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Yes, U.S. clean-energy and transportation investment remained substantial in the second quarter of 2026, but that does not mean every company or technology is expanding. Clean Investment Monitor estimates $75 billion in investment that quarter, while separate tracking shows a thinner pipeline of new manufacturing commitments and billions of dollars in announced projects canceled. The distinction between spending, announcements, cancellations and projected capacity is essential to understanding what is actually growing.

Are companies still investing in clean energy?

Yes, though the clearest current measure combines business and consumer spending. The Clean Investment Monitor, produced by Rhodium Group and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), estimates $75 billion in U.S. clean-energy and transportation investment in Q2 2026. That was 22% above Q1 2026 and 4% above Q2 2025, and the second-highest quarterly total in the Monitor’s record. Clean investment represented 5.2% of U.S. private investment in structures, equipment and durable consumer goods that quarter.

The Monitor counts real dollars spent on facility construction or retail purchases; for a new greenfield facility, it counts investment once groundbreaking is confirmed. Its estimate is therefore different from the announced value of proposed projects. It is also not a business-only total: retail spending includes households as well as companies.

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What the current totals include

The Monitor’s U.S. summary puts investment at $277 billion over the four quarters through Q2 2026, 1% above the preceding four-quarter period. It divides the activity into manufacturing, energy and industry, and retail. Those categories describe different kinds of investment and should not be treated as interchangeable.

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Retail investment made up 56% of the Q2 2026 quarterly total. Within that consumer-facing segment, the Monitor reports $41 billion in spending on zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), distributed renewable electricity generation and storage, and heat pumps. Distributed generation and storage reached nearly $12 billion in Q2 2026—more than twice its Q1 level—with residential battery storage installations accounting for 75% of investment in that category. These figures include household purchases and installations; they do not establish that businesses alone drove the spending.

Why can spending rise while the project pipeline shrinks?

Construction and purchases happening now reflect decisions made over different time horizons. A factory that has broken ground can contribute to measured investment while a new factory proposal is canceled or never announced. A shrinking pipeline is a warning about future activity, but it does not erase dollars already spent or prove that current investment has stopped.

Actual investment versus new manufacturing announcements

Over the two years covered by its Q2 2026 summary, the Clean Investment Monitor counted $81 billion in clean-energy and vehicle-technology manufacturing investment, compared with $60 billion in the preceding two years. Yet new manufacturing project announcements over those same two-year windows fell to $48 billion from $130 billion. The electric-vehicle supply chain was the dominant driver of manufacturing spending in the Monitor’s account. These rolling-period totals show why it is possible for actual investment to remain elevated even as the next wave of commitments weakens.

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Energy and industry deployment followed a different pattern: the Monitor reports $196 billion over the two years through Q2 2026, up 31% from the preceding two years. Utility-scale solar and storage together accounted for $148 billion of that amount. Emerging technologies—including clean hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels, carbon management and industrial decarbonization approaches—accounted for $6 billion over the same period. That emerging-technology figure is one segment, not the total climate-technology market.

Announcements and cancellations are not dollars already spent

An August 17, 2026, update from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Atlas Public Policy’s manufacturing-investment tracker recorded $7.9 billion in new U.S. clean-energy manufacturing announcements in Q2 2026 and $2.9 billion in canceled previously announced projects, for $5 billion net new announced investment that quarter. Since the start of 2025, the tracker recorded $39.6 billion in canceled planned manufacturing investments and 53,400 announced manufacturing jobs canceled. These are tracker values for plans and announcements—not a tally of money spent on operating facilities and then removed.

The same update identified solar manufacturing, transmission and grid equipment as drivers of Q2 activity. It described Convalt Energy’s planned $5 billion solar-manufacturing campus in New Mexico as an announcement, not an operating plant. The report said this was only the third clean-energy manufacturing investment above $1 billion announced in the prior 18 months, compared with 24 such projects in the preceding 18 months. The contrast points to fewer very large new commitments even as some sizable proposals continue to appear.

The timeline matters when comparing cancellation figures. A Clean Investment Monitor supply-chain analysis of Q1 2025 found that companies announced $9.4 billion in new manufacturing projects while six announced projects valued at $6.9 billion were canceled. The report called that quarter’s cancellation value the highest quarterly total on record at that time, amid tariffs, uncertain federal policy and macroeconomic pressure. It is an earlier snapshot, not the same measure or period as EDF and Atlas Public Policy’s Q2 2026 tracker.

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Which climate technologies are still growing?

