2025 marked a radical economic shift for the US solar industry, with a shorter window for federal subsidies and a presidential administration that actively resist developments in the field of sustainable energy. Import tariffs, universal inflation and high interest rates for project financing have also dampened the recent solar boom.
Credit: Swift Current Solar
Bankruptcies, furloughs and layoffs accompanied this massive change in the marketplace, impacting installers, manufacturers and other groups within the U.S. solar industry. Environmental business group E2’s latest “Clean economy worksAn analysis found that by October 2025, almost 30,000 jobs that would have been created by new major clean energy projects had been cut.
Employment rates in the solar and storage sector reached record highs in early 2025.2024 National Solar Jobs Census‘ found that 464,053 people were employed in the US solar and storage sector at the start of the year, more than three times the number of people employed in the US coal industry.
“Since these job totals date back to 2024, they do not reflect the seismic federal policy shifts that have occurred since a new presidential administration took office in January 2025. We expect this 2024 baseline will provide an important point of comparison for how these policies have affected the solar and battery energy storage industries when 2025 employment data are collected in the coming year,” the report said.
Now the Trump administration is shifting the ambitions of President Joe Biden’s clean energy policy back to fossil fuels. The total impact of this has not yet been measured, but the effects on solar energy in homes are already visible.
US solar bankruptcies and layoffs
From one World of solar energy After reviewing state agencies’ Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices, at least 1,691 people working in the U.S. solar industry have reportedly been laid off in 2025, but these documents do not account for all the jobs lost in the industry.
Two months into Trump’s second term, national solar leasing company Sunnova laid off 300 people — about 15% of its workforce — citing high-interest financing and policy uncertainty as reasons for the workforce reductions. Sunnova then filed for bankruptcy in June, leaving the market owing millions of dollars to creditors, including its installer customers, and losing a workforce of more than 1,000 people. Sunnova’s assets and business have been acquired by GoodFinch Management and are now managed by its subsidiary Solaris Assets.
In a similar market segment, Spruce Power, a third-party residential solar financier, laid off 40 people and closed its office in Denver, Colorado, in August, saying the decision was based on business savings.
In August, former PosiGen CEO Peter Shaper sent a memo to almost all employees informing them that their jobs had been terminated. According to the WARN filing, 293 PosiGen employees were laid off in Connecticut, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. PosiGen’s corporate mission was to expand access to solar energy by installing projects for low- to moderate-income customers.
According to the employee’s termination letter, PosiGen planned to stay in business if it could find other sources of financing, and even recently secured a $600 million investment from private equity firm Brookfield Asset Management. But the company ultimately filed for bankruptcy in November.
“Hundreds of employees, including myself, were fired without any warning,” said a former PosiGen employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Contractors and partners went unpaid. Families who trusted our mission of ‘Solar for All’ were left in the dark.”
Blue Ridge Power, the EPC subsidiary of developer Pine Gate Renewables, laid off 517 employees in September between its companies in Asheville and Fayetteville, North Carolina. David Sanders, president of Blue Ridge Power, again blamed “regulations and capital market environments” as the main causes for the workforce reductions at the EPC.
Then, Blue Ridge’s parent company, Pine Gate Renewables, filed for bankruptcy in November, selling its operations and its portfolio of solar and energy storage projects, with a 10 GW pipeline.direct current in progress.
In addition to installation and factory floors, the domestic solar manufacturing segment also saw layoffs and closures in 2025.
Meyer Burger laid off 355 workers in May at its newly opened solar panel assembly plant in Goodyear, Arizona. Less than a year after starting operations, the 1.5 GW PV module factory was closed, with the company attributing the closure to financing issues.
Increased retention of parts by Customs and Border Protection has reportedly led solar panel maker Qcells to lay off 1,000 workers and lay off another 300 at its two factories in Georgia.
Powin Energy, an energy storage company based in Oregon with a global installed capacity of more than 17 GWh, filed for bankruptcy in June. Solar shingle manufacturer GAF Energy laid off 138 employees and closed its R&D facility in California in December. Oliver Koehler, CEO of another solar shingle manufacturer, SunTegra, decided to shut down operations in October.
“We have been hit with tariffs since the first containers we had on the water, literally going back to 2014,” he said in an article published in October.
Mosaic, a financier of solar energy and home improvements, filed for bankruptcy in June. Vote Solar, an industry association based in California, laid off 11 people in August. And design platform Aurora Solar reportedly laid off 58 people in January 2025, according to reports from the state WARN.
The impact of federal opposition to solar energy has reached virtually every corner of the industry. Perhaps not every job loss or business closure can be attributed solely to the Trump administration withdrawing subsidies that once supported the sector, but companies largely cite this hostility toward PV as the major factor.
