After the election of President Donald Trump last November, Chandler Evans began to worry that federal policies supporting renewable energy might be in jeopardy. The home Evans and his wife purchased in North Pomfret in 2022 already had a solar array on the barn, but he knew they’d need more juice for the heat pumps they hoped to add.
So, Evans got in touch with Catamount Solar, one of Vermont’s largest installers, and started strategizing how to add panels to his home before the tax credits for such systems dried up.
He’s glad he did. The federal spending bill that Trump signed into law on July 4 eliminates the long-standing 30 percent federal income tax credit for residential solar systems at the end of 2025. In Vermont, the change could jeopardize hundreds of good-paying jobs in the solar industry and slow down efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
“I’m sad the incentives are going away,” Evans said. “It seems like a step backward instead of a step forward.”
The cuts threaten a sector that has grown into a pillar of the state’s economy. Despite Vermont’s long, dark winters, about 16 percent of the electricity generated in the state comes from solar. Overall, more than 18,000 people in Vermont — 6 percent of the workforce — hold clean energy jobs, according to a 2024 report from the Department of Public Service. About 1,800 of those workers sell or install solar systems, with most others engaged in energy-efficiency work such as insulating homes and installing heat pumps.
For the moment, the solar business is booming, thanks to people such as Evans who are racing to take advantage of the tax credits while they last. The incentive is a significant one: Homeowners who install a typical $35,000 array can deduct $10,500 from their federal income tax bill. So many people want to install solar that crews can’t keep up. Catamount, which placed 20 new panels atop Evans’ home earlier this month, is booked solid through the end of the year, general manager Jarred Cobb said.
“No business wants to operate in an environment of uncertainty about what your entire industry is going to look like in six months to a year.”
Mike McCarthy
SunCommon, the state’s largest residential solar installer, will likely reach that point later this month, president Mike McCarthy said last week.
“Our phones are ringing off the hook right now,” he said.
The Waterbury-based company is scrambling to get systems designed, permitted, financed and installed before the deadline. It’s a heady time, but it’s one that McCarthy knows will be short-lived. He expects it’s going to be much harder to convince property owners to invest in solar once the federal tax incentive goes away.
“It’s really unfortunate,” McCarthy said. “What [the federal budget bill] did to the residential solar tax credit is an assault on this industry.”
“I am very much feeling like we are battening down the hatches and shoring ourselves up for a storm,” he added.
SunCommon could look very different in the future as the solar landscape adapts to the federal changes, McCarthy said. (The Vermont company was purchased last year by the Houston-based investment firm Siltstone Capital after its own parent, iSun, went bankrupt.) It’s possible, for example, that SunCommon could focus on commercial installations, which still qualify for tax incentives but will face stricter rules and tighter timelines.
Nearly half of SunCommon’s revenue already comes from commercial customers. The firm recently scored the contract to install a $500,000 array atop the new Burlington High School, McCarthy noted, and has been shifting some commercial work to next year so it can focus on time-sensitive residential jobs.
The company is also considering a new business model in which it would lease solar arrays to homeowners rather than selling them. Since the homeowner doesn’t own the system, the arrangement is considered a commercial installation and may still generate tax credits.
Navigating these and other shifts — including ever-changing tariffs and complex new requirements on where solar components are made — has been nerve-racking, McCarthy said.
“No business wants to operate in an environment of uncertainty about what your entire industry is going to look like in six months to a year,” he said.
And there’s more: Vermont had been anticipating $62.5 million in grants from a $7 billion federal program called Solar for All. Established under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the program was designed to help low-income Vermonters afford solar.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin killed the program in August, claiming it was “grift” and a “boondoggle.” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a strong supporter of Solar for All, called its elimination illegal and vowed to fight the move. The state Department of Public Service, which had already set up a program to distribute the money in Vermont, also pledged to get the funding restored, including through litigation if needed.
Attorney General Charity Clark, no stranger to suing the Trump administration, said her team is “building the best path forward” to recoup the funds by analyzing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision affecting how states can fight grant cancellations.
“What the Trump Administration is doing is unconstitutional, and I want to reassure Vermonters that I will continue to fight,” she said in a statement.
This isn’t the first time Vermont’s solar industry has faced headwinds in recent years, yet it has still managed to prosper. Utility regulators have been steadily reducing the amount that homeowners are reimbursed for the solar power they sell to the grid. Permitting costs are high, and there can be intense local opposition to large projects, especially if they are highly visible or covering farmland.
For these and other reasons, SunCommon and larger companies have opened offices in states where installation costs are lower. When the residential solar tax credit goes away, McCarthy expects it will hit Vermont harder than places such as New York, where state support for solar is stronger.
Renewable Energy Vermont, a trade group, is likely to push for state regulatory changes to better support the industry.
“Writ large, the impact on Vermont and New England of the actions of the Trump administration and the Congress will be significant,” said Peter Sterling, the group’s executive director. “It increases our reliance on natural gas, which is very expensive.” How changing federal policies will affect the transition to 100 percent renewable energy is a focus of the group’s annual conference in South Burlington on October 15.
The state could help the industry in several ways, Sterling said. Permitting reforms could speed up approval of larger solar projects; regulators or lawmakers could increase what solar system owners are paid for the power they feed into the grid.
The Public Utility Commission will reset that rate next year, but it’s too soon to say whether the Department of Public Service will advocate for an increase, said TJ Poor, its director of regulated utility planning.
Some in the industry acknowledge the challenges ahead but say solar’s future remains bright. Vermonters are so unhappy that the country is shifting back toward fossil fuels under Trump that they may continue to embrace solar in spite of his effort to kill it, said Cobb, the manager at Catamount.
“I hope,” he said, “that there’s an ethos in Vermont of: Fuck whatever’s happening in Washington — we’re going to keep doing things the way we’re doing things.”
Solar installations will still make economic as well as environmental sense in the future as photovoltaic technology improves and component costs continue to decline, according to Megan Beattie, director of sales and marketing for South Burlington-based Green Mountain Solar. And as electric bills rise, home solar offers people a way to lock in electricity costs now, sidestepping future rate increases, she noted.
“The value proposition for solar is definitively still there,” Beattie said. “Obviously the tax credit ending is abrupt and it creates a bit of a shift, but we don’t see it killing the solar industry by any means.”
Correction, September 18, 2025: A previous version of this story misidentified TJ Poor’s title.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Solar Storm | Trump’s attack on renewable energy has solar companies scrambling to install panels before incentives end — and worried about what comes next”
This article appears in Sep 17-23 2025.
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