Solar outlook: partly cloudy

Solar stocks tumbled this week on reports that President Donald Trump planned to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, before stabilizing a bit with certainty that the U.S. would exit the global agreement to lower global carbon emissions.

Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to withdraw from the agreement. The 2015 accord set targets for countries to lower their carbon emissions, moving their energy generation away from oil and coal to renewable energies like wind and solar, in an effort to combat climate change. As the second-largest

greenhouse gas emitter, the participation of the U.S. was considered crucial for the Paris accord to have any effect.

Trump has said withdrawing from the agreement would be a victory for the American economy. One sector to benefit would be fossil fuel energy companies, particularly coal — an industry that has lost thousands of jobs as coal has fallen out of favor.

Investors had expected the Paris accord to broadly benefit renewable energy companies at the expense of fossil fuels. But without the mandate to lower carbon emissions, power companies may be less hasty to shut down their coal-generating plans in

favor of solar, for example.

First Solar rose nearly 3 percent, and SunPower, a smaller solar panel manufacturer, rose 1 percent. Another solar manufacturer, JinkcoSolar, fell more than 2 percent.