Companies canceled or scaled back nearly $1.6 billion in clean energy projects last month, bringing the total amount of withdrawn investment to more than $24 billion so far this year, according to the clean energy advocacy group E2.
The report said $11 billion of new investments have been announced this year. “However, new investments still fall far short of offsetting the scale of cancellations and slowdowns across the clean energy manufacturing base,” it said.
E2 issues a montly report tracking large-scale clean energy project announcements. The September figure is mostly due to the shuttering of Natron Energy, a sodium-ion battery startup, reportedly due to unresolved funding issues.
Natron permanently closed its facilities Santa Clara, California, where it was headquartered, and Holland, Michigan. Before shutting down, it had announced plans for a $1.4 billion factory in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
General Motors also downsized its electric vehicle manufacturing in September, writing in an Oct. 14 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company is reassessing its electric vehicle capacity and manufacturing footprint “following recent U.S. Government policy changes,” including the termination of consumer tax incentives and a “reduction in the stringency of emissions regulations.”
“[W]e expect the adoption rate of EVs to slow,” GM said.
E2 said that despite an overall downturn in clean energy projects, businesses announced $542 million in new clean energy investments in September, creating an estimated 985 new jobs.
One major announcement was Hitachi Energy’s decision to invest $457 million in a grid manufacturing facility in Virginia.
E2 found that after the Inflation Reduction Act expanded federal clean energy tax credits in 2022, companies announced “415 major projects across 42 states and Puerto Rico, representing $135B in investment and 125,000 planned jobs.”
But since the beginning of this year, 42 clean energy projects have been canceled or scaled back,indicating that “the overall trajectory of clean energy growth has sharply slowed in 2025,” the report said.
Battery storage and EV manufacturing accounted for 32 of the 42 major projects canceled this year, accounting for $19.2 billion and 18,700 jobs lost, it said.
E2 attributes much of this change in trajectory to the July passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which significantly curtailed the tax credits in the IRA, and other Trump administration policies aimed at limiting clean energy deployment.
