Cancelled

Monday 13 October 2025

The Trump administration continues to find clever ways to cancel wind and solar projects. Their most recent success is exceptionally destructive, as they’ve found a way to scuttle the gargantuan Nevada-based solar project Esmeralda 7, which was slated to top out at a head-spinning 6.2GW of capacity, spread across nearly 200 square miles of land. A quick review of the global solar table shows that Esmeralda would not just have been the largest solar array in the United States, but would have landed immediately in the top ten solar plants in the world. There is only one word to describe this administration’s efforts: madness.

The most recent cancellation comes at a time when everyone from utility and power professionals to energy sector generalists agree that growing imbalances between U.S. electricity supply and demand are on a collision course. Actually, it’s worse than that. Supply and demand imbalances were already in the queue prior to 2025, when U.S. power demand finally jumped out of its long-stagnant range as electrification itself started to take hold, and the construction boom of AI data centers began in earnest. John Arnold, former natural gas trader and now philanthropist and policy advocate, had this to say upon learning of the Esmeralda cancellation:

While it goes without saying, the Trump administration is so broadly incompetent that it appears not to have occurred to them that “the electric bill” is a reality that permeates American society, not unlike the grocery bill and prices at the pump. Indeed, it is almost surely the case that the administration believes it can marshal all the power the U.S. grid needs from coal and natural gas new build—entirely forgetting that those construction projects take time, often much time, to complete. Now add to this heap of trouble the fact that cooling days are on the rise in much of the U.S., placing further upward pressure on the grid to serve demand. It’s a very ugly picture.

At what point do Republicans in a state like Nevada (and others) realize that “the electric bill” is likely to be a major talking point in next year’s midterm elections? Perhaps more quickly than you expect: the Republican governor of Nevada is not happy about the cancellation.

Wind and solar have made a critically important contribution to the U.S. power grid by being the go-to, quickly deployable solution to U.S. electricity demand growth. For the past five years—and so far in 2025 as well—combined wind and solar have pretty much covered all the growth in U.S. electricity. That’s a big deal, especially given that U.S. power demand is on course this year to be up a cumulative 9.0% since 2021. Cold Eye Earth takes the view that if the Trump administration doesn’t reverse course on its attempt to suppress wind and solar growth, the portion of marginal growth that would have otherwise come from wind and solar will not be adequately covered by coal and/or natural gas. Demand is moving too swiftly to the upside. Only wind and solar can move that fast. (Note on active charts: the chart below is active and can be toggled to show totals for each category: ex-wind+solar; and wind+solar. But the active chart is only responsive only at the Cold Eye Earth website, not in this email.)