https://prospect.org/environment/2025-05-20-sun-sets-west-virginias-green-energy-future
The Sun Sets on West Virginia’s Green-Energy Future
President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was finally bringing jobs and industry back to the state. But not for long.
May 20, 2025
Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch via AP
Zach Drennen, left, and Colton Memmott of Rewire Appalachia and Coalfield Development install solar panels, in Huntington, West Virginia, in 2018.
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Nine months ago, Marqees, 42, began a training program for adults facing employment barriers and felt energized about his future. His program in Huntington, West Virginia—once dubbed “America’s drug death capital” —was preparing people for careers in solar, and Marqees felt drawn to projects on abandoned mine lands. Though his father worked in coal, the national coal miner workforce has fallen from 900,000 in 1923 to about 40,000 today. West Virginia has fewer than 4,500 such positions.
Drug probation had taken Marqees from McDowell County, West Virginia, to Huntington, where he completed rehabilitation and entered transitional housing. McDowell is the poorest county in the state, and one of the most remote. It has lost 83 percent of its population since 1950. Marqees described the people still there as “those who couldn’t afford to leave.” Securing a spot in the training program felt like a promising first step toward a sustainable future in the new green economy.
West Virginia might not seem like a probable place for a solar boom. Coal still generates 86 percent of its electricity, more than any other state, but modern businesses demand renewable power—if for no other reason than it’s typically cheaper. In Huntington, Marqees was learning construction techniques to qualify as a solar installer. “There’s a lot that can be done to revitalize West Virginia,” he told me last fall. “I’m ready to build.”
The Inflation Reduction Act gave federal agencies financial tools to help communities eliminate environmental hazards on abandoned mine sites and spur clean-energy production.
Until January, the Inflation Reduction Act directed clean-energy investment to regions tied to fossil fuels. While large-scale solar carries risks from price shifts and permitting hurdles, new tax credits increased returns to investment, and major developments gained traction. The credits also made the shift to residential solar more attractive to homeowners.
“We can move on from coal,” Marqees said. “Coal was never good for miners.” He saw how coal companies stripped value from his motherland and people. “Everything in McDowell died, leaving no jobs, no hope, no nothing. And it’s been like: What can I do? Where do I fit in? That’s why I’m glad to be in my program.” His training organization had partnerships with solar developers hiring legions of workers to construct new installations. Most relied on the federal incentives.
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order suspending the funding. With most of the money going to places that voted for him in 2024, the loss of clean-energy incentives hit red states hardest.
With green investment canceled, paused, or at best uncertain, Marqees’s plans quickly unraveled. He left his program and returned to McDowell County, where adult labor force participation falls below 30 percent.
MOST COAL JOBS DISAPPEARED before the 1990s due to automation. Methods like strip mining and mountaintop removal required far fewer workers than traditional mining. Today, cheaper natural gas and renewables are simply driving it out of the market. Twenty years ago, coal accounted for about half of American electricity; today, as of 2023 it was 16 percent and falling fast. West Virginia therefore faces a dire economic situation, with a poverty rate well above the national average, falling life expectancy, and a declining population. When mines close with nothing to replace them, entire communities suffer as jobs vanish and spending falls. Lower tax revenues shrink public services. Local utilities have also passed the high costs of coal plants on to consumers, raising electricity rates.
The EPA has long backed solar development on former mine lands, especially closed mountaintop removal sites, which otherwise persist as devastated wastelands. Unremediated, the locations can leach toxins and emit methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Conversely, the sites often offer roads and transmission lines useful to renewable-energy generation. Reclaiming mined land, however, entails dealing with acid mine drainage, uneven high walls in the terrain, and contaminated soil, as coal company bonds haven’t covered the cost of repairing all the damage.
Cost-benefit concerns had stalled redevelopment until the IRA tipped the scales. The legislation gave federal agencies financial tools to help communities eliminate environmental hazards on abandoned mine sites and spur clean-energy production there. Then-Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) cast the deciding vote, insisting on fossil fuel support in the bill, but signaling West Virginia’s need to begin moving on from coal.
