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Dalton, Georgia, is home to QCells, one of the largest solar facilities in the world, thanks to investments from the Inflation Reduction Act. It is also located in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district. <\/span>Dustin Chambers\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Senate version <\/span>of President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill,\u201d unveiled<\/a> to the public at Midnight on Friday, went even further than the House version in its hostility toward the nation\u2019s burgeoning renewable energy sector. The House version merely <\/em>seeks to end the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies for wind and solar development enacted under President Joe Biden. Now, Republican senators want to levy punishing new taxes on wind and solar projects.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate to say it, but it would kill [America\u2019s] renewable energy market,\u201d says Kenneth Gillingham, a dean and professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale University. <\/p>\n \u201cIt would kill it!\u201d concurs Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a national organization of business leaders advocating for smarter climate policies and the author of a recent book titled Clean Economy Now<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n If solar and wind projects aren\u2019t finished by 2027, per the Senate version, the developers will face a tax that would add an additional 10 to 20 percent to their costs, per Rhodium Group<\/a>\u2018s analysis. The American Clean Power Association estimates<\/a> that this will cost companies $4 billion to $7 billion by 2036 and raise consumer electricity costs by 8 percent to 1o percent.<\/p>\n Red-state voters \u201cwill be losing out on jobs that they would have been getting otherwise, but they might not know that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Ending the IRA subsidies would cause a big industry slowdown, Gillingham says, but the proposed taxes are nails in its coffin. The Senate bill, he says, shifts the economy away from wind and solar\u2014the fastest-growing<\/a> energy sources here and worldwide<\/a>\u2014and back toward fossil fuels. \u201cIt very clearly shows the policy priorities of the Republicans who are drafting this bill. They are entirely pro-fossil fuels,\u201d says Gillingham.<\/p>\n Jesse D. Jenkins, an energy systems engineering professor at Princeton University, calls the bill a \u201ctruly bizarre, a self-defeating measure,\u201d especially from a \u201cparty that claims to stand for American energy dominance.\u201d Its provisions, in addition to hindering the development of clean power, Jenkins says, will lead to more pollution and higher energy bills for homes and businesses.<\/p>\n Indeed, according to an analysis<\/a> by Michael Thomas, founder and CEO of the clean energy data platform Cleanview<\/a>, the bill will increase electricity costs substantially for customers in every state\u2014in some cases by more than 20 percent.<\/p>\n That\u2019s particularly notable now that demand for electricity has begun to increase<\/a> after a decade of flatlining. The rise in demand, Keefe told me, referring<\/a> to Trump\u2019s invention of a crisis to rationalize his \u201cdrill, baby drill\u201d energy policies, could well turn into an actual \u201cenergy emergency.\u201d And the only way to fix that, he says, \u201cis through solar, wind, and batteries.\u201d<\/p>\n The Republicans\u2019 bill utilizes what journalist Jael Holzman calls the party\u2019s\u2019 \u201canti-China trap<\/a>.\u201d Namely, wind and solar companies won\u2019t have to pay the excise tax if they extract their supply chains from China\u2014as if that\u2019s remotely possible. \u201cIt would take several years to get to a point where a supply chain would not face this tax, if possible at all,\u201d Gillingham told me. \u201cIn the meantime, the manufacturing would be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n Keefe calls is a \u201cworthwhile goal\u201d to move manufacturing to the United States from China, the global renewable energy leader <\/a>by leaps and bounds, but he says this bill would do the opposite. Fueled by the IRA funding, the US renewables industry was just starting to gain a stronger footing. \u201cAll of those projects now are at risk because we\u2019re killing the tax policies that made them possible,\u201d Keefe says.<\/p>\n The economic losses would almost certainly hit red, rural districts the hardest, because 78 percent<\/a> of the IRA tax credits for clean energy have gone to these areas. And all the new jobs being created in states like Georgia were just the start. \u201cThe greater loss is actually on the jobs that would have happened within the next year or two,\u201d Gillinhgam says. \u201cThey will be losing out on jobs that they would have been getting otherwise, but they might not know that.\u201d<\/p>\n Keefe emphasizes that the losses won\u2019t stop with IRA-funded projects. \u201cBusiness investments were prompted because of the market signal that the previous administration set when it said it was shifting to a cleaner economy,\u201d he says. Even if the bill fails, $14 billion<\/a> and 10,000 clean jobs already have been lost just thanks to uncertainty created by the administration\u2019s energy and trade rhetoric.<\/p>\n A handful of Republican Senators are balking at the new renewables taxes\u2014three are backing an amendment<\/a> to ease the proposed levies in ways that could jeopardize the larger bill.<\/p>\n In any case, the crux of the matter goes well beyond economic and political considerations, Keefe says, citing the bill\u2019s downstream effects: \u201cWe\u2019re going to be going backwards on protecting the air that you and I breathe, in the water that we drink, and and the planet that we live on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n