Data centers could power solar market, despite Trump criticism
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Data centers could provide a power boost for green energy companies that are being ignored — or outright denigrated — by President Trump.
Driving the news: That's a takeaway from the new IPO filing for SOLV Energy, a private equity-owned provider of construction services for solar and battery projects.
- It mentions data centers more than a dozen times, including the lead of a section on "market opportunity."
State of play: Trump loves data centers, for both their construction jobs and AI enablement. But he despises solar energy, calling it a "scam" and pledging to block new solar farm permits.
Zoom in: San Diego-based SOLV hints at the inconsistency, without explicitly calling it out, and argues that America's climbing energy needs can only be satisfied with the sort of all-in strategy that Trump once touted.
- It writes: "The combination of growth in the number and capacity of data centers, manufacturing reshoring, increasing use of HVAC caused by more extreme weather, electrification of industrial processes and retirement of existing coal-fired generation facilities are resulting in rapid load growth that cannot be met by existing generation capacity."
By the numbers: Per the IPO filing, Wood Mackenzie and the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate that annual U.S. electricity consumption will climb 28% between 2024 and 2034, versus just 5% during the prior decade, with a majority of that increase coming from data centers.
- SOLV, which was founded in 2008 and bought by American Securities in 2021, reports $114 million of net income on $1.7 billion of revenue for the first nine months of 2025.
- That's up from basically break-even on $1.4 billion of revenue for the year-earlier period.
The bottom line: For solar, the friend of its enemy may be its friend.
