LAS VEGAS — The erosion of federal support for clean energy that has dimmed the outlook for the solar sector has the industry embracing a new strategy: Let the market economics decide.
Solar power has been one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity for years, aided by an array of federal incentives that have helped cut its costs to a fraction of the levels seen 15 years ago. And as power prices surge around the country, solar industry executives who traveled to the RE+ conference last week say they believe the urgent need for electricity will help offset the financial pain from the phaseout of the tax credits that President Donald Trump signed into law this summer and other federal policy obstacles.
The scramble to increase power supplies to meet the demand from a fleet of new data centers being erected for artificial intelligence is already underway. Tech giants like Meta, Amazon and Alphabet are signing deals with electricity generators, recently retired nuclear power plants are returning to operation, and the Trump administration and members of both parties in Congress are pushing to streamline permitting rules to grow energy supplies.
“The demand for electricity is increasing. That alone is enough of a [tailwind] to propel the industry through whatever’s happening at the federal level,” said JD Smith, director of marketing and public relations at Arch Solar, a solar company founded in Wisconsin. “In cases like Wisconsin, where we’re very aggressively trying to bring in data centers, it is even more of an imperative.”
