Report: Developers Have Cancelled 1,891 Power Projects in 2025

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Executive summary

Electricity demand is growing faster than it has in decades in the United States. Data centers, manufacturing reshoring, and electrification are driving massive growth in power consumption. But at the exact moment America needs more electricity generation, the country's infrastructure developers are canceling projects at an alarming rate.

Our analysis reveals that 1,891 power projects with a combined 266 GW of generation capacity have been canceled in 2025—equivalent to roughly one-quarter of America's entire current electricity generation capacity. To put this in perspective, this is more capacity than the total electricity generation of Texas, the nation's largest power producer.

Clean energy projects have been hit hardest, accounting for 93% of project cancellations in 2025. Utility-scale solar alone saw 86 GW canceled, while battery storage projects lost 79 GW and wind projects shed 54 GW.

While each region and grid faces unique challenges, five patterns emerged across the 1,891 canceled projects that we analyzed:

• Local opposition is killing projects where electricity demand is growing fastest. Virginia—home to the country's largest data center market—lost 6.7 GW of potential capacity. In Ohio, where elected officials have courted hyperscale data centers, the state has blocked more clean energy projects than any other. In Indiana, another data center hotbed, 44% of proposed data centers are located in counties that restrict renewable energy development.
• A failure to build transmission lines is resulting in high interconnection costs. High-voltage transmission construction has plummeted from 4,000 miles in 2013 to just 322 miles in 2024—less than one-tenth of the 5,000 miles per year needed. In MISO, average interconnection costs for canceled projects hit $753,116 per MW—roughly half of a typical project's total capital cost. Louisiana and Missouri, with costs exceeding $900k per MW, lost 26 GW of capacity combined in 2025.
• Battery storage economics are worsening from market saturation and tariffs. "Battery cannibalization"—where growing capacity drives down the prices batteries earn—is making it harder to build profitable battery projects. Texas battery revenues crashed 70% from $192/kW in 2023 to $55/kW in 2024, while ancillary service prices fell 90%. California saw similar declines, with revenues falling from $103/kW in 2022 to just $53/kW in 2024. Meanwhile, Trump's tariffs have increased the cost of batteries by 56-69%.
• Trump's War on Wind killed gigawatts of potential capacity. Since taking office, the Trump administration has systematically dismantled offshore wind development through sweeping policy actions, funding cancellations, and construction halts. These moves led to massive waves of project cancellations in New York (13 GW), New England (11 GW), and California (2.5 GW).
• Grid operators cleaned up their interconnection queues. Starting in 2023, ISOs implemented sweeping reforms to eliminate speculative projects from their queues. New cluster processes, higher deposits, and compressed timelines resulted in hundreds of project cancelations. In MISO, 62% of 2025's 73.4 GW in cancellations came from a single study cycle. SPP saw 27 GW canceled in August 2025 alone following interconnection study results. While reforms improved queue quality, they accelerated project cancelations.

These project cancelations will affect nearly every American. The 266 GW of lost capacity threatens higher electricity prices for households and businesses as supply fails to keep pace with surging demand—a dynamic already visible in PJM's double-digit annual price increases.

Beyond higher bills, the cancelations represent a massive economic loss. We estimate that the 1,891 projects canceled this year would have generated $400 billion in investment—capital that would have flowed disproportionately to rural communities in need of economic revitalization.

The current trajectory is unsustainable: America is simultaneously approving unprecedented electricity demand while canceling the generation needed to meet it, creating policy incoherence that threatens grid reliability, affordability, and the country's competitiveness in the global AI race.

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Full access to the data used to produce this report is available to Cleanview's annual subscribers. We've identified 14,000 canceled power projects across the US between 2000 and 2025. To get access to the data or learn more about Cleanview, you can contact us here.

Takeaways from our analysis

Local opposition and NIMBYism remains a problem

Local opposition to power projects has been rising for years. In 2025, it forced many developers to cancel viable projects in states across the country. The problem may be most acute on the country's largest electric grid, PJM.

Virginia has seen the most canceled projects in 2025 within the PJM territory, losing 6.7 GW of potential capacity. In the state, more solar permits are now denied than are approved. All of this comes at a time of rising electricity demand in the world's largest data center market. Recently Hanover County officials approved a 2.4 GW data center on the same night they denied a 20 MW solar project.

The severity of local opposition extends beyond individual permit denials. At least 10 Virginia counties have enacted outright bans or severe restrictions on solar, with Mecklenburg County—the state's ninth-largest county—passing an ordinance in April 2025 that removed utility-scale solar as an allowed land use entirely.

Ohio and Indiana face a similar paradox. State leaders have successfully courted some of the country's largest planned data center facilities from Google, Meta, and Amazon—with AEP forecasting that data center demand in Ohio alone will increase from 600 megawatts to 5,000 megawatts by 2030. Yet both states have lost gigawatts of potential power generation capacity in 2025 due to project cancellations. In Ohio 6 GW of capacity has been canceled in 2025—more than AEP's entire data center pipeline by 2030. In Indiana 5 GW of capacity has been canceled, equivalent to two of the world's largest data centers that are under construction in the state.

