Clean energy jobs were soaring during the Biden era. Not anymore

In 2024, the clean energy sector saw a job boom: The industry added nearly 100,000 new jobs throughout that year, meaning clean energy jobs grew more than three times faster than the rest of the workforce.

Last year was a different story, however.

It was a year of losses for the clean energy industry, in terms of projects, investments, and employment.

Existing factories closed, like Natron Energy’s sodium-ion battery facilities in Michigan and California. Planned facilities were canceled, including a $3.2 billion Stellantis battery factory in Illinois. And multiple kinds of projects were scrapped, blocked, or downsized, from EV plants to wind farms.

In total, the turbulent year meant that 38,000 jobs—a mix of current and future positions—were erased from the clean energy industry, according to a new analysis by E2, a nonpartisan organization that tracks U.S. clean energy projects.

A net loss of clean energy jobs

The vast majority of those 38,000 lost jobs were in manufacturing (though some may have been counted in multiple categories, like energy generation or maintenance). For comparison, by the end of 2024, there were about 577,000 manufacturing jobs in the clean energy industry.

These job losses are especially significant because they’re happening amid a general decline in manufacturing employment. In 2024, clean energy manufacturing had been a “bright spot,” says Michael Timberlake, E2 director of research and publications, helping bring back U.S. production.

“When those projects are canceled, we’re not just losing jobs on paper; we’re losing a pathway that had been driving a new manufacturing resurgence,” he says. “And the investment doesn’t disappear. It moves to other countries and U.S. competitors that are aggressively building clean energy supply chains and hiring the workers we can’t afford to lose.”

Even amid cancellations, some new clean energy projects and jobs were announced in 2025, like a $42 million Anthro Energy battery factory in Louisville, Kentucky, which will create 110 jobs. 

But the number of jobs eliminated outweighs those potential additions. Just 22,905 jobs were announced in 2025, meaning a net loss of more than 15,000 expected clean energy positions. 

“No previous year tracked by E2 saw job losses on this scale, underscoring how quickly employment gains can evaporate when projects are abandoned,” the analysis reads.

New clean energy investments were also overshadowed by cancellations. Companies canceled, closed, or downsized $34.8 billion in clean energy projects, nearly three times the $12.3 billion in new investment announced throughout the year, a 3-to-1 imbalance. 

Republican-held districts hit harder

Though the entire country was affected by these losses, Republican-held districts felt their impact a bit more than others. 

Republican districts lost $19.9 billion in investments that would have brought 24,500 jobs to those regions, compared to $10.6 billion and 12,600 jobs lost in Democratic-held districts.

That makes sense because the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2022—which spurred clean energy jobs and projects—benefited many Republican-led districts, even though not a single Republican voted for the legislation and in fact House Republicans voted 42 times to repeal it.

Nearly 200,000 of the 334,000 clean energy jobs that the IRA created in its first two years were in congressional districts represented by Republican House members. 

Still, clean energy is growing

Despite attacks on clean energy by the current Trump administration, the sector is still growing in the United States. In 2025, nearly all of the new power added to the country’s grid came from solar, wind, and batteries. 

Even the U.S. Energy Information Administration has said that all net new generating capacity the country sees in 2026 will come from renewables. 

And clean energy experts say the industry will continue to grow—even as the president tries to prop up coal, oil, and gas—because electricity generated from renewables is cheaper than fossil fuels, and the projects are often faster to build than fossil fuel power plants. 

Still, economic losses that the clean energy sector saw in 2025 are devastating, and may not be fully recovered.

And if clean energy job growth is at risk, that affects our entire economy. Clean energy jobs are present in every single state, and, as the World Resources Institute put it in November, “movement toward clean energy will create opportunity for millions of Americans.”

E2’s data also doesn’t capture the “tens of thousands of additional jobs and projects” that likely would have been announced if the country’s policy and market certainty continued, Timberlake says.

“Likely hundreds of projects that would have been announced, and hundreds more that could’ve been announced this year, cannot be recovered,” he adds, “and will instead benefiting workers and communities in other countries.”