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The Senate is about to destroy clean energy to give tax cuts to billionaires
The bill could pass within the next 24 hours.
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Climate and clean energy advocates thought they had already seen the worst case scenario in previous versions of the Senate’s sweeping reconciliation bill. They were wrong.
The latest bill, released late Friday night, includes a new tax on solar and wind farms that analysts at Rhodium Group estimate will increase the cost of renewable energy projects by 10 to 20%. That’s on top of cost increases that will come from an aggressive phase out of tax credits that have led to a clean energy boom over the last decade.
“It’s a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry,” Adrian Deveny, founder and president of the policy advisory firm Climate Vision, told Politico.
The bill could become law as soon as this evening if the Senate succeeds at bringing it to the floor while most Americans are asleep.
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The bill wouldn’t just dramatically slow clean energy’s growth. It would also provide subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
One provision in the bill would exempt oil and gas drillers from paying any corporate taxes. Another provision offers coal producers a production tax credit. These giveaways would add to the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies the industry has received from taxpayers over the last century.
The new fossil fuel subsidies in the bill come after a month of intense pressure from fossil fuel industry lobbyists and advocates. In a lunch with Republican Senators, fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein successfully argued that Senate leaders should go further than the House did in slowing clean energy’s growth.
Last week, Epstein said wind and solar were “a cancer we have to get rid of” before referring to jobs created by the industry as “fentanyl jobs.” He told the New York Times his advocacy is funded by the fossil fuel industry.
The bill would cause irreparable damage
If passed, the Senate’s bill would set America back significantly in its effort to address climate change. By 2035 the United States would emit one billion tons of additional carbon pollution compared to its current trajectory, according to modeling from Princeton University. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan, the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter.
The bill would also lead to a massive wave of clean energy project cancellations at a time when America is already running out of electricity due to a surge in demand from AI data centers. Less electricity supply would boost prices for American families and businesses in every state, with some experiencing price