Ohio has blocked more clean energy projects (221) than any state in the country. Virginia ranks 4th with 57 projects blocked. In 2025, more than a dozen projects were blocked in each state. In Indiana, 44% of proposed data centers are located in counties that restrict renewable energy development, forcing companies to source power from distant grids rather than building generation capacity locally.

High grid interconnection costs are killing projects

Another primary cause of project cancelations is the slow buildout of transmission infrastructure which is showing up as high interconnection costs for developers.

In 2024, just 322 miles of high-voltage transmission lines were completed, marking the third slowest year for such construction in the past 15 years—compared to nearly 4,000 miles built in 2013 alone. Construction of new high-voltage transmission has slowed to a trickle over the past decade, falling from an average of 1,700 miles per year from 2010 to 2014, to 925 miles from 2015 to 2019, and just 350 miles annually from 2020 to 2023.

The consequences for renewable energy developers have been severe. In MISO, the South and Midwest's grid operator, the average interconnection cost for canceled projects in the latest study cycle was $753,116 per MW—roughly 50% of a typical solar or wind project's total capital expenditure.

Louisiana and Missouri, which saw the highest cancellations in MISO at 26 GW combined, also had the highest interconnection costs at $928k and $915k per MW respectively. The two states that saw relatively modest cancellations—Wisconsin and Illinois—had some of the lowest interconnection costs. Across all project data from MISO, states with higher interconnection costs were significantly more likely to see higher cancellation rates.

The problem extends beyond MISO. In PJM, the country's largest grid operator, many solar and storage projects were canceled in 2025 after cluster study results revealed interconnection costs of $150k-$300k per MW. The proposed 60 MW Shockoe Solar Farm in Virginia withdrew from PJM's queue after studies showed grid upgrade costs in this range, while the 100 MW McHenry County Solar Project in Illinois faced similar economics that forced cancelation.

Decades of underinvestment in transmission infrastructure have created a massive bottleneck. Developers can't afford to build projects when grid connection costs equal or exceed the cost of the generation equipment itself. Until transmission buildout accelerates, interconnection costs will continue forcing economically viable projects out of the queue, threatening America's ability to meet growing electricity demand.

Battery projects aren't penciling like they use to

Battery storage accounted for 79 GW of the 266 GW canceled nationwide in 2025. This is likely due to the double squeeze of falling revenues and rising costs facing developers.

Revenue collapse across major markets

In Texas, the country's largest battery storage market, revenues crashed in 2024 and 2025. Battery energy storage revenues decreased by over 70% in 2024, with the average battery earning just $55/kW compared to $192/kW in 2023. The collapse was driven primarily by market saturation. Revenues for ancillary services—which batteries had historically relied on for stable income—fell 90% since 2023, with ERCOT's installed battery capacity reaching 11 GW by mid-2025.

Ancillary service prices fell from $21 per megawatt-hour in 2023 to $5/MWh in 2024 and are currently at $3/MWh. Analysts at McKinsey estimate that battery cannibalization—where growing battery capacity drives down peak hour prices—is responsible for at least 30% of the observed revenue decline. Profitability among battery operators now depends more on strategic site selection and operational timing rather than fleet size, with most major operators posting year-to-date profitability below 2.2%.

The revenue crisis extends beyond Texas. In California, net annual revenues per kW of battery capacity decreased from $103/kW in 2022 to $78/kW in 2023 and just $53/kW in 2024 due to lower peak hour prices. In New York's NYISO, 57 battery storage projects totaling 11.0 GW were withdrawn through October 2025, representing 40% of that year's cancellations, as developers faced lower than expected capacity revenues and uncertain projections in changing market structures.

Rising construction costs from tariffs and FEOC

Meanwhile, developers now face dramatically higher construction costs from the Trump administration's aggressive tariff policies. Since January 2025, battery storage costs have risen 56% to 69% due to Trump's tariffs.

The administration's new Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) regulations—which kick in starting in 2026—threaten to increase costs and complexity further. It's unclear whether every company will be able to find alternative suppliers that comply with the FEOC rules, as China makes most of the world's solar and lithium-ion battery materials and components.

The law phases in material assistance restrictions with percentage thresholds that vary by technology, requiring developers to have an increasing proportion of materials coming from companies and sources that aren't linked to foreign entities of concern.

The combined impact of collapsing revenues and soaring costs has made battery storage economics unworkable for many developers. Projects that penciled at $192/kW in revenue with $100/kWh battery costs in 2023 now face $55/kW in revenue with $130/kWh costs—a fundamental shift that has forced developers to cancel 79 GW of planned capacity nationwide.

Trump's offshore wind assault hit California and the Northeast

Since taking office, the Trump administration has systematically dismantled offshore wind development through sweeping policy actions, funding cancellations, and construction halts. These moves led to massive waves of project cancellations in the Northeast and California.

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order withdrawing all areas within the Outer Continental Shelf from wind energy leasing, preventing consideration of any new or renewed wind energy leasing for electricity generation White House. The memorandum also directed the Secretary of the Interior to assess a legal basis for terminating or amending existing leases, creating unprecedented uncertainty for projects already under development.

