The past few years have been an almost nonstop parade of good news for climate tech in the US. Headlines about billion-dollar grants from the government, massive private funding rounds, and labs churning out advance after advance have been routine. Now, though, things are starting to shift.  

There are still projects moving forward, but these cancellations definitely aren’t a good sign. And now we have tariffs to think about, adding additional layers of expense and, worse, uncertainty. (Businesses, especially those whose plans require gobs of money, really don’t like uncertainty.) Honestly, I’m still getting used to an environment that isn’t such a positive one for climate technology. How worried should we be? Let’s get into the context.

Sometimes, one piece of news can really drive home a much larger trend. For example, I’ve read a bazillion studies about extreme weather and global warming, but every time a hurricane comes close to my mom’s home in Florida, the threat of climate-fueled extreme weather becomes much more real for me. A recent announcement about climate tech hit me in much the same fashion.

In February, Aspen Aerogels announced it was abandoning plans for a Georgia factory that would have made materials that can suppress battery fires. The news struck me, because just a few months before, in October, I had written about the Department of Energy’s $670 million loan commitment for the project. It was a really fun story, both because I found the tech fascinating and because MIT Technology Review got the exclusive access to cover it first.

And now, suddenly, that plan is just dead. Aspen said it will shift some of its production to a factory in Rhode Island and send some overseas. (I reached out to the company with questions for my story last week, but they didn’t get back to me.)

One example doesn’t always mean there’s a trend; I got food poisoning at a sushi restaurant once, but I haven’t cut out sashimi permanently. The bad news, though, is that Aspen’s cancellation is just one of many. Over a dozen major projects in climate technology have gotten killed so far this year, as the nonprofit E2 tallied up in a new report last week. That’s far from typical.

I got some additional context from Jay Turner, who runs Big Green Machine, a database that also tracks investments in the climate-tech supply chain. That project includes some data that E2 doesn’t account for: news about when projects are delayed or take steps forward. On Monday, the Big Green Machine team released a new update, one that Turner called “concerning.”

Since Donald Trump took office on January 20, about $10.5 billion worth of investment in climate tech projects has progressed in some way. That basically means 26 projects were announced, secured new funding, increased in scale, or started construction or production.

Meanwhile, $12.2 billion across 14 projects has slowed down in some way. This covers projects that were canceled, were delayed significantly, or lost funding, as well as companies that went bankrupt. So by total investment, there’s been more bad news in climate tech than good news, according to Turner’s tracking.

It’s tempting to look for the silver lining here. The projects still moving forward are certainly positive, and we’ll hopefully continue to see some companies making progress even as we head into even more uncertain times. But the signs don’t look good.

One question that I have going forward is how a seemingly inevitable US slowdown on climate technology will ripple around the rest of the world. Several experts I’ve spoken with seem to agree that this will be a great thing for China, which has aggressively and consistently worked to establish itself as a global superpower in industries like EVs and batteries.

In other words, the energy transition is rolling on. Will the US get left behind? 

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