The story of the solar industry in 2025 can be told as a tale of two rooftops.

Roof 1 is at the headquarters of Specialty Products, a global auto parts manufacturer in rural Longmont, Colorado.

“The whole roof is covered with the solar arrays,” said chief operating officer Mina Cox.

We're talking row, upon row, upon row of solar panels. The company built the array last year. A grant from the USDA covered 40% of the half-million dollar price tag.

“We wouldn't have done it without the grant,” said Cox. “It just was not financially feasible.”

The project on Roof Number One was so successful that late last year Cox applied for another grant, for an even bigger solar array on the second rooftop in this story: Roof 2. It's a few miles up the road, at the company's manufacturing plant, where mills, laser cutters and welders turn blocks of steel and aluminum into suspension parts and oil pumps.

“We thought, ‘Oh, this would be great for manufacturing!’” Cox said. “These are all very large machines, cutting metal. And they use a lot of energy to do that.”

The panels were supposed to be funded by Biden-era solar incentives, because renewable energy was all the rage during the four years Joe Biden was president. His administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which spent billions to speed up the clean energy transition, with much of that investment targeting rural areas in particular.

But then the Trump administration took over. On day one, President Donald Trump signed executive orders shifting American energy policy away from renewables and back to fossil fuels.

“It's almost like a 180-degree flip from where we were, with the prior administration,” said Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School.

Since taking office, President Trump has sewn chaos for rural renewables. Funding for those IRA green energy grants was frozen. Then unfrozen, with the USDA encouraging recipients to bring their projects in line with Trump's energy priorities.

Confused? So is the solar industry!

“The solar industry is in a very strong hold pattern,” said Mike Kruger, outgoing president of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association. “People aren't investing, they're not hiring. They're generally just holding onto their cash, in the hopes that we get more certainty and less chaos.”

That was exactly the thought process for Mina Cox, who was hoping to build that second solar array on Roof 2, at her company's 40,000-square-foot manufacturing plant. The grant money seems to be flowing again. But Cox says she's not interested anymore. The uncertainty made her so wary, she withdrew her application.

“Feels like a lot of rugs are being pulled out of small businesses,” she said. “We don't want to be participating in a risk like that.”

So, at least for now, our Roof 2 remains bare.