Solar overtakes coal in US despite Trump’s war on renewables

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Despite Donald Trump’s best efforts, solar power has overtaken coal in the US energy mix for the first time. It supplied 12.8% of American power in May, compared to fossil fuel’s 12.2%. The US president has declared war on clean energy, scrapping subsidies in favour of promoting fossil fuels. But American states are forging ahead with solar and wind projects. This trend cuts across political divides: of the ten states that saw the biggest growth in clean energy last year, eight voted for Trump in 2024, and Texas, a Republican stronghold, recently overtook California as the biggest producer of renewable power in the country. The picture is not all positive, though, as several Democratic states have diluted their climate commitments.