The GOP budget law that President Trump signed a year ago has darkened the outlook for several clean energy sources, but stopped far short of strangling low-carbon tech.

Why it matters: It's part of a broader attack on Biden-era climate policies, along with Trump's executive moves to kill regulations and slow permitting of renewables projects.

• The law signed July 4, 2025, phased out wind, solar, and electric vehicle subsidies that Biden officials called key tools for slashing emissions and boosting U.S. clean tech industries.

The big picture: EVs were down to 5.9% of new U.S. car sales in the second quarter of 2026, per Cox Automotive — about two percentage points lower than a year ago.

• 🪁 On wind power, BloombergNEF's U.S. forecast for gigawatts of new power-generating capacity through 2035 is 42% lower than its outlook before the law. The research firm also pared back solar growth forecasts.
• 🏭 On manufacturing, the U.S. has seen billions of dollars in project cancellations spanning batteries, EVs and industrial decarbonization equipment, per joint tracking from MIT and Rhodium Group researchers.

Yes, but: Rising power demand overall — including Big Tech's voracious energy needs in particular — is offsetting some of the headwinds the 2025 law created.

• "The clean energy industry in the U.S. is ... certainly doing worse than it would have, but it is still doing quite well, particularly in the case of the clean power sector," said Nick Nigro, founder of research and advisory firm Atlas Public Policy.
• "Everyone in the industry will tell you the fastest way to get power onto the grid right now is with renewables and batteries," Nigro, whose firm analyzes manufacturing and clean energy generation projects, said in an interview.

State of play: BloombergNEF has upwardly revised its long-term outlook for onshore wind and grid-scale solar projects since its initial post-law forecasts, though its estimates remain well below what would have occurred without the 2025 law.

• Its mid-May analysis for wind installations in 2026-2035 is 13% above what it first projected after the law passed.

The intrigue: One thing analysts will keenly watch is the pace of new wind and solar project plans, now that eligibility for tax credits lapsed earlier this month.

• Developers rushed to get projects under construction ahead of the deadline.

Reality check: Some humility is in order here! It's impossible to completely isolate the law's effect in the stew of market and policy forces that affect these industries.

• Think, for instance, slower EV demand growth than some analysts and automakers expected even before the law killed subsidies.

What we're watching: For the global climate, the big story is what the law didn't scuttle, writes Council on Foreign Relations energy scholar David Hart.

• Surviving credits for costlier, less mature tech — advanced geothermal and nuclear, and battery storage — mean the U.S. is setting the stage for more global projects down the road.

"If the [U.S.] covers the relatively high costs at the front end of this 'learning curve,' the rest of the world might be able to afford them at the back end," Hart argues.

U.S. electric vehicle sales surged in the third quarter of 2025, when buyers rushed to snag tax credits vanishing under the GOP budget law. Then they declined sharply.

Rivian's share price bounced Thursday when second-quarter deliveries (a proxy for sales) beat Wall Street forecasts, while Lucid's sank the same day after its deliveries came in below expectations.

Why it matters: They're two of the most important U.S. EV companies, and face overlapping challenges.

• Both have well-reviewed cars but are navigating the fraught, expensive journey from buzzy startup to commercial-scale automaker.
• It's a journey littered with casualties.

Catch up quick: Rivian reported nearly 12,200 deliveries in April-June and raised its full-year outlook to 65,000 to 70,000, up from 62k-67k.

• Its share price rose 8.4% Thursday on the news, fueling an overall 15.9% bump last week.
• The same day, luxury sedan maker Lucid missed estimates with 3,953 in Q2 deliveries, sending its shares down 8.3%. It announced a leadership shakeup under new CEO Silvio Napoli.

The bottom line: Analysts with Deutsche Bank see a wider story about U.S. consumer EV interest — which plummeted after federal tax credits expired last September — in Rivian's higher-than-expected volume.

• It "supports our view that EV demand/sentiment may have at least bottomed in the US," they said in a note.

Speaking of Rivian, CEO RJ Scaringe must have a sense of deja vu: Rivian's most important product to date — the mass-market R2 electric SUV — is launching amid yet another supply squeeze, this time for critical memory chips.

• Four years ago, a global chip shortage threatened the launch of Rivian's first electric truck, the R1.

Why it matters: There's tons of demand for the $50,000 R2, which is getting rave reviews from automotive journalists. But if Rivian can't build a lot of them, the company will face an existential crisis.

• "If R2 doesn't go well, the whole company is not designed properly," Scaringe told Amy at the recent Aspen Ideas Festival.

Driving the news: Rivian just began deliveries of the first R2s rolling out of its Illinois factory.

• Scaringe says he's excited by the consumer demand, but is worried about things he can't control.
• "The whole semiconductor space is gonna be quite constrained. So, by far my biggest worry about ramping R2 isn't demand. It's, you know, can we get enough parts to build cars?" he said.

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"We concede that crude will likely remain under near-term pressure despite ongoing uncertainty, but we do not subscribe to the 'back-to-normal' narrative that is ascendant in the market at the moment."

She argues that transit through the Strait of Hormuz will stay well below pre-war levels for the foreseeable future, and doubts the 60-day timeline for reaching a final U.S.-Iran deal.

• Yet oil prices have fallen back to where they were before the crisis began.