In May, over a dozen solar CEOs gathered at the Capitol Hill Club, the watering hole of choice for Republican lawmakers and lobbyists just steps from the Hill.

Gulping coffee to fuel up for another long day of meetings, they sported pins that said “support energy dominance” in front of a gleaming solar panel – borrowing the macho phrasing President Donald Trump uses to talk about oil and gas.

They were there to cajole Republicans to protect clean energy tax credits from Trump, who had spent his 2024 campaign vowing to kill them. The first draft of the president’s sweeping tax and spending bill had just been released, and it made steep cuts to the subsidies.

Nevertheless, the renewables industry was bullish. They believed they had an ironclad argument to present to pro-business Republicans: Wind and solar had beaten the competition from a pure cost perspective. Utilities couldn’t build it fast enough to keep up with surging demand from Big Tech needing to power AI and data centers. And best of all, new factories building renewables, batteries and electric vehicles were supporting tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs in red Congressional districts – so killing them could be a political third rail.

“This industry supports the president’s full agenda,” Costa Nicolaou, CEO of solar roof mounting company PanelClaw, told CNN. “We are part of their American energy dominance solution. We’re a part of their steel, aluminum and manufacturing job solution.”

But on Capitol Hill, their argument ultimately fell on deaf ears, a sign of the steep obstacles the industry faced in a Washington run by Trump’s Republican Party.