Given the hostility of the U.S. government to anything green and the daily drumbeat of headlines about canceled wind farms, tax breaks and environmental rules, you might mistakenly think clean energy is on its deathbed. In fact, by at least one measure, it’s healthier than ever.

Global investment in renewable energy sources hit $386.5 billion in the first half of 2025, according to BloombergNEF — the best six-month stretch on record, believe it or not. This happened despite a 36% decline in U.S. investment compared with the second half of 2024, when investors scrambled for one last shot at Inflation Reduction Act tax breaks doomed by President Donald Trump’s return to office.

As feared, Trump wasted no time in trying to eradicate clean energy root and branch, slashing not only incentives but also any regulations that might motivate switching from fossil fuels. For good measure, he also upended global supply chains and business models with a novel trade philosophy that could be described as “chimp with an AK-47.”

Trump’s shortsighted assault on these emerging technologies at a time of booming electricity demand not only threatens to raise electric bills for Americans, it’s also handing geopolitical rival China the keys to the energy future. Facing heavy U.S. tariffs, China’s solar panels have poured instead into ripe new markets in Africa, where panel imports from China jumped 60% in the past year, according to the energy think tank Ember.

As it has for more than a decade, mainland China contributed the most to the world’s clean-energy boom in the first half, at $169 billion. That spending was down a smidgen from the second half of 2024, when a power-market policy shift in Beijing pushed developers to lock down projects before the end of the year.

But the real story here might be the European Union, where investment jumped 63% from the second half of 2024 to nearly $76 billion, double the paltry $37 billion in the U.S. In fact, the EU and the U.S. swapped places as the world’s second-biggest destination for green capital after China.

“This supports the idea that developers and investors may be reallocating capital out of the U.S. and into Europe,” the BNEF analysts wrote. They noted that TotalEnergies SE, the French oil major with a big wind portfolio, recently told shareholders it was rebalancing its offshore wind plans toward the North Sea and away from the U.S., as did German energy giant RWE AG.

In other words, the clean-energy revolution isn’t losing to Trump. It’s simply relocating, leaving the U.S. behind.

Even global investment in wind power — which Trump has attacked with particular venom, recently claiming it was “ruining our country” — rose by 8% in the first half to $126 billion. But the transition’s big winner continues to be solar power. It edged up to $252 billion in the first half, even as investment in utility-scale projects in China, Brazil and elsewhere suffered from negative power prices and other headaches related to having too much electricity.

One nice thing about clean energy, aside from the whole “maintaining a livable environment” thing, is that it’s typically cheaper and quicker to install than other forms of power. Investments in these sources provide more bang for the buck, especially when accounting for the trillions of dollars in damage inflicted by burning fossil fuels. Not even Trump’s furious opposition can overcome that economic edge. It helps explain why solar and battery storage are expected to account for 80% of the utility-scale energy development in the U.S. in the second half of this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It’s becoming more expensive to build wind power, but it’s also becoming more expensive and harder to build natural-gas turbines, with yearslong wait times for supplies. Notably, 12% of the new utility power in the U.S. will come from wind in the second half of 2025, compared with 7% for gas.

Of course, the U.S. government’s attempt to sabotage the clean-energy transition is unwelcome when every country should be enthusiastically working toward the same goal. The world is running out of time to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages and avoid more catastrophic effects of climate change.

To zero out global carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050, the world should be investing more than $7 trillion a year on the transition, including both the supply and demand side, BNEF has estimated. By that broader measure, the globe invested just $2.1 trillion last year — a record, and better than fossil-fuel investment of $1.2 trillion — but still at least $5 trillion short.

The good news is that, even in the face of this country’s extreme efforts to derail it, the clean-energy transition has a self-perpetuating momentum that keeps attracting capital and making exponential adoption increasingly likely. Ignore the noise and follow the money.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

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