Ivanpah’s Grand Promise and Harsh Reality
The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert was once celebrated as a symbol of the renewable future. Spread across 3,471 acres of public land and featuring three massive 459-foot towers surrounded by more than 173,000 mirrors, the $2.2 billion plant was launched in 2014 with great fanfare and $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration.
Ivanpah was designed to be a 30-year solution for clean energy, but it has barely lasted a decade. Despite its futuristic design, the project consistently underperformed. Jenny Chase, a solar analyst at BloombergNEF, explained that the plant never generated more than 75 percent of its planned annual output. Even worse, the facility depended heavily on natural gas to operate, undermining its entire image as a green alternative.
Environmental concerns also plagued the project. Blaze Media reported that tens of thousands of birds were killed by the intense beams reflected from the mirrors to the central towers. By 2025, the project’s reputation as a renewable milestone had collapsed.
The final blow came when PG&E, California’s utility giant, announced it would terminate its power purchase agreements with Ivanpah. The utility made clear that sticking with the project would cost customers far more than abandoning it. As PG&E explained, terminating now would “reduce costs for customers compared with maintaining them through 2039.” In other words, the plant was too expensive to justify keeping on the grid.
Why Utilities Are Cutting Off Renewables
Ivanpah’s failure is more than an isolated incident. It is a warning about the economics of renewable energy. Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, compared Ivanpah to another failed green experiment, saying, “Ivanpah is yet another failed green energy boondoggle, much like Solyndra. Despite receiving $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees, it never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected while still relying on natural gas to stay operational.”
Steven Milloy, a senior fellow at the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute and a former member of Trump’s EPA transition team, argued that Ivanpah highlights the structural flaws in subsidized green energy. “Soon we will be looking at failures of larger magnitude than Green New Deal spending. No green project relying on taxpayer subsidies has ever made any economic or environmental sense,” he said. Milloy praised Trump’s effort to “stop the taxpayer bleeding by ending what he accurately calls the ‘Green New Scam.’”
The central issue is cost. Solar panels may be cheaper than ever, but the real price of renewable power lies in the storage needed to make it reliable. Without massive batteries to keep electricity flowing at night or during cloudy weather, renewables are useless. Those batteries are costly, driving up the total price of renewable energy far beyond that of fossil fuels. Ivanpah proved that without endless subsidies, such projects cannot survive.
Trump’s Energy Strategy in Action
President Trump has made it clear that he sees renewable subsidies as wasteful and counterproductive. His administration has already moved to cancel $13 billion in subsidies for renewables and electric vehicles. In August, Trump canceled $679 million in funding for offshore wind port projects, redirecting the money to other port upgrades.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy justified the move by stating, “Wasteful wind projects are using resources that could otherwise go towards revitalizing America’s maritime industry.” For Trump and his allies, it makes more sense to invest in infrastructure that serves national interests rather than pour billions into unprofitable green ventures.
The offshore wind industry has been hit especially hard. More than 80 gigawatts of projects had been planned across the U.S., but their future is now in doubt. Trump has repeatedly called wind power expensive and destructive, even saying, “We’re not allowing any windmills to go up. Unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago, we don’t allow windmills.”
In his speech at the United Nations, Trump left no doubt about his stance. He dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and described green energy as a “double-tailed monster” that is destroying Europe. “You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you’re going to be great again,” he told world leaders.
Billions in Canceled Projects
So far in 2025, more than $22 billion in renewable projects have been canceled. According to a report from the environmental group E2, these cancellations cost thousands of jobs and billions in investments. Projects included General Motors scrapping a $4.3 billion expansion for electric trucks in Michigan and Toyota scaling back a $2.2 billion electric SUV project in Indiana.
Michael Timberlake, spokesperson for E2, lamented the cuts, saying, “These cancellations aren’t just numbers on a balance book. They’re jobs, paychecks and opportunities in communities that were counting on these clean energy projects to drive economic growth. And now they’re gone.”
But Trump has taken the opposite view, arguing that Americans should not be forced to pay higher energy bills for projects that cannot stand on their own. As he sees it, cheaper and more reliable energy comes from oil, gas, and coal, not from heavily subsidized green projects.
The Ivanpah Lesson
The story of Ivanpah captures what Trump has been arguing for years: renewable projects look good on paper, but they fail in the real world when costs are factored in. Ivanpah was supposed to be the crown jewel of Obama’s green energy agenda, yet it will shut down more than 20 years early after proving too costly and too inefficient.
As more utilities follow PG&E’s lead and cut unprofitable power sources off the grid, renewables may continue to shrink rather than expand. Trump’s policy is simple: end subsidies, let the market decide, and drive down energy prices for Americans.
Ivanpah’s closure is not just the end of one plant. It is a symbol of what happens when political promises meet economic reality. And for Trump, it is a victory in his push to keep American energy both affordable and secure.
FAM Editor: The renewables industry is finally waking up, but it is years late to reality. Developers are now scrambling, desperate for cheaper storage that simply does not exist. Meanwhile, the climate investment community is even worse. These are the people with their heads buried deepest in the sand, clinging to two delusions: first, that storage costs are perfectly fine, and second, that subsidies will magically return because, in their minds, they must.
Outside of the West, most countries cannot afford to pay the higher prices for renewable energy. They are waiting for renewable energy to be cost effective. That means energy that actually beats oil, gas, and coal on cost.
Watch for more of this. Grid providers will be under more pressure to provide cheaper energy, and less pressure to retain connections to renewable projects that are not profitable. Purchase agreements are no longer automatic, more will be disconnected.
