Despite Donald Trump’s unrelenting attacks on renewable energy, there’s a quiet revolution happening on US grids.
The US added a record-breaking amount of energy storage in 2025, according to a new solar industry report published Monday. The growth of battery storage across the US is a rare success story for clean energy during the renewables-hostile second Trump administration—and also a sign of how utilities may be thinking about reorienting electric grids as demand goes up across the country.
The new report, issued by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), follows another dataset released last week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showing a similar boom in battery growth. In 2025, according to the SEIA report, the US installed 57 gigawatt hours of new energy storage to the grid, with new installations growing almost 30 percent over the year before. (As its name suggests, a gigawatt hour is a measure of energy stored over time.) That’s enough storage, the SEIA report claims, to power more than 5 million homes each year.
The report predicts that the market could jump another 21 percent by the end of this year, increasing by an additional 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. These are monster numbers compared to less than a decade ago, when there was about half a gigawatt of storage on the grid in total.
Batteries have proven remarkably politically resilient. Tax credits for wind and solar were cut as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill last summer amid a large-scale attack on renewables from the administration, despite opposition from Republican lawmakers with clean-energy projects in their states. But battery tax credits were largely spared.
And despite Washington’s hostility toward renewable energy, batteries—along with solar—saw significant growth in some deep red states last year. One of the big renewable energy success stories of the moment is Texas, where solar met more than 15 percent of demand throughout the summer, beating out coal for the first time. The SEIA report predicts that Texas will overtake California this year to become the US state with the most gigawatt hours of storage deployed.
Jigar Shah, a managing partner at the advisory firm Multiplier and the former director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, points out that Texas’ independent and largely deregulated power grid—which operates much closer to a true free-market system than other grids in the country—has enabled solar and batteries to soar ahead of other options despite resistance in the White House. (Solar’s success story is so big that it does even seem to be reaching some voices on the right: Recent polling suggests that MAGA voters support solar, while Katie Miller, the influential former top communications official for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to whom White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is married, has been tweeting approvingly about solar energy in recent weeks.)
“Texas basically says, ‘I don't care about your cultural bias,’” says Shah, who was not involved in the SEIA report. “‘These are the market signals. You guys do what you want to do. If you want to build new coal plants, great. If you want to build batteries, great.’ And it happened to be that batteries were most incentivized by their financial incentives.”
While batteries and solar are proving a killer combination in places like Texas, the majority of battery installations last year, the SEIA report found, were stand-alone ones not connected to specific solar projects. The growth of stand-alone storage is a good sign for grids that are increasingly stressed by skyrocketing demand.
On an average day, energy grids around the US use only about 50 percent of the energy available to them. This underutilization is by design; the grid needs a large amount of capacity for days when demand is at its peak. Installing batteries at all levels of the grid is one way to take advantage of the extra energy that’s not used during off-peak days so that it doesn’t go to waste.
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Friendly reminder that the battery industry is filled with shady and evil stuff. Cobalt mining for example.
More info can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTrXk4geQFg&feature=youtu.be
And also here:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893...
By yesfitz 2026-02-2417:16 Not to understate the terrible conditions of "Artisanal" mines, but the Cobalt Institute says "Due to market surplus, ASM [Artisinal and Small Mine] production has reached a record low, with ASM accounting for an estimated 2% of total cobalt supply from the DRC in 2024."[1]
Which conflicts with the NPR article, "In his new book, Cobalt Red, Kara writes that much of the DRC's cobalt is being extracted by so-called 'artisanal' miners..."[2]
Unfortunately, nowhere in the NPR article does it give a hard number to compare like the Cobalt Institute, but as of 2024, JP Morgan analysis said "ASMs... contribute up to 30% of the DRC’s cobalt supply..."[3]
So, what can we do?
Mining and battery production don't require pseudo-slavery, so maybe the best answer is to work towards improved conditions in ASMs in the DRC, develop battery reuse/recycling, and searching for alternative sources of the conflict minerals so that the industy can vote with their wallet.
Unless you have another solution?
1: https://www.cobaltinstitute.org/responsible-sustainable-coba...
2: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893...
3: https://web.archive.org/web/20240704040321/https://am.jpmorg...
By orev 2026-02-2416:53 Consumption of resources always has an impact on the environment. The question is which type is less bad.
Oil is extracted and used once before becoming harmful pollution, while minerals for electrical infrastructure like batteries can be extracted once and then are reusable forever.
By triceratops 2026-02-2416:56 All mining is filled with "shady and evil" stuff.
The difference is batteries can be recycled, so we will need almost no mines in the steady state. 99% of lead-acid batteries are made from recycled batteries. That means we'll only need 1% of the cobalt mines in the future (assuming newer batteries need cobalt at all, which is unlikely).
Oil and coal on the other hand will have to be mined or drilled forever because it isn't recyclable. The "shady and evil" stuff in the mining there will go on and on until the oil and coal run out.
If you repeat the "batteries need toxic mines" meme without talking about oil spills, methane leaks, and coal mine pollution, you're a useful idiot for the fossil fuel companies. Or making money off them in some way.
By toomuchtodo 2026-02-2416:53 This is not relevant to LFP and sodium ion chemistries, which most of the industry is moving towards.
By belviewreview 2026-02-2420:28 Am I correct in assuming that you believe, as Trump puts it, that global climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to ruin the American economy? And that we should stay on fossil fuels forever?
Or if I am wrong about you, then tell us what you yourself actually believe. What do you specifically believe about global climate change? And what specifically should we be doing about energy? And also, what do you think about Trump's claim that wind turbines cause cancer, and his claim that China has no wind turbines?
I strongly suspect that you won't answer these questions, or you will do so but in a vague, evasive manner. But perhaps I am wrong about this.
>> Friendly reminder that the battery industry is filled with shady and evil stuff. Cobalt mining for example.
What I am about to say is going to come off as exceptionally insensitive, but bear with me. The mining conditions are horrific and of course it would be better if regulation was introduced and industrial methods of extraction was used. But you have to wonder, if there are thousands of men and teenagers willing to toil in the sun all day for a tiny amount of money, what other alternatives do they have for income?
If cobalt never existed in DRC, what exactly would they be doing for work and subsistence? Is this horribly unsafe and in-humane form of work a step up from whatever alternatives they have, or perhaps from nothing at all.
Again I am not condoning it, I am just wondering.
> If cobalt never existed in DRC, what exactly would they be doing for work and subsistence? Is this horribly unsafe and in-humane form of work a step up from whatever alternatives they have, or perhaps from nothing at all. Again I am not condoning it, I am just wondering
Is just wondering the new just asking questions?
Clearly they would be doing something else, perhaps what they did before the mine opened.
I feel by framing it as either a step up from nothing at all or from something lesser, you've already condoned it.
By DangitBobby 2026-02-2419:43 What is the something else? Starving? Looting and pillaging? Warring? Becoming software developers?
By tenuousemphasis 2026-02-2418:47 Friendly reminder that battery chemistries differ greatly. Lithium iron phosphate, a safer but less dense chemistry than Lithium Ion, contains no cobalt.
