Trillion-dollar Win: Clean Energy Investment Benefits Growth and Jobs in All States

Investment in clean energy technology from both private and public sources has climbed steadily across the United States beginning during over the past six years, spanning both Donald Trump’s first and Joe Biden’s presidential terms, according to RMI analysis of data from Clean Investment Monitor.

However, many of those benefits are now at risk as agencies roll back historic clean energy investments passed by Congress. Through mid-2025, businesses closed, canceled, or cut back over $22 billion worth of clean manufacturing and energy projects, according to nonprofit E2, leading to 16,500 related job losses.

During 2018–24, that flow of investment, new jobs, and related growth tilted toward states in which Trump won the 2024 election. Republican voting states received $650 billion in clean energy investment over that time; Democratic voting states took in $440 billion. As of March 2024, total investment had created nearly 349,000 related jobs.

The landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed along party lines in August 2022, was the largest in a series of federal policy moves that amped up investment in clean energy technologies, with quarterly investment nearly tripling in the past four years, Clean Energy Monitor data shows.

Two years after passage, the IRA and other federal incentives emerged as a common thread in a string of high-profile projects in both red and blue states that have either broken ground and/or begun operations:

• Alabama. First Solar, a $1.1 billion solar manufacturing facility in Trinity, opened in September 2024 and is expected to employ 800 workers. The plant benefits from state and federal incentives.
• Georgia. In January 2023, the Qcells solar panel factory in Dalton announced the creation of 2,500 new jobs, and another 4,000 pending, with state and federal support via the IRA.
• Oklahoma. Stardust Power’s lithium refinery in Muskogee — a $1.2 billion investment announced in January 2025 — aims to extract lithium, a vital ingredient for batteries and other clean technologies, from byproducts of oil and gas drilling. The project is expected to “create hundreds of high-paying jobs,” with support from IRA and state incentives.
• South Carolina. ES Foundry in Greenville, the largest silicon solar manufacturing outfit in the United States, opened its doors in February 2025 and expects to have 500 employees, making the factory one of the largest employers in the city, thanks partly to federal support from the IRA.
• West Virginia. To build grid-scale batteries, Form Energy announced in mid 2024 plans to employ at least full time 750 workers at a factory expected to be completed in late 2025. With state and federal support, the investment is helping to restore economic development in a region that has lost thousands of coal mining and steel jobs.

The surge in clean technology investment is at risk, however, because of policy reversals proposed by the new US administration. As of March 2025, a small but growing number of projects have slowed down or been suspended. More than $6.9 billion in clean energy projects were withdrawn in the first quarter of 2025, “the highest quarterly value on record,” according to Clean Investment Monitor.

For example, growing uncertainty over federal support was cited in the rollback of these projects:

• KORE Power has abandoned a $1 billion battery plant in Buckeye that would have brought 3,000 jobs to the area.
• FREYR cancelled a $2.6 billion battery plant in Newnan, which was expected to create over 700 jobs.
• Solar-cell maker Heliene paused a plant in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area amid uncertainty around tax credits that make the facility viable.

Over the past six years, beginning in Trump’s first administration, a trillion-dollar wave of manufacturing investment has taken shape in the United States, committing billions in investment, and creating thousands of new jobs in red and blue states alike.

A more complete rollback of incentives is likely to multiply cancellations, increase job losses, and worsen economic anxiety.