Building a clean, carbon-free electric grid is the key to decarbonizing the US economy, including transportation, buildings, and much of industry, in time to avert a climate crisis.
This includes retiring all coal and replacing it with reliable, affordable clean energy. We estimate that roughly 700 gigawatts of new clean energy will be needed by 2030. To reach this goal, Sierra Club supports robust deployment of clean energy, including responsibly sited wind, solar, and battery storage.
Solar: Sierra Club supports solar energy that is sited in ways that balance conservation priorities with the need to build out a clean grid. Sierra Club supports both distributed (rooftop) solar and responsibly-sited large scale solar, both of which are essential to an affordable, clean, and reliable grid.
Wind: Today, wind is the only renewable, sustainable energy resource that is being seriously proposed for immediate development on a major scale. Sierra Club supports responsibly sited wind energy with robust public participation. Sierra Club supports responsibly sited, equitably developed offshore wind power as one of the key ways to fight climate change and transition to 100% clean energy. Offshore wind turbines provide reliable, pollution-free energy to high populations on the coast and will create jobs, help stabilize energy prices, and ensure our families breathe clean air.
Offshore Wind: Sierra Club supports responsibly sited, equitably developed offshore wind power as one of the key ways to fight climate change and transition to 100% clean energy. Offshore wind turbines provide reliable, pollution-free energy to high populations on the coast and will create jobs, help stabilize energy prices, and ensure our families breathe clean air.
Battery storage: Battery storage is a key existing technology that can store wind and solar and release it back into the grid, lowering electricity costs and delivering a reliable grid.
Transmission: To build a 100% clean, reliable, and affordable grid, we need a significant amount of new transmission lines. Studies show that we need to double or triple the pace of responsibly-sited transmission buildout to decarbonize the grid on the timeline needed to stop climate catastrophe.
In New England alone, building nine gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 could halve the region's spending on natural gas to produce electricity. Ratepayers could individually save up to $55 a year with new wind power, which would also eliminate huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
Solar, wind, and storage made up more than 90% of all grid additions in 2024. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), the largest climate investment in US history, helped us achieve remarkable progress towards achieving the Paris climate targets. However, many of the Trump Administration's priorities threaten to undo this progress.
Green energy legislation under the Biden Administration created hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs and invested billions in energy communities (areas with a historical reliance on fossil fuel production).
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jobs in the solar industry
Clean energy saves money: The transition to 100% clean energy will save the average family up to 7200 dollars per year in energy costs and another $1,500 per year in healthcare costs.
Clean energy creates good-paying jobs: The solar industry already employs over 250,000 people, nearly twice as many people as the coal-mining industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the two fastest-growing jobs in the country are wind turbine technicians and solar panel installers.
Trump Goes Zero For Five Against Offshore Wind
In late 2025, Trump’s Department of the Interior halted five offshore wind projects that were all more than 40 percent complete. Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts was nearly 95 percent finished and already delivering power to the grid. Trump’s orders halted fully-vetted, billion-dollar projects and sent thousands of workers home at a time when construction jobs were scarce and energy demand was nearing its peak. Since then, all five stop-work orders have been challenged in court, and in all five times, the courts have ruled in favor of the offshore wind projects.
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