Trump’s War on Solar Just Claimed Its Biggest Victim Yet… Sunnova’s $3B Free Fall Ends in Bankruptcy

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill isn’t just causing Elon to completely lose his mind and post on Twitter like a salty NFL player with CTE (and then delete the posts later as if it never happened)… it just drove Sunnova straight into bankruptcy court. Sunnova (the Houston-based company that once promised to bring rooftop solar to low-income families and blackout-plagued Puerto Rico) is officially cooked. They filed for Chapter 11 in Texas after watching their debt rise to ungodly levels and their federal lifeline go up in smoke courtesy of the Trump administration.

If you’re looking for a textbook case of how fast things can go from “we’ve got a $3 billion deal!” to “we’re laying off half the company,” look no further. You see, Sunnova had it made. Back in the Biden era, they landed a partial loan guarantee from the Department of Energy worth a shocking $3 billion. It was the feds’ single largest commitment to solar energy ever. The plan was to use that money to help underserved communities get rooftop panels through something called Project Hestia. Sounds noble, right? Well, Donald Trump took one look at that and said, “Let’s put that money towards deregulating crypto.” Ok, maybe not… but he got rid of it.

Well last month, Trump’s Energy Department killed the deal. $2.92 billion of that loan guarantee got immediately de-obligated. That’s government-speak for “you’re on your own, buddy.” And just like that, Project Hestia became Project Hysteria. Now, to be fair, Sunnova technically asked for the cancellation… after realizing it wasn’t gonna make it work. But don’t let the PR spin fool you. Without federal support, high interest rates, and a congressional budget bill hanging around like a guillotine (which threatens to gut federal solar tax credits), Sunnova was screwed either way.

So now, here we are. Sunnova laid off 718 employees (55% of their staff) just days before going full Chapter 11. (Timing is everything.) They listed somewhere between $10 billion and $50 billion in liabilities. (Yes, that’s a $40 billion shrug. Very normal. Nothing to see here.) And they’d already warned in March that they weren’t sure they’d make it. (So, credit where it’s due… they nailed that call.)

Of course, Wall Street already saw this coming. Sunnova shares fell 36% before the bankruptcy even dropped. They’re now trading at literal penny stock levels ($4 to .22 cents). From $840 million in revenue last year to a corporate obituary in June. The whole residential solar industry is getting bent over by a combo of rising interest rates, shrinking incentives in states like California, and now federal support getting ripped out from under them. And if Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” makes it through Congress, it would eliminate the 30% tax credit that’s been propping up homeowners going solar for years.

Sunnova isn’t some isolated collapse either. SunPower already went bankrupt. The only question is who’s next? So yeah, if you went all in on solar stocks here in 2025, I feel for you.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News doesn’t hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.