From the outset, President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was always going to be bad for renewables (and U.S. energy consumers), because it rolled back clean energy tax credits that have spurred billions of dollars of investments into technology like wind, solar, batteries, and electric vehicles.
But recent changes to the bill’s text go even further, more aggressively phasing out the current clean energy tax incentives, and also adding a new tax on solar and wind projects. These changes will effectively kill many clean energy projects, cut millions of jobs, and raise the average American’s electricity bills in every state, experts say.
The Senate reconciliation bill is now more than 900 pages long. Tucked into that lengthy bill were changes released the night of June 27 that would impose a new tax on solar and wind projects. That tax would essentially be a penalty on these projects tied to the amount of materials they get from China, or other “prohibited foreign entities.” That means solar and wind products would need to drastically change their supply chains—a reshoring process made more difficult without the tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.
Dispatches From The Front 