According to reporting by The Epoch Times, the long hype cycle surrounding wind and solar power is giving way to a far more sobering reality. After years of aggressive promotion, heavy subsidies, and political support, wind and solar are now being forced to compete on cost, reliability, and performance. Energy analysts quoted by The Epoch Times say this moment has been expected for some time, especially because large scale renewables never solved their biggest weakness: affordable and dependable energy storage.
Sam Romain, chairman of Americans for Energy Dominance, put it bluntly. “We’ve reached the end of the hype phase, and the beginning of the reality phase,” he told The Epoch Times. He added that going forward, “technologies that lower costs, improve reliability, and strengthen the grid will grow. Those that don’t will fade.”
A Major Shift in Federal Energy Policy
The turning point for wind and solar has been driven largely by a sharp change in federal policy under the Trump administration. On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump suspended new wind and solar leases on public lands and waters and raised fees for existing projects. These early actions signaled that the era of automatic federal support for renewables was over.
That shift became formal policy with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The legislation imposed firm deadlines for ending federal tax credits and subsidies for wind and solar projects. As a result, more than $300 billion in planned investments are now considered at risk, with developers unsure whether projects can move forward without taxpayer support.
In August 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy canceled $679 million in federal funding for 12 offshore wind projects. He said the administration was “prioritizing real infrastructure improvements over fantasy wind projects that cost much and offer little.” A few months later, the Department of the Interior halted leases for five large offshore wind projects, citing national security concerns.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum described the projects as “expensive, unreliable and heavily subsidized,” adding in a public statement that “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.”
Subsidies Were the Foundation
For decades, federal subsidies were the foundation of wind and solar expansion. Between 2016 and 2022, the industries received more than $55 billion in federal support. Those subsidies were originally justified as a way to help new technologies mature and become cost competitive.
Critics argue that the opposite happened. Despite decades of support, wind and solar remain dependent on tax credits, mandates, and favorable regulatory treatment. New IRS rules issued in 2025 tightened eligibility for clean electricity tax credits and limited developers’ ability to qualify through accounting maneuvers. The Department of the Interior also introduced a three tier review process that adds significant delays and uncertainty for projects on federal land.
The administration’s July 2025 executive order made the policy direction unmistakable. It declared that taxpayer support for “expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar” must end because such subsidies distort markets, weaken the grid, and increase dependence on foreign supply chains.
Reliability Becomes the Central Issue
As subsidies fade, analysts say the core weaknesses of wind and solar are harder to ignore. Sarah Montalbano, an energy policy analyst at Always On Energy Research, told The Epoch Times that “wind and solar won’t be able to credibly compete with affordable, reliable baseload sources like gas, coal, and nuclear at the utility scale.” She noted that intermittent power sources depend heavily on tax credits and state mandates to survive.
Unlike nuclear, gas, or coal plants, wind and solar cannot produce electricity on demand. When the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, backup generation is required, usually from natural gas plants. The cost of building and operating those backups is rarely assigned to the renewable projects that make them necessary.
Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, explained that the comparison is fundamentally uneven. Wind and solar installations often last 10 to 20 years, while nuclear plants can operate for 50 to 70 years. “You’re comparing an intermittent resource to a 24/7 dispatchable plant,” Glahn said. “Wind and solar can’t compete on that basis.”
Storage Is, and has Always Been the Problem
As solar cells have fallen in price and wind power has moved closer to headline cost competitiveness, much of the industry’s enthusiasm has focused on generation alone. In that hype driven push, a central requirement has been consistently overlooked: energy storage. For any intermittent power source, storage is not optional. It is essential for reliability and for maintaining a stable electric grid.
Once adequate storage is added to a wind or solar project, the economics change dramatically. The cost per kilowatt hour rises sharply and moves well beyond the range where the project can compete with reliable baseload sources such as natural gas or nuclear power. Analysts note that this is not a mysterious technical challenge. It is a relatively straightforward engineering problem. The real obstacle has been cost effectiveness, which has largely been ignored in policy discussions and project planning.
As a result, storage has remained mostly outside the practical reach of large scale renewable development. Even the lowest cost battery systems, many of them manufactured in China, have come under increasing scrutiny. While they may appear inexpensive upfront, critics point to limited lifespans that are far too short to solve the long term cost problem. When replacement and degradation are taken into account, these systems fail to provide a durable or affordable solution, leaving wind and solar power exposed to the very intermittency that storage was supposed to fix.
Hidden Costs and Consumer Impact
Supporters of renewables often argue that wind and sunshine are free, making wind and solar cheap. Critics say that argument ignores the true system wide costs. New transmission lines are required to connect remote wind and solar facilities to population centers, and those projects often cost billions of dollars.
Glahn said these expenses are frequently misallocated. “The wind and solar projects cause the transmission projects to be needed, and these are multi billion dollar projects,” he told The Epoch Times. “But that cost all gets assigned to resources that are running and that are useful.”
Another overlooked cost is decommissioning. Studies have found that many states require little financial assurance for cleaning up wind and solar sites at the end of their lifespan, even though such requirements are standard for coal, gas, and nuclear plants. Critics warn that local communities could be left paying for abandoned turbines and solar panels.
These costs ultimately show up in higher electric bills. A 2025 report found that average electricity prices have risen 32 percent since 2022, leaving millions of Americans struggling to pay utility bills. Romain warned that “if a policy drives up bills and increases blackout risk, it’s not sustainable.”
Public Resistance and Political Reality
Beyond economics, wind and solar are facing growing resistance from local communities. According to analysts tracking project opposition, more than a thousand wind, solar, and battery projects have faced organized pushback. Residents cite land use, wildlife impacts, visual disruption, and long term waste as major concerns.
Energy analyst Robert Bryce pointed to cases like California’s rejection of the Fountain Wind project as evidence that public patience is wearing thin. He also highlighted the contrast between renewable mandates and rising costs in states like New York, where electricity prices are now far above the national average after the closure of reliable nuclear capacity.
What Energy Looks Like Going Forward
Most experts agree that wind and solar will not disappear entirely. State mandates and rooftop solar installations will keep some growth alive. Romain acknowledged that home solar paired with batteries can make sense for many households and has grown rapidly in recent years.
At the utility scale, however, the focus is shifting. Natural gas, nuclear power, and other dispatchable energy sources are increasingly viewed as essential to maintaining grid reliability. Nuclear power, in particular, stands out for its long lifespan, constant output, and minimal land use.
Much of the solar and wind energy that is not producing at competitive costs on a 24 hour basis will likely be shut down. Perhaps they will reopen should the industry find a cost effective approach to energy storage.
A Warning for the Future
The message from critics is clear. Without a breakthrough in affordable, large scale energy storage, wind and solar struggle to function as the backbone of a modern power grid. As subsidies end and oversight increases, many large renewable projects may never be built, while others may be shut down early.
For years, Americans were told that wind and solar would soon become cheap, reliable, and self sustaining. According to analysts quoted by The Epoch Times, that promise has not materialized at scale. The hype phase is over, and the reality phase has begun.
