The Keystone Research Center and ReImagine Appalachia are reporting that a recent fall in clean energy investments in Appalachia has dramatically impacted the region’s employment numbers and manufacturing output.
A solar project was built on a former coal mining site in Pennsylvania.
“The manufacturing investment boom that federal clean-energy and innovation policies sparked in 2022 has turned into a bust. Private construction spending in manufacturing has been in free fall for 20 months, and the nation has lost 277,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2024,” said Stephen Herzenberg, economist and executive director emeritus, Keystone Research Center
In early 2022, private construction spending in the United States was about $80 billion, and that more than tripled to $249 billion before November 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That increase was driven in part by federal policies that incentivized clean energy investments, like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Those annual investments have reduced to $170 billion in June of this year.
“Getting private construction spending in manufacturing growing rapidly again is vital to manufacturing communities in coal-country Appalachia and across the United States — and to the regional and national economy, to limiting climate-related disasters, and to public health,” Herzenberg said.
ReImagine Appalachia analyzed state-level private construction data from the Rhodium/MIT Clean Investment Monitor, which monitors related federal incentives and investments. In this post-incentive era, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the states comprising Appalachia, clean energy deployment was 17% less than its peak in 2024, and clean energy manufacturing investments were 26% less than their peak investment period in Q4 2023.
In December, ReImagine Appalachia released a report claiming that 67% of the region’s nearly 93,000 clean energy jobs were at-risk under the Trump administration. The report found that clean energy investments in the region, which had peaked $4.7 billion in one year, had stagnated in 2025.
Appalachia is home to many “energy communities,” or communities that have relied on economic growth from fossil fuels, such as coal production. The IRA incentivized clean energy project of a certain scale, such a solar PV, to receive additional tax credits for deploying new systems in energy communities.
Despite the slowing cash investments, ReImagine Appalachia and Keystone Research Center reported that individual consumers in the region are spending more on clean energy and electric vehicles in 2026.
“There is real hope in this data. Consumer spending on clean energy and clean transportation kept rising in 2026 because renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper. But to rebuild manufacturing in coal-country Appalachia, we need a reversal in federal policy. Federal investment was a game changer, and it can be again,” said Diana Polson, Pittsburgh policy and research director at the Keystone Research Center.
News item from ReImagine Appalachia
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