Global investment in renewable energy projects hit a fresh record this year but fell in the U.S., an analysis released today shows.

Why it matters: Trump 2.0's reversal of federal support is starting to show up in hard financing data.

Driving the news: The first half of 2025 saw "reallocation" of investment dollars away from the U.S. begin, the research firm BloombergNEF found.

• U.S. spending fell by $20.5 billion, or 36%, from the second half of 2024 in what the firm calls a response to the U.S. presidential election.
• It was the steepest drop of any country.

"There was a rush to construct toward the end of last year as developers sought to lock in access to tax credits, and then a sharp drop in the first half of this year due to worsening policy conditions, particularly for wind, and growing tariff uncertainty," the report states.

The intrigue: The European Union saw a big jump, which "supports the idea that developers and investors may be reallocating capital out of the U.S. and into Europe."

🧮 Stunning stat: The U.S., in the first half of 2025, wasn't among the world's top-five wind markets for the first time since 2016.

🖼️ The big picture: Worldwide investment was $386B in the 1H 2025, a tally that's largely wind and solar, but also includes biofuels, geothermal and more.

• The solar picture is split, with spending on small-scale projects up, "reflecting cheap modules and the ease of siting" these assets.
• But financing for big, or utility-scale, projects fell sharply "amid concerns over revenue risk."
• "[M]any of the markets that saw the largest year-on-year declines in investment — including mainland China, Spain, Greece, and Brazil — have seen rising curtailment, greater exposure to negative power prices, or both."

What we're watching: How recent events sway U.S. investment trends.

• The Interior Department has unveiled fresh constraints on wind and solar projects, while the Commerce Department could impose new tariffs on wind blades and components.
• And just last week, Interior demanded that Ørsted halt construction on a big, nearly complete wind project off Rhode Island.

President Trump's Interior Department intends to yank late Biden-era permits for a large planned project off Maryland's coast, new court filings show.

Why it matters: The motions on US Wind's Maryland Offshore Wind Project are the latest sign of Trump 2.0's escalating efforts to thwart coastal turbine plans.

• Interior is simultaneously halting construction of Ørsted's nearly completed Revolution Wind development in New England (more on that below).

Driving the news: The Justice Department said Interior will move no later than Sept. 12 to remand and vacate the construction and operation permit granted last December.

Catch up quick: US Wind's project, to be built in phases, would eventually help power over 718,000 homes, Interior's offshore energy branch said when approving the permit in December.

• The company is owned by funds managed by Apollo Global Management, an American investment firm, and Renexia SpA, a subsidiary of Toto Holding SpA.

What we're watching: Legal pushback against the efforts.

• "Our construction and operations plan approval is the subject of ongoing litigation, but we remain confident that the federal permits we secured after a multi-year and rigorous public review process are legally sound," US Wind's VP of external affairs Nancy Sopko tells multiple outlets.

Trump 2.0's stop-work order on Ørsted's Revolution Wind project is bringing all kinds of predictions about the market and political consequences.

Catch up quick: The Interior Department issued the order Friday on the nearly completed project off Rhode Island and Connecticut.

• It cited national security concerns and competing marine uses of the region.

⚠️ Threat level: New England's grid operator, ISO-NE, warned that delaying the project slated to come online in 2026 will increase risks to power reliability.

• Recent heat waves "demonstrated that our region needs all generation resources with market obligations to be available to meet demand and maintain required reserves," it said in a statement.

The intrigue: ClearView Energy Partners, in a note, muses on what might have motivated the decision beyond Trump 2.0's disdain for wind.

• Ideas include the two states' joining litigation against GOP policies on Planned Parenthood; conditions imposed on grants for crime victims; and a "White House effort to tamp down blue-state greening in response to federal rollbacks."
• Trump officials may also be seeking to pressure the states to approve natural gas infrastructure, it states.

What we're watching: The "existential developer risk of retroactive permitting is now clearly in play," TD Cowen analysts said in a note.

• It cites Revolution Wind but also last spring's temporary stop-work order on Equinor's Empire Wind project off New York's coast.
• "While Trump is currently targeting renewables, watch for any future Dem Admin to be equally aggressive on disfavored fossil projects," it adds.

The bottom line: The Biden-era goal of 30 gigawatts of U.S. offshore wind by 2030 was already fading even before the election as projects hit various snags.

• And now it's receding even further. The research firm BloombergNEF currently sees 6.1 gigawatts operating in 2030, and it's obviously an evolving situation.

🌊 Frontier, the consortium of corporate giants trying to jumpstart carbon removal, this morning unveiled $31.3 million in offtake deals with removal startup Planetary.

• Why it matters: Frontier, which carefully vets removal startups, sees promise in Planetary's method of ocean alkalinity enhancement — a technique to boost marine CO2 absorption.
• State of play: The agreement is for 115,211 tons of CO2 removal between 2026 and 2030. Read the announcement.

⚛️ SMR startup X-energy, Amazon, and South Korean energy companies unveiled a "strategic partnership" to speed deployment of U.S. reactors.

• Why it matters: The plan cites "growing power demands from data centers and artificial intelligence." Data Center Dynamics has more.

⚛️ The Bill Gates-backed TerraPower is working with Utah state officials and land developers to explore siting a reactor and energy storage plant there. Go deeper via The Salt Lake Tribune.

🌀 President Trump's budget cuts to disaster preparedness are a departure from response improvements made in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA employees warn. Full story.

🚛 Via the Washington Examiner, EPA "has moved to block a California regulation aimed at reducing emissions from diesel trucks, arguing that it serves as a backdoor emission rule that would be imposed on the entire nation."

⛏️ "The U.S. on Monday proposed adding copper and potash among others to the draft critical minerals list for 2025, for their importance to the economy and national security," Reuters reports.

"We're losing people to other states because our housing and energy are too expensive — those are infrastructure problems that have been allowed to get out of control because CEQA gets used maliciously."

His pet issue is ending CEQA, a state environmental regulation that Agarwal believes has strayed far from its original intent — instead becoming an impediment to new construction.