After exceeding In the days of ongoing debate, the U.S. Senate passed a version of the budgeted megabill Tuesday afternoon, which could have a catastrophic impact on the future of renewable energy in the country.
One of the bad news about the climate initiative, including the new tax credit for coal and the sunset for electric vehicle tax credits, which forces wind and solar tax credits to positively cut off. The bill ends credits for projects invested in the service (essentially a term that a project is ready to power the grid – putting hundreds of planned projects nationwide at risk after 2027.
“It’s a bill that punishes renewable energy,” said Costa Samaras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “It really needs to add clean energy supplies to the grid – electric vibrates our cars, cheers our houses, cheers our buildings, cheers our factories, and the demand for AI, both need new clean energy. The role of this bill makes it harder and more expensive.”
Incredibly, the original version of the bill proposed Monday night is even worse news for renewable energy. The text contains a new tax on wind and solar energy that would tax certain foreign companies that procure materials, including China, an allegation that essentially affirms both industries. The new text also brings a little leeway to projects that begin construction next year, and they can retain the tax credit even before the 2027 deadline.
President Donald Trump has long-standing hostility to the windmill, and his campaign ends the inflation-lowering bill, while the original House bill delivers on that promise. But the more extreme last-minute additions in the Senate text shocked energy analysts, environmentalists, unions, Silicon Valley technocrats and even Senate Republicans.
In particular, the increase in the excise tax seems to be a surprising surprise. As NBC reported on Monday, several Republican senators said they don’t know who the rule is.
Alex Epstein is an energy “philosopher” who pushes the narrative around fossil fuels that is crucial to “human prosperity” and declared on X this weekend that he does not support the excise tax.
Elon Musk, whose businesses benefit from a variety of climate and clean energy-related tax credits, posted a series of tweets on Sunday and Monday that devalued the bill’s renewable energy provisions.
“The latest draft Senate bill will destroy millions of U.S. jobs and cause huge strategic damage to our country!” he wrote. “It’s totally crazy and destructive. It provides handouts for the past industries while also severely undermining the future industries.”
According to Politico, Trump reportedly pushed Senate leaders to produce a text that was more aggressive than the version of the bill passed by the House to phase out the tax credits for renewable energy, according to Politico. Trump posted a long, wrong, wrong voice in the Truth Society in late June on “I hate the “Green Tax Credit” and published a long, wrong, wrong voice in late June.
