The One Big Beautiful Bill will kill wind and solar power tax credits—and pit humans against AI in a battle for scarce electricity.
The One Big Beautiful Bill will kill wind and solar power tax credits—and pit humans against AI in a battle for scarce electricity.
President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act – assuming the version Senate Republicans passed on Tuesday becomes law–would cut the legs out from under the renewable energy industry.
The biggest hit: The bill would quickly phase out federal tax credits that have for years enabled wind and solar developers to offset 30% or more of project costs. Yes, it could have been even worse. At the last minute, the Senate’s Republican leadership ditched a proposed excise tax on wind and solar projects using Chinese components which could have added 20% to the cost of many projects. But it left in a fast phase-out of the tax credits.
Moreover, there are lots of other anti-green, pro-fossil fuel bullets the industry didn’t dodge. The bill would open more federal lands to oil and gas leasing at lower royalty rates; end tax credits and other subsidies for electric vehicles; and refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. There’s also a new tax break to incentivize mining metallurgical coal, now to be considered a strategic mineral.
Uncertainty, and the looming end of federally subsidized tax equity financing, could plunge renewables investing into a deep freeze, says Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of Houston-based EDP Renewables North America (which operates wind and solar plants). “It severely hamstrings the U.S. ability to meet skyrocketing power demands and dilutes its economic competitiveness on the global stage,” she says.
Why is Trump so determined to kibosh economic growth in Texas, where last Saturday afternoon solar power met 31% of the grid’s 77 gigawatts of power demand and wind power provided 15%? Sure, gas-fired generation still led with 35%, but coal provides merely 13% of the state’s electricity needs. The trend is clear: Growing, power-hungry states like Texas and states where the sun shines or the wind blows, have been increasingly relying on solar and wind power.
The How Green Is Your State? map makes clear that geography matters more than ideology when it comes to the adoption of green energy. Windy, sparsely populated and Republican South Dakota (Trump won 63% of the vote in 2024) gets an enormous portion of its retail electricity from renewable sources. Tiny, densely populated Delaware, Joe Biden’s home state, gets almost none of its retail electricity from green sources.
Complaints about the bill’s assault on green energy have come from all quarters. Elon Musk calls the energy components of the bill “insane and destructive,” saying they will destroy millions of jobs. Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, compares the impact to “terminating 1,000 Keystone XL” pipelines (Biden, of course, terminated just the one).
