ICYMI: GOP Clean Energy Repeal Targets Jobs, Manufacturing Boom in Trump Country

A new report from the American Clean Power Association (ACPA), featured in Canary Media, finds that U.S. clean energy factories support 122,000 jobs and generate $33 billion of annual economic activity. It’s a major onshoring success story—one that Republicans are now trying to bring to a “staggering halt” with their sweeping tax proposal. Notably, nearly three-quarters of these factories, which produce solar panels, batteries, and wind power equipment, are located in states Donald Trump won.

Meanwhile, new modeling from the nonpartisan Energy Innovation shows that Republicans’ de facto repeal of clean energy tax credits in their “One Beautiful Bill” would cause power prices to spike 50 percent by 2035, driven by a sharp drop in new clean energy generation. As written, the bill amounts to a full-scale assault on clean energy and climate progress.

ICYMI: Canary Media: Just how many jobs and GDP dollars do US clean energy factories create?

By Julian Spector
May 20, 2025

Key Points:

  • American manufacturing has already surged in the clean energy sector, bringing with it significant economic rewards.

  • That’s the main takeaway from a census of U.S. clean energy factories, published today by the American Clean Power Association trade group. The report identifies 200 operating across 38 states as of early 2025. 

  • Those facilities already contribute 122,000 jobs and create $33 billion of economic activity annually, which includes earnings, goods and services produced, and payments to supporting industries, ACP found. Notably, 73% of these factories operate in what the report describes as “Republican states” (as determined by presidential vote). That economic impact could grow to $164 billion by 2030 if the currently planned and announced factories come to fruition.

  • “We have seen a tremendous amount of momentum over just even the past couple of years in clean energy manufacturing growth,” MJ Shiao, ACP’s vice president of supply chain and manufacturing, said on a press call Friday. “With stable tax and stable trade policy, we can really continue to amplify, grow that momentum.”

  • “If they are implemented as currently drafted, which we certainly hope they are not, we will see factories shutting down,” Shiao said. “We will see these American manufacturers have to lay people off, and we will see them having to tell their local business partners that they no longer have the opportunity to work with them.”

  • In that light, the ACP report reads as a tabulation of what the country could miss out on if policy changes underway in Washington bring the onshoring trend to a staggering halt.

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