The answer depends on whether the measure is recent spending, manufacturing investment, operating capacity or a conditional projection. The available evidence does not support a blanket claim that every clean-technology sector is booming.

Technology or segment What the evidence indicates How to read it
Utility-scale solar and storage The Clean Investment Monitor reports $148 billion in combined energy-and-industry deployment over the two years through Q2 2026. Recent deployment spending, not manufacturing investment alone.
Distributed generation and storage The Monitor estimates nearly $12 billion of Q2 2026 investment, more than twice Q1; residential batteries represented 75% of the category. A quarterly category that includes household installations.
Battery and solar manufacturing The Clean Investment Monitor’s supply-chain analysis, updated through Q1 2025, found the strongest post-IRA investment and capacity growth in these sectors. A dated assessment of supply chains, not a Q2 2026 capacity update.
ZEV manufacturing The same analysis found manufacturing capacity exceeded 2024 sales. If all announced and under-construction plants entered operation, U.S. capacity could reach 6.84 million vehicles in 2035—equivalent to 60–67% of projected annual ZEV sales from 2030 to 2035. The 2035 figure is conditional on projects being completed and projections being realized; it is not current operating capacity.
Wind manufacturing The supply-chain analysis described declining investment, few new announcements and limited capacity expansion. A counterexample to the idea that all clean-energy manufacturing is expanding at the same pace.

The Q1 2025 supply-chain analysis also projected that U.S. solar-module production could amount to roughly 55% of projected annual capacity additions by 2035 under a rapid-decarbonization scenario. That is a scenario-dependent projection, not an achieved market share. In the same report, domestic battery cell and module capacity exceeded then-current deployment levels, while solar-module production was on par with then-current deployment.

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Storage also illustrates how opportunity can shift across markets. Clean Air Task Force’s analysis of Q4 2025 described battery storage colocated with data centers as an emerging emphasis. That observation describes a market signal in that period, not proof that every such project has been built or that it explains the broader investment total.

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What happens to investment when federal policy changes?

Federal policy can change project economics and timing, but the available figures do not isolate its effect from costs, demand, tariffs, interest rates, grid constraints or other market conditions. The evidence supports neither the claim that Washington is irrelevant nor the claim that federal policy alone explains the direction of investment.

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Clean Air Task Force’s Q4 2025 analysis describes federal policy as sometimes catalyzing private projects and sometimes hindering them. It points to narrowed tax-credit eligibility under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, delays in federal approvals and guidance, funding cuts, permitting changes and compliance requirements. For projects that rely on credits or federal approvals, changing rules can affect expected returns, financing assumptions, bankability and schedules. The effects vary by technology and project; legal eligibility can change, so this account is not current tax advice.

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The Q2 2026 tracker’s simultaneous record of new announcements and cancellations shows activity and pullback in the same period, but does not establish what caused either. In EDF’s August 17, 2026, release, Technical Analyst Grace Hauser said that “Federal policies that provide long-term certainty can keep that momentum going, but recent policy changes are putting America’s manufacturing competitiveness at risk.” That is EDF’s interpretation of the figures, not a measured finding about how much policy caused investment to change.

How should today’s figures be compared with the IRA-era boom?

Historical figures help show scale, but their periods and categories should not be substituted for current annual totals. The Clean Investment Monitor’s 2024 review estimated $493 billion in actual business and consumer clean-technology investment from the second half of 2022 through the first half of 2024, 71% more than in the preceding two-year period. It said clean investment was 4.5% of U.S. private investment in structures, equipment and durable consumer goods over that period, compared with 2.6% in the prior two years.

That 2024 review broke the two-year post-IRA total into $89 billion in clean-energy and transportation manufacturing investment, $161 billion in clean-energy production and industrial decarbonization investment, and $242 billion in purchases and installations of ZEVs, heat pumps, distributed renewables, fuel cells and storage. The figures are historical category estimates; the rounded component amounts need not sum exactly to the reported total.

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A separate Clean Investment Monitor supply-chain analysis reported $115 billion invested in U.S.-based clean-energy and transportation manufacturing from Q3 2022 through Q1 2025, compared with $21 billion in the equivalent pre-law period. Its period and manufacturing scope differ from the 2024 economy-wide business-and-consumer tally, so the two totals should not be added together.

Taken together, the current and historical measures describe continued investment alongside a less robust manufacturing-announcement pipeline, cancellations and sharply different technology trajectories. They do not reveal why any one company chose to proceed, pause or withdraw; aggregate trackers cannot establish individual corporate motives.

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