotive expects EVs to make up 10 percent of new auto sales in 2025, up from 7.5 percent in 2024, while hybrids and plug-in hybrids are anticipated to account for an additional 15 percent of sales.
Cirba Solutions is pushing ahead with plans for a pair of battery recycling facilities despite the policy shift in Washington, chief executive David Klanecky said in an interview. The North Carolina-based battery recycler received two DOE grants worth almost $200 million to expand an existing recycling facility in Ohio and build a lithium-processing plant in South Carolina, federal records show.
Klanecky said there was “a little bit of a pause” after Trump directed agencies to freeze spending, but the company has been told that its money has been restored. Federal records show that Cirba has received nearly $28 million in federal funding for its Ohio project.
Building a domestic EV supply chain that is not reliant on China fits squarely with Trump’s economic and security goals, Klanecky said. Meanwhile, adoption of EVs continues to grow.
“I see it as an opportunity. It takes a lot of foresight, I guess, and risk tolerance. You want to invest because the market is at a low point because it takes time,” he said. “The world is going to be in a different place in two to three years because demand for batteries and critical minerals is still going to be very prominent.”