Steve Helber/AP Photo
This 2018 photo shows heavy equipment and trucks moving coal in the Sun Coal Company coal yard along the Kanawha river in Dickinson, West Virginia.
With the boost from the IRA, a trickle of renewable-energy plans grew into a flood of projects for old energy communities like Marqees’s. In 2022, a developer gained approval to build solar on two former West Virginia mines, creating over 300 construction jobs and powering 90,000 homes. The plans included a workforce center to retrain miners for renewable-energy positions. Construction was slated for spring 2026.
In lower-income neighborhoods, residential rooftop solar was previously far out of reach, due to high costs, but the IRA funded programs to ensure low-income West Virginians benefited. Over 3,000 residents installed panels, supporting hundreds of jobs, with more growth expected. Schools and churches were preparing to go solar.
Then Trump won. Alas, the very structure of the Biden-era legislation made it vulnerable. Unlike traditional government programs with up-front appropriations, the IRA used tax incentives to quietly rewire the economy by making clean-energy projects more profitable than fossil fuels. It was policy by encouragement, not mandate. Any whiff of repeal or reduction would send investors scrambling.
After the presidential election, Trump and other Republican leaders began targeting green-energy spending as bloated and ideologically driven, despite the fact that red regions like McDowell County—which Trump won by almost 60 percentage points—collected the vast majority of the benefits. In Ravenswood, West Virginia, BHE Renewables had broken ground on a 2,000-acre project. Almost immediately after Trump took office, talk of delays circulated. More companies that had made bold moves under the promise of stable federal policy began reconsidering the viability of their commitments. Residential projects in West Virginia were also floundering. A trainer mobilizing the solar construction workforce described his efforts as “terminated.”
LIKE MARQEES, ALISON, from outside Huntington, had unexpectedly begun to see a future for herself in solar. After dropping out of high school, she worked in retail, without stability or benefits, and married young. One Fourth of July, she spotted a Facebook ad for a program that prepared women for skilled trade apprenticeships. “What do I have to lose?” she thought. “I could just submit an application.”
Within a week, Alison began learning technical skills and also about herself. “The confidence boost was huge,” she said. “You can build a whole wrong idea about who you are based on the situation you’re in.”
The program required Alison to complete a job shadow, which she did at a local residential solar company. When she climbed a roof and saw a shed below plastered with pro-coal slogans, she judged the energy transition well under way. She gained experience in panel installation and project management and was offered roles in both. Project management provided a flexible schedule, stable income, generous benefits, and time to supervise her child’s homeschooling.
Soon after, Alison divorced her husband. He shirked child support, and without her solar job, she couldn’t have afforded her son’s school supplies or doctor visits. She felt grateful for her freedom. Her confidence and stability continued to grow. “When I see solar panels,” she said, “I feel proud to play a part in them. I don’t ever want to do other work.”
A FEW YEARS AGO, Lee, from Putnam County, bought a solar startup. Not long before, he hadn’t known solar existed in West Virginia.
Lee had worked for the county park system, where he performed the occasional electrical job, though he lacked professional licenses. When an inspector noticed, the park system paid for Lee to return to school. In night classes, he learned about circuits and maintenance, and familiarized himself with building codes.
When he completed the program, Lee saw an ad for an installation position at a residential solar company. It seemed like an interesting opportunity. He applied and got the job, then quickly learned what he needed to know. The tasks didn’t seem complicated. Turning on solar systems from his phone felt thrilling, and he enjoyed traveling to varied job sites.
Before long, Lee installed solar at his own house, saving $70 a month as electricity rates climbed. Others saw the same potential, and Lee’s installations picked up pace.
Lee joined another startup aiming for larger projects. Soon the company put the largest construction outfit in the state on solar, with 1,200 panels. Seeing opportunity solarizing schools and libraries, the construction firm acquired the startup. As the landscape at the federal level threatened to change, however, the construction company’s executives moved to shutter their new solar subsidiary.
