7 reasons to feel actually hopeful about the clean energy transition

It’s been a rough year if you care about climate change policy in the United States.

In Washington, the second Trump administration has moved quickly to dismantle the scaffolding of federal climate action: pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement (again), freezing or clawing back clean energy funding, fast-tracking fossil fuel projects, and even threatening the legal foundation of federal climate regulation itself.

With the help of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, whole climate, science, and conservation programs have been gutted, public servants fired, and climate language scrubbed from federal websites. And just last week, the administration moved to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research — arguably the world’s most crucial climate-science research institution that touches nearly every corner of US weather and climate forecasting, from wildfire modeling to the computational backbone universities rely on. 

So when we published Escape Velocity back in April — a project arguing that the clean energy transition had gathered enough economic and technological momentum to become effectively unstoppable — it was fair to wonder whether that thesis could survive this onslaught.

The past eight months suggest it can. 

Looking back at the period since we published the project, what’s surprised me most isn’t how much went wrong — it’s how much progress kept happening anyway. Here are seven developments from 2025 that have me feeling hopeful for our future.

1) Renewables officially eclipsed fossil fuels globally

In 2025, the clean energy transition crossed a line that will be hard to uncross. For the first time, renewables overtook coal as the world’s leading source of electricity. In the first half of the year, solar, wind, and hydropower generated 34.3 percent of global electricity, edging past coal’s 33.1 percent — a quiet but historic turning point. Just as striking, solar and wind didn’t merely grow alongside rising demand — they met it entirely. As global electricity use rose about 3 percent, solar and wind expansion covered 100 percent of that increase, with solar alone supplying more than 80 percent.

The pace of change has been startling. The world added 380 gigawatts of new solar capacity in just six months — a 64 percent jump from the same period in 2024 — putting 2025 on track to shatter records yet again. What once felt like “alternative energy” is now the cheapest, fastest power humanity has ever built.

Bill McKibben captures this inflection point in his 2025 book Here Comes the Sun, arguing that the real breakthrough isn’t a new technology, but the realization that the energy transition is finally running on economics, not idealism. The sun, it turns out, is doing exactly what it always has — and at last, we’re ready to use it.

2) Thank you…China?

If Reason 1 is that the transition crossed a threshold, Reason 2 is who pushed it there: China has turned clean energy into the default global option.

China is now the single most important force in the global clean energy transition. It is installing vast amounts of solar, wind, and battery storage at home — but just as importantly, it has driven manufacturing costs so low that clean energy is affordable almost everywhere else. (Let’s also be clear that this is all happening as China continues to take more of an all-of-the-above approach — boosting coal and natural gas capacity, too.) 

That’s why rooftop solar is spreading rapidly across Europe, South Asia, and the Global South. It’s why batteries are getting cheaper. And it’s why many countries no longer face a stark choice between climate action and energy access.

3) Coal is losing — even where it once seemed untouchable

A global transition only matters if it shows up in the hardest places. In 2025, it did.

Poland, one of Europe’s most coal-dependent countries, generated more electricity from renewables than from coal for the first time in June. Coal also fell below 50 percent of Poland’s electricity mix for an entire quarter — a symbolic and material break from the past.

Meanwhile, in the UK, coal has all but disappeared from the grid, while wind has become the country’s single largest power source. Unfortunately, in the US, however, the Trump administration is trying anything it can to save coal, which is beginning to modestly slow down its rate of decline here. 

Coal demand still reached a record high in 2025, but it’s clear that we are at or nearing the peak. The future prognosis is terminal: Coal is dying simply because it’s losing the math.

4) Without Trump really noticing, the states became the backbone of US climate action

Despite aggressive rhetorical and policy attacks on renewables, solar continues to dominate new electricity generation in the United States. And solar energy is the star of 2025: By early December, solar accounted for roughly 75 percent of all new generation installed this year, far outpacing wind, gas, and nuclear.

We can thank the states for that. 

In 2025, states passed clean energy affordability laws, modernized grids, invested in transit, expanded solar access, repealed coal bailouts, launched heat-pump rebates, and defended projects under federal attack. 

From Illinois and Maine to Nebraska, Ohio, and Oregon, progress came not from sweeping national legislation but from dozens of smaller — and arguably more durable wins.

And where it gets really interesting is in Trump country. This year, 80 percent of US solar manufacturing investment went to Republican-held districts, and most of the top solar-installing states now vote red. Texas leads as solar expansion in the state is on track to produce more electricity on the state’s power grid than coal for the first time. Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, and others are close behind. Of the 20 states that installed the most solar capacity since 2024, 14 of them voted for President Donald Trump last year, and there is now more solar capacity installed in Trump states than in states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris.   

