Trump administration stops fighting wind power as clean energy emerges

EDF’s report also saw a significant increase in gas projects. “(T)otal planned and under construction natural gas power increased from 44.8 GW in Q4 2025 to 65.5 GW at the end of Q1 2026, an increase of 20.7 GW,” its authors wrote, more than four times the combined growth of solar, storage, and wind over the same period. The share of refined petroleum products has risen from 9 percent by the end of 2022 to 27 percent, “a three-fold increase that reflects the rise in oil production costs,” according to the report.

In an interview with Inside Climate News, Jon Gordon, director of policy at Advanced Energy United, a clean energy advocacy group, said natural gas production “was a big deal…

He said: “What is causing the increase in gas is because the government has been blocking roads to increase it and encouraging people to use old things.”

For a clean energy state like Maryland, he said, the problem was real because “many of our problems are short-term. Gordon said the economy is in favor of a better way to generate electricity because the cost of building gas plants has “almost doubled in a few years,” while the cost of solar and batteries is falling.

The EDF-Atlas report also found that 80 percent of existing, planned, and under-construction electric power is located in congressional districts represented by Republicans. Of the 30 states with the most clean energy, only five are Democratic. Texas leads every state with 164 GW, almost twice California, in second place with 83 GW.

Abe Silverman, a research assistant at Johns Hopkins University’s Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute, cautioned against reading the map blindly. Speaking to Inside Climate News, he said the first thing he looks for is “where is the cheapest place.”

“Is it the red tape and the stupidity of the government, or is it the high cost of land and the density?” he asked. Much of the growth is in areas with affordable housing, he said, and is also driven by consolidation plans.

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