Lee decided to buy the solar firm himself and paid with credit card debt. But the factors motivating the construction executives to divest from solar have only grown stronger.
Andrew Thomas/NurPhoto via AP
President Trump poses with coal miners during an executive order signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House, April 8, 2025.
In addition to the loss of Biden-era incentives, the developing trade war has led to a sense of panic in the renewables industry. Though solar costs fell more than 80 percent between 2009 and 2024, panel prices rose ahead of new Trump tariffs, echoing earlier trade barriers. 2018 taxes on imported solar panels had caused job losses and market disruption.
While the Biden administration left some of those levies in place, it paired them with subsidies for domestic clean-energy manufacturing now on the chopping block. The IRA gave panel buyers 30 percent tax credits for U.S.-made equipment. In two years, solar module production nearly quadrupled, and the U.S. became almost self-sufficient in panel production. But American solar panel makers continued to rely on other imported components—ones subject to Trump’s latest tariffs. Building just one new production facility would cost over $10 million and take time to certify. Meanwhile, increases in solar energy prices threaten existing distribution and installation positions in the domestic solar sector.
Lee had planned to partner with a state organization helping people with barriers to employment to double his installation staff. Knowing how to use tools, read a tape measure, and do basic math was sufficient to pick up the remaining skills on the job. Now he has frozen hiring, and keeping the firm afloat feels tenuous.
ON APRIL 8, as the S&P 500 hit its lowest level since President Trump started his global trade war, he signed an executive order to reinvigorate the coal industry. “We’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” he said. “We’re going to put the miners back to work.” The order proposed saving retiring coal plants and using emergency powers to boost output. Miners flanked the president in work gear in symbolic support.
Nearly simultaneously, however, the Trump administration slashed funding to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, limiting black lung prevention efforts. A rule to cut silica dust exposure limits stalled. Mine Safety office leases went under review. And the trade war prompted swift retaliation from China—15 percent tariffs on American coal and gas—with profound effects on West Virginia.
The White House had ignored the centrality of Chinese demand to remaining coal jobs. About half of West Virginia’s coal gets exported, supplying nearly half the U.S. metallurgical coal sold to China.
With the tariffs sparking debate about what American workers should be producing domestically, renewables seem to offer a smarter investment than coal. Even Chinese coal demand is falling fast, as the country embarks on a breakneck transition away from fossil fuels. Promises of the first Trump administration to revive the coal industry did not pan out; by the end of his term, the industry had fewer mining positions than when he took office. While the latest orders blamed coal job losses on regulation, the documents ignored the major economic shifts that have rendered coal increasingly uncompetitive, in addition to the danger and pollution.
ALISON’S SMALL-BUSINESS CLIENTS with federal funding for clean energy no longer knew whether the money would materialize, and some canceled projects. Alison still felt she had a future in the industry, if the political and economic turbulence abated, but she couldn’t foresee when that might happen.
Realistically, Alison understood some solar companies would fail, and other customers shared similar concerns. They were asking whether her firm would exist to service their systems.
Residential solar approvals took months, and cancellations stung when installations were ready to proceed. To Alison, energy was energy, and there was no need to play politics around the transition to a green economy.
Across town, a new curriculum for an associate’s degree in solar energy was moving forward, but one of the designers now worried about opportunities for graduates. He had already told 400 trainees their jobs installing mine-land solar might not start. He hoped solar technologies would eventually prevail.
In McDowell, Marqees attended a county commission town hall. “No one’s talking about solutions,” he said. To him, his neighbors’ presidential votes had reflected feeling unheard. He saw little improvement since. Before the meeting ended, he decided to challenge a political insider for mayor, on a platform of workforce training and future-oriented jobs. The election takes place this summer.
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Energy & the Environmentsolar powerEconomic Policyindustrial policyInflation Reduction ActtradetariffslaborPoverty & WealthDonald TrumpWest Virginia
Jodie Adams Kirshner
Jodie Adams Kirshner, a bankruptcy law scholar, is a research professor at New York University. Her latest book is ‘Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises’; her forthcoming book is about economic mobility and workforce training.