Double down on local and state incentives and cutting red tape.
Make friends with a Cabinet secretary.
Ease the data center growth upheaval with offers of abundant clean energy.
Hang on for November and a potential change in Congress.
Remind anyone who will listen that as bombs fly in the oil-rich Middle East, safe and clean sunshine abounds right here at home.
Any and all of the above was the advice of solar power experts telling Colorado’s annual solar industry convention how to survive in an era when federal agencies and a majority in Congress are actively opposing everything renewable energy stands for.
“You’ve got to dust yourself off and move on,” said renewable energy attorney John Putnam, a partner at Kaplan and Kirsch. “There’s still money out there.”
“There are glimmers of hope,” said Pat Donovan, state director for U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat who is also running to succeed Jared Polis as governor. Advocacy in Congress, Donovan said, “is a long game, and some of these projects are a long game, and so there’s a hope you can get the ball rolling with members and make progress here.”
A forum on federal policy changes for 150 industry leaders Tuesday became a grief and support group for the Colorado Solar and Storage Association. The federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 put an end to most renewable energy tax credits that helped utility projects get built. Trump administration agencies have tried to rescind billions of dollars in research and development grants supporting clean energy or cutting pollution from the fossil fuels industry. Tax credits for rooftop home solar have expired, devastating a growing industry. Federal land management agencies are sitting on or actively opposing permits for wind, solar and transmission on public lands.
Colorado has successfully defended more than $1 billion in grant and research funds threatened by the administration, with challenges to win back $660 million more still to come, said Kelly Watkins, Polis’ director of federal affairs.
“To have the government come back and just sort of pull the rug out, is pretty damaging,” Watkins acknowledged. “That said, in terms of long-term impact on the state and the renewable energy industry … we have incentives and funding and just a great business atmosphere here for the renewable energy industry. So while this is really frustrating and in some ways disheartening to see how this is going, back and forth with the federal government, we still are very optimistic about the prospects for this industry in our state.”
Watkins and other panelists said the loss of federal support means state and local governments need to add incentives for building out solar resources, educate developers on what’s already available, and make sure state and local regulations are as easy as possible to navigate.
Putnam said federal permitting and congressional funding are still important for many projects, and that thousands of knowledgeable agency staffers with “centuries” of accumulated knowledge leaving the government under cost-cutting has raised even more barriers. But he said there are cracks developers can seek out.
He mentioned one project at risk that he thought “was a goner” under new federal antipathy, but a supporter found “a personal connection to that particular jurisdiction, with a particular secretary, and in literally three hours before funding would have terminated, it actually came through. So I think that point of personalizing it, not giving up hope, is important. This is a very transactional and less objectively based administration, and there is still hope to get some of those things through.”
The Rattlesnake Solar Farm sits on 175 acres just east of CH2E the largest waste tire monofill in North America, previously known as Tire Mountain located in Hudson, Colorado. (Carl Payne, special to the Colorado Sun)Moderator Erin Duncan of the national Solar Energy Industries Association agreed. Projects that require permits for federal land use “now go all the way up to the White House” for approval, Duncan said.
In the near term, the experts said, it’s important for Colorado’s solar industry and advocates to be “squeezing the last bits of tax credits out of the system.”
Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission, Watkins noted, helped assure years of new development by recently approving 4,100 megawatts of new utility generation with the vast majority of that coming from solar, wind and battery storage. “That’s a really tangible thing coming out of this push,” Watkins said.
With oil and gas prices already rising from the latest Middle East conflict, Donovan said, “folks in this room are still in the best position to win out on the affordability argument” for developing new renewable energy.
Duncan said the trade group has seen a subtle shift in the clean energy direction from Trump officials just in the last week or two, with the energy secretary switching from referring to solar as a “parasite” to saying “solar can be a part of this mix.”
Solar supporters also might gain new fans by shifting from environmental arguments to emphasizing “resilience” and “independence” that comes with local, renewable energy, the panel said. Watkins noted the enthusiasm for a bill in this year’s legislative session clearing away any barriers to consumers trying “plug-in” or “balcony” small solar panels that can supply up to 20% of their home’s energy.
State and local officials should support innovations like that, she said.
“That’s something we’re excited about,” Watkins said.
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