All of this means that, ironically, we’re actually in the midst of a development sprint. 

States across the country are racing to fast-track wind and solar projects before Trump’s rollback of federal clean energy tax credits takes full effect. The credits, created under the Inflation Reduction Act, cut project costs by 30 to 50 percent, making them “the financial backbone of nearly every renewable energy project currently in the pipeline,” said Patty O’Keefe of Vote Solar. 

Since Trump ended the credits in July, states including Colorado, Maine, California, New York, Oregon, and Minnesota have accelerated permitting, procurement, and grid connections to help developers break ground before the July 4, 2026, construction deadline. 

Those projects will keep generating power for decades, meaning today’s scramble will permanently tilt the energy system slightly more toward renewables, regardless of what happens in Washington next. 

5) Electric vehicles are gaining traction. Yes, really. 

This year, more than one in four new cars sold globally was at least partially powered by an electric motor.

That surge wasn’t led by the United States or even Europe, but by emerging markets — especially in Southeast Asia — where EVs are becoming the obvious choice for new buyers. Globally, more than 25 percent of new cars sold so far this year were either an EV or plug-in hybrid.  

According to a new report published this week by global energy think tank Ember, which analysed available monthly data for 60 countries, new markets are making a rapid switch to plug-in vehicles, putting to bed the theory that EV adoption would stall outside of Europe and China.

In the US, the story is messier, with policy uncertainty slowing adoption of more efficient cars. But globally, the direction is clear: automakers are designing for an electric future because that’s where the customers are.

6) Batteries are solving the renewables problem people worried about most

For years, critics dismissed wind and solar as unreliable. In 2025, battery storage finally made that argument feel outdated.

The US hit record-breaking storage installations this year, with utility-scale batteries strengthening grids and soaking up cheap renewable power when it’s abundant — then delivering it when it’s needed. Developing technologies are already extending lifespans and cutting costs; solar combined with battery storage and wind with battery storage as a combo deal are even on track to undercut fossil fuels in cost worldwide before the end of the decade.  

This is what makes renewables infrastructure, not just energy sources.

7) The Data Center elephant in the room 

Okay, okay — by this point in the story, I know what you’re thinking: What about data centers???? Isn’t the insatiable buildout of AI going to derail any positive developments? 

It’s true that data centers are sprouting up across the American landscape like weeds. As of November 2025, the US had built 5,427 data centers — with capacity up by more than 40 percent since the start of 2025 — making it the world’s largest data center market by a significant margin. As data center demand explodes, companies increasingly rely on renewables like solar and wind through power purchase agreements — but because those sources are intermittent, developers are pairing them with battery storage and, more often, natural gas plants to provide round-the-clock reliability. In practice, that means data centers are pulling heavily on clean energy where available, while leaning on fossil fuels, especially gas, to guarantee constant power as grids and storage struggle to keep up.

But there’s even a silver lining here: As the grid needs more and more energy, grid operators are increasingly looking to build out overall capacity with renewable energy sources because they are so cheap. 

And then there’s also something interesting happening that makes me feel hopeful about climate activism: As AI-driven data centers spread across the U.S., community backlash is growing — and fast. This feels like a purpose that the environmental movement, which has seemed unmoored for quite some time now, could glom onto. In places like suburban Philadelphia, Michigan, Georgia, and Virginia, residents are organizing against massive data centers over concerns about rising electricity bills, pollution, and noise.

Power prices are already spiking for American consumers, and community opposition has delayed or canceled nearly $100 billion in projects so far. What’s striking is how bipartisan and local the resistance is — and how politically potent it’s becoming. Data centers are turning abstract climate and energy issues into tangible, neighborhood-level fights, offering climate activism a new, concrete target with broad public appeal. 

And just last week, Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, proposed a moratorium on new data centers because he says artificial intelligence is coming along too quickly and we need time for “democracy to catch up.”

The bigger story is hopeful — but it’s not over yet

None of this means the climate fight is won. Clean energy is growing fast, but not yet fast enough to avoid serious harm. Infrastructure bottlenecks remain. Inequities persist. And US political sabotage carries real costs.

But the clean energy transition no longer depends on a single election, a single country, or a single president. It’s being driven by economics, technology, and global demand — forces that are far harder to reverse than a regulation.

The United States may be choosing to give up its head start. The rest of the world isn’t waiting.

And every megawatt we build anyway still matters — because every fraction of a degree we avoid is lives saved, futures preserved, and disasters that never happen.