In August 2025, the administration canceled $679 million in federal funding for 12 offshore wind infrastructure projects across the country. The single biggest project affected was the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Marine Terminal in Northern California, which lost $427 million in federal support.

The port, located in a rural area five hours north of San Francisco that has seen its timber industry wane over decades, had planned to use the funding to clean up and remediate polluted areas, build facilities for handling turbine parts, dredge the waterway and build a larger wharf capable of handling pieces of steel longer than a football field. Port officials described the loss as devastating for a community in desperate need of high-skilled, high-paying jobs.

The administration escalated its campaign beyond blocking new projects to actively halting construction on approved, nearly-complete facilities. The Department of the Interior ordered Denmark's Orsted to halt work on the Revolution Wind project off the coast of New England—a fully permitted project that was 80% complete. The work stoppage on an operational project sent shockwaves through the industry and caused Orsted shares to tumble to record lows.

The federal assault forced state regulators to abandon their own offshore wind plans. New York's Public Service Commission terminated its offshore wind transmission process in July 2025, citing federal permitting halts that "make achieving New York's offshore wind goal impossible in the near term." New York has a goal of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035 under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act—enough to power about 1.7 million homes.

The policy onslaught triggered a wave of cancellations across major offshore wind markets. 13.2 GW of projects in NYISO's grid territory were canceled in 2025, representing 48% of all cancellations in that region. Across New England, wind projects totaling 11 GW were canceled in 2025—the vast majority being offshore wind.

In California, 2.5 GW of offshore wind projects were canceled shortly after the federal funding cuts. California had set a goal of producing 25 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2045—enough to power 25 million homes and provide about 13% of the state's power supply.

The offshore wind industry—which the Biden administration had promoted with an ambitious goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030—now faces what industry advocates describe as an existential threat, with states unable to meet their clean energy goals and developers abandoning billions in planned investments.

Grid operators cleaned up their interconnection queues

A significant portion of 2025's project cancelations stem from deliberate policy reforms rather than external market forces. Starting in 2023, grid operators across the country began overhauling their interconnection processes to eliminate speculative projects and focus resources on developers serious about construction.

PJM transitioned from "first-in, first-out" to "first-ready, first-served" in July 2023. The new cluster process introduced decision points and readiness deposits designed to filter out speculative projects. Since implementation, 246 projects have either dropped out or been removed from the queue. The reforms culminated in late 2024 and early 2025, when PJM completed its Transition Cycle 1 studies and issued interconnection agreements. Projects unable to post full security by the October 21, 2025 deadline withdrew en masse—contributing to PJM's 38 GW of cancellations in 2025 alone.

SPP saw similar dynamics. The grid operator's transition to a cluster study process triggered 52.8 GW of cancellations in 2023 as developers exited earlier interconnection cycles. In 2025, another wave hit when SPP posted Phase 2 final results for the DISIS-2023-001 cluster on July 25, with a restudy following on August 18. That single month saw 27 GW of projects canceled—over half of SPP's entire year total—as developers confronted interconnection costs that made projects uneconomical.

MISO followed a similar trajectory. The grid operator's DPP-2022 study cycle delivered transmission interconnection and upgrade cost results in summer 2025. Of the 73.4 GW canceled in MISO this year, 62% came from that single study cycle. The message from developers was clear: when interconnection costs average $753,116 per MW—half a typical project's total capital expenditure—even well-capitalized developers walk away.

The queue reforms achieved their stated goal of removing speculative projects. Across all ISOs, the percentage of projects reaching commercial operation has likely improved, and grid operators can now focus their limited study resources on serious developers. But the reforms also created a wave of cancellations that compounds America's capacity shortage. Projects that might have survived under the old "first-in, first-out" system—where developers could wait years for studies while hoping for better market conditions—now face compressed timelines and stark go/no-go decisions based on current economics and policies.

Conclusion

America's growing capacity crunch threatens to increase electricity prices for the country's households and businesses. When supply can't keep pace with demand, wholesale power markets respond with higher prices—costs that ultimately flow through to consumers' utility bills. This dynamic is already playing out in PJM, where prices are growing by double-digits each year due to a capacity squeeze.

Beyond higher bills, the cancelations represent a massive economic loss. We estimate that the 1,891 projects canceled this year would have generated $400 billion in investment—capital that would have flowed disproportionately to rural communities in need of economic revitalization. Humboldt Bay, California lost a $427 million offshore wind terminal that officials described as "the biggest economic development we've seen in a century," with high-skilled, high-paying jobs for a region where the timber industry has long declined. Similar stories played out across the country as rural counties saw billions in potential investment evaporate.

The current trajectory is unsustainable. America is adding unprecedented electricity demand while canceling the generation capacity needed to meet it. Counties are approving gigawatt-scale data centers while rejecting solar projects—sometimes on the same night. States are courting hyperscalers while blocking the energy projects that would power them. The federal government is promoting "energy dominance" while halting construction and imposing prohibitive tariffs. This policy incoherence threatens grid reliability, consumer affordability, and America's competitiveness in the global AI race.