Donald Trump’s new prices are about to postpone the renewable energy industry, threatening to advance prices, disrupting supply chains and reducing American ambitions to lead the artificial intelligence revolution, the managers of clean technology said.
The tasks of 10% to 49% on electrical components, the storage of batteries and other equipment from China, Southeast Asia and Europe pushes a punch for an industry already in shock from Trump industry in the fossil fuels and limited appetite for clean energy.
Managers have warned that the additional costs of prices would in turn cause higher energy bills. Electricity prices increased twice as quickly as inflation last year, according to Bank of America, several public services requesting two-digit price increases from regulators to cover the increase in labor costs, materials and network improvements.
“This could be a potential de-rame when we really have to inaugurate this new era of energy domination to put the United States to the epicenter of data centers and AI technology,” said Sandhya Ganapathy, managing director of EDP Renewable America, one of the greatest developers of wind, solar energy and battery in the United States.
“It is disturbing from the point of view of companies and creates disturbances,” she added.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith, analyst at Jefferies, an investment bank, said that the prices had created “many troubles” at a time when companies were already uncertain to know if Trump could chop lucrative incentives for green energy provided by former American president Joe Biden.
He said: “The prices provide another reason for companies to delay investments. And the current problem is that there is simply not a fairly large American supply chain in many renewable sectors, such as solar, batteries and wind. There are not many options than buying abroad.”
Biden triggered a relocation boom by offering hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits in a radical reshuffle of industrial policy through the law on the reduction of inflation and the law on flea and science. More than 200 large -scale manufacturing projects have been launched since the legislation adopted more than two and a half years ago, although many factories have not started production.
Analysts claim that green energy is particularly vulnerable to prices given its high dependence on imports abroad and a reduction in government support. Trump has promised to dismantle IRA, calling it a “new green scam”, has taken a break and loans for certain renewable projects and granted priority to fossil fuel projects. This has cooled investments in the green energy industry, which faces the additional cost of supply equipment for countries subject to punitive prices.
One of the most exposed power chains is the storage of batteries, which is essential for the storage of renewable energies. Last year, more than 90% of lithium-ion energy storage cells deployed on the American storage market are from China, according to Rho Motion, a data research company. And despite efforts to develop domestic production in the United States, there is not enough national capacity to meet demand.
Imports of Chinese storage cells are faced with an additional rate of 34%, in addition to a 20% previously announced by the Trump administration. Overall, existing tariffs on the storage of batteries, new Trump prices and previously planned prices increases announced by Biden administration will wear total tasks on Chinese cells up to 82.4% in 2026.
“The American storage industry will pay considerably more for cells than elsewhere,” said Iola Hughes, analyst at Rho Motion.
Hughes said that an American national manufacturing of storage cells increased, but even these factories would remain dependent on imports from China Cathodes, which would still be subject to prices.
The United States’s solar panel manufacturing industry has increased rapidly in recent years, but the country has imported approximately 95 million photovoltaic panels last year, partly due to storage developers before planned changes, according to Rystad Energy figures.
Most of the imports came from countries faced with high prices, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. These follow additional rights on their solar imports announced last year, before Trump took up his duties. Marius Mordal Bakke, vice-president of solar research in Rystad, expects the United States to start importing more from the Middle East and Africa.
“We expect an acceleration in the rise of cell plans and domestic modules, but the costs for developers will increase,” he said. The United States has also relied on imports from polysilicon and platelets, he added.
The American wind sector imports many components such as blades, transmissions and electrical systems, with almost half of imports from the EU in 2024, according to Rystad. A February Mackenzie's February report warned that universal prices of 25% on all imported wind products would increase the costs of the 7% project and put certain projects in danger.
The United States also imports many components that are essential for upgrading electrical networks to ensure that it can meet the demand for increasing power. They will now become more expensive and will increase the prices of electricity for customers, say the managers.
Ganapathy of EDP said: “Whether it is transformers (or) whether it be circuit breakers, many of them come from foreigners, Canada or Mexico or other parts of the world. And (the taxation of prices) has not only an impact on new projects that we want to put in the ground, this has an impact on the stability of the grid.”
“The fact is that we have to keep the pace of a very, very increasing energy request scenario,” said Ganapathy.
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