2025 was marked by a radical economic shift for the U.S. solar industry, with a shorter window for federal subsidies and a presidential administration that is actively halting renewable energy developments. 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 have accompanied this sea change in the market, affecting installers, manufacturers and other groups within U.S. solar. Environmental business group E2’s latest “Clean Economy Works” analysis reported that as of October 2025, nearly 30,000 jobs that would have been created from new major clean energy projects were canceled.
Employment numbers in the solar and storage industries hit a record high to start 2025. The “National Solar Jobs Census 2024” determined that 464,053 people worked in U.S. solar and storage at the beginning of the year, more than triple the amount of people employed in the U.S. coal industry.
“Since these job totals are as of 2024, they do not reflect the seismic federal policy shifts that have occurred since a new presidential administration took office in January 2025 … we anticipate that this 2024 baseline will provide an important comparison point for how these policies have impacted the solar and battery energy storage industries when 2025 employment data is gathered in the coming year,” the report states.
Now, the Trump administration is shifting the ambitions of President Joe Biden’s clean energy policy back to fossil fuel sources. The total impact of this hasn’t been measured yet, but the effects on domestic solar are already apparent.
U.S. solar bankruptcies and layoffs
From a Solar Power World review of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices issued by state offices, at least 1,691 people working in U.S. solar were reportedly laid off in 2025, but these documents do not account for every job lost in the industry.
Two months into Trump’s second term, national solar leasing company Sunnova laid off 300 people — about 15% of its staff — citing high-interest financing and policy uncertainty as the reasons for workforce reduction. Then in June, Sunnova filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, leaving the market with millions of dollars owed to creditors, including its installer clients, and shedding a staff of more than 1,000 people. Sunnova’s assets and business operations were acquired by GoodFinch Management and are now under operations of its subsidiary Solaris Assets.
In a similar market segment, Spruce Power, a third-party residential solar financier, laid off 40 people and closed its Denver, Colorado, office in August, claiming the decision was based on company savings.
In August, former PosiGen CEO Peter Shaper sent a memo to nearly all employees informing them that their jobs were terminated. Per WARN notice filings, 293 PosiGen employees were laid off in Connecticut, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. PosiGen’s company mission was to expand access to solar energy by installing projects for low-to-middle income customers.
According to the employee termination notice, PosiGen intended to stay in business if it could find other financing sources, even recently obtaining a $600 million investment by private equity firm Brookfield Asset Management. But ultimately, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November.
“Hundreds of employees, including myself, were laid off with little warning,” said a former PosiGen employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Contractors and partners were left unpaid. Families who trusted our mission of ‘Solar for All’ were left in limbo.”
Blue Ridge Power, the EPC subsidiary of developer Pine Gate Renewables, issued layoffs for 517 employees between its Asheville and Fayetteville, North Carolina, businesses in September. David Sanders, president of Blue Ridge Power, again blamed “regulatory and capital market environments” as the primary causes for workforce reduction at the EPC.
Then in November, Blue Ridge’s parent company Pine Gate Renewables filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, selling off its businesses and its portfolio of solar and energy storage projects, with a pipeline of 10 GWDC underway.
Beyond installation and onto factory floors, the domestic solar manufacturing segment also experienced layoffs and closures in 2025.
Meyer Burger laid off 355 employees in May at its recently opened solar panel assembly factory in Goodyear, Arizona. Less than a year after beginning operations, the 1.5-GW PV module factory shuttered, with the company attributing the closure to funding issues.
Increased component detainment by Customs and Border Protection reportedly caused solar panel manufacturer Qcells to furlough 1,000 employees and lay off 300 more from its two plants in Georgia.
Powin Energy, an energy storage company based in Oregon with a global installed capacity of more than 17 GWh, filed for Chapter 11 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 cease operations in October.
“We’ve been impacted by tariffs from the first containers we had on the water, literally going back to 2014,” he said in a feature published in October.
Mosaic, a solar and home improvement financier, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June. Vote Solar, an industry advocacy group based in California, laid off 11 people in August. And design platform Aurora Solar reportedly laid off 58 people in January 2025, according to state WARN notices.
The effect of federal opposition to solar has reached practically every corner of the industry. Perhaps not every job lost or company closure can be solely attributed to the Trump administration rescinding the subsidies that once bolstered the industry, but companies are largely citing this hostility to PV as the primary factor.
