The clean energy industry in the United States is facing a policy cold wave

The US government recently submitted the 2026 fiscal year budget proposal to Congress, proposing significant cuts in federal spending on the environment, renewable energy, and other areas, with a total reduction of over $160 billion. According to the latest survey report by the Energy Enterprise Alliance E2, due to factors such as constantly changing trade policies and reduced green incentives, the United States has experienced a cliff like decline in its commitment to new clean energy investments since the beginning of this year, with a withdrawal scale of $7.9 billion in the first quarter. International public opinion believes that the policy swings and uncertainties in the United States are severely impacting the country's economy, and this cold wave has triggered a chain reaction across the entire clean energy industry chain, and may even rewrite the process of the US energy transition.

New fiscal year budget cuts green spending significantly

Regarding the US fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, Bloomberg pointed out that there is a lack of overall details, not only omitting baseline economic data and interest rate forecasts, but also failing to make any predictions on government debt, deficit, or tax revenue. The Financial Times pointed out that according to this budget, the United States will reduce financial support for renewable energy and electric vehicles, and instead increase fossil fuel research and development, while climate issues will be completely marginalized.

It is reported that over $15 billion in federal support funds for renewable energy projects, $2 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office for Promoting Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, $80 million in funding from the Department of the Interior for developing wind and solar energy projects on public land, $6 billion in funding for electric vehicle charging stations in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and $1.3 billion in funding for climate observation satellites from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have all been cut.

At the same time, financial support from the US Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other departments has also been significantly reduced. The EPA's budget has been cut by 55%, the Department of Energy's budget is nearly $5 billion lower than 2025, environmental equity projects have been completely abolished, and funding for climate change research has been drastically reduced. In addition, the 2026 fiscal year budget also encourages states in the United States to reduce funding for climate and green energy projects.

It is worth noting that the budget reduction for the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy is about 13%, which will directly affect climate science and clean energy research.

The scale of clean energy divestment continues to increase

Oil Price Network pointed out that concerns about the prospects of the federal clean energy tax credit policy continue to intensify in the United States, while the impact of trade and tariff policies on green project supply chains is becoming increasingly apparent.

E2 tracking data shows that since the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, a total of 34 clean energy projects in the United States have been abandoned, involving over 15000 jobs and $10 billion in investment. In the first quarter of this year, 16 large-scale new factories and other projects in the United States were cancelled, closed, or scaled back, resulting in the disappearance of 7800 clean energy jobs, which exceeds the total number of job losses caused by project cancellations between 2022 and 2024.