One Year Later: Advanced Energy Still Dominating Grid’s Growth
One year ago, President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” (OBBBA) into law, catalyzing one of the most significant and disruptive policy shifts the advanced energy industry has ever faced. The bill upended the clean energy credits and incentives created by the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022.
Every industry needs certainty to succeed. The rollback of these federal tax policies – originally intended to stand for a decade – injected new uncertainty for developers, manufacturers, and customers alike. Large-scale advanced energy projects were perhaps the most impacted, with timelines disrupted, supply chains thrown into question, and investment plans reevaluated. Sixty-one major energy projects, representing $34 billion in investment and 38,000 American jobs, were cancelled in the wake of this destructive change in energy agenda.
Despite this, the industry is adapting and is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the American people. Our technologies are cleaner, cheaper, and quicker to deploy than fossil sources. Even amidst this tumultuous time, 90 percent of new energy capacity added in the U.S. in 2025 came from clean sources, and renewables constituted 26% of total U.S. electrical generation last year. Our member companies have weathered regulatory and political changes in the past, and they will continue to innovate, adapt, and persevere – but they still need a policy environment that allows them to confidently invest in American communities and lower the cost of energy for households and businesses across the United States.
By 2035, the country will face a 340 GW decrease in generation capacity due to OBBBA as compared to post-IRA projections. At a time when energy demand is skyrocketing – with electricity demand anticipated to grow by 25 percent by 2030 – it is imperative that Congress and states act with urgency to unlock American advanced energy sources.
Advanced energy is easily deployable, affordable, and ready to meet this moment of unprecedented growth – yet unnecessary red tape continues to hold these solutions back. There are nearly 8,000 generation and storage projects with active interconnection requests in grid operator queues as of July 2026. These projects could nearly double the installed capacity on the grid today and represent more than enough energy to meet projected demand. However, the average wait time for a project to get approval to connect to the grid has ballooned, from about 20 months in 2005, to five years in 2025.
Siting and permitting regulations are also in desperate need of reform. Siting rules are often extremely inconsistent on a state-by-state and even county-by-county basis, forcing energy developers to jump through duplicative hoops to get their projects on the grid. And in Washington, an obsolete, overly bureaucratic federal permitting system is stifling our member companies and their investors.
Congress has a golden opportunity to get American energy back on the map – fix the broken interconnection queue, streamline federal siting regulations, and modernize an antiquated permitting process – if it can pass a bipartisan permitting reform package by the end of the year. There are thousands of advanced energy projects that could be sending energy to the grid within just a few short years, instead of being stalled for decades in development. The time is now for Congress to act and unlock our domestic energy capacity. Americans are already seeing energy price spikes, and failing to take action threatens to exacerbate both cost and reliability challenges.
The road ahead may look different than it did a year ago, but the need for affordable, reliable, and secure energy has only grown. The advanced energy industry remains committed to working with decision-makers to meet these challenges. At Advanced Energy United, we’re focused on reducing the regulatory barriers for our member companies, and we’re optimistic our industry will continue to build the infrastructure that will power America’s future. This is how we meet the moment: Build It, Make It Flexible, and Make it Affordable.