Lobbyists spent millions to save green energy. Wins were few.

E&E News

4 days ago

Renewable energy lobbyists dumped millions of dollars over the past few months in a frenzied push to save green energy priorities. In the end, they didn't get much bang for their buck.
As Republicans ramped up their efforts to roll back tax credits, the top renewable energy advocacy organization in the country, the American Clean Power Association, spent a record $3.8 million lobbying federal officials for the second quarter that ended in June. That's more than six times as much that they spent a year ago in the same time period, new disclosures show.
The GOP ended up slashing the incentives anyway in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax and spending budget reconciliation bill.
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'We all failed to appreciate just the intensity of the desire to undo any fraction of any figment of any remaining Biden policy,' Jason Grumet, the group's CEO, said of former President Joe Biden's green agenda on POLITICO's Energy podcast.
'The [Trump] administration really prioritized the narrative around ending the Biden program, above an assessment of what the benefits were.'
ACP was far from the only group that significantly boosted its advocacy work in the period from April to June. Congressional lobbying disclosures due this week show that dozens of companies and associations in wind, solar, batteries, electric vehicles and related fields went all out in trying to persuade lawmakers not to quickly halt their tax subsidies.
Other sizable increases came from the Solar Energy Industries Association, which more than doubled its spending to $950,000 for the quarter. The Zero Emission Transportation Association's spending was more than four times the level a year prior, at $130,000.
While much of the spending by lobbyists was aimed at preserving green energy tax credits, advocates also spent money on other renewable energy priorities and legislation.
The lobbyists were, for the most part, unsuccessful in pushing back at what President Donald Trump and many Republicans had long promised: to end the incentives from the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act that the GOP has labeled the 'Green New Scam.'
The new law sets a quick timetable to end incentives for wind and solar, as well as batteries, electric vehicles and vehicle charging infrastructure, while repealing other pro-clean-energy policies.
'Was it a failure? No, absolutely not.'
Yet, as they reflect on the fight, some advocates say they are proud of their efforts.
'I've seen some armchair quarterbacks saying the industry failed, sure, but those people weren't involved in the actual work, don't know what they are talking about, or both,' said Colin Hayes, founding partner at Lot Sixteen, which has a number of clients in clean energy and batteries.
'Was it a failure? No, absolutely not. Every single Republican voted against the IRA in the first place, so anything north of complete repeal was a win.'
Indeed, industry advocates did notch some accomplishments. The tax credits do not end immediately, and a last-minute push by some Senate Republicans gave developers one year to start their wind and solar projects and get the credits.
And they defeated an earlier Senate proposal to impose a new excise tax on wind and solar projects based on the amount of equipment they use from China and other adversaries.
Renewable energy lobbyists and their allies also softened supply chain mandates and preserved a practice allowing companies to transfer credits to third parties.
The Kayenta Solar Plant in Arizona. |Not all industry fared the same. Individual solar manufacturing, nuclear, and biofuel companies saw more success after they sent their CEOs to the Capitol, said Jeff Navin, founder of the firm Boundary Stone, which represents solar manufacturers, battery companies and similar clients.
But advocates representing solar and wind energy developers 'ran into headwinds of Donald Trump, who has strong opinions about wind in particular,' he said. 'They did change some minds of Republicans, not enough to overcome Trump's tweets and the political disaster of cutting Medicaid.'
Ultimately, he said, 'I think it's easy to write the story that says they spent a lot of money and they lost,' Navin said. 'That's true and you don't want to lose. [But] it's not like they didn't get anything for it. We just have more work to do to build and broaden the coalition.'
Conservatives celebrate
Conservatives and fossil fuel advocates acknowledge they didn't get everything they wanted — but they did get one thing: 'One of the highest priorities was to get these things phased out before President Trump left office because in the past they've always sunset and then the political climate changed,' said American Energy Alliance President Tom Pyle.
Renewable energy companies' strategies to save the credits largely focused on hiring Republican lobbyists, flooding congressional offices and trying to appeal to moderates with big investments in their districts.
They emphasized forecasts of job losses if the credits were repealed; SEIA, for instance, repeatedly cited research it commissioned saying that repeal threatened 330,000 solar jobs.
SEIA and other groups even passed out stickers with Trump's signature 'energy dominance' catchphrase on Capitol Hill. But observers noted it was too little, too late.
'Their entire strategy was to build relationships with the Democratic Party and green groups,' Pyle said of solar and wind lobbies. 'They ran into a brick wall in the name of President Donald Trump.'
Even before the last election, groups like ACP have made a point of increasing their outreach to Republicans but their efforts have not softened the president's animosity to renewable energy. And many GOP solar and wind allies on the Hill seem to feel they can only do so much to buck Trump's agenda.
In a recent interview with POLITICO's E&E News, SEIA CEO Abigail Ross Hopper highlighted the sector's accomplishments in the budget legislation.
'We have emerged from this legislative battle with the tax credits certainly curtailed, but not eliminated, and with some paths forward that are super important,' she said. 'I don't know that there's anything at the moment I can think of that we would have done differently.'
Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, speaking last year in Washington during the group's 50th anniversary celebration. | Eric Kayne/AP
Big spending elsewhere
Grumet, the American Clean Power Association CEO, said he and others misjudged how far Republicans would go in rolling back the policies that had been enacted or expanded in the Inflation Reduction Act.
'I think we have become, as an industry, almost a political football in which both sides exaggerate either our glory or our dismay and use us as a talking point for their larger political ambitions. I think that the Congress misread the bipartisan support for clean energy,' Grumet said.
A number of individual clean energy companies also boosted their advocacy work in the second quarter. Rooftop solar firm SunRun spent $320,000 in the quarter, up more than 500 percent from a year prior. Solar manufacturer First Solar's $520,000 in lobbying was more than double the same period in 2024.
In wind, Vestas North America put $100,000 into lobbying, up from $30,000 a year before. Tesla doubled its expenditures to $320,000.
Many of the companies hired new lobbying firms during the reconciliation fight, or retained their first firms.
Advantage Capital, an investment firm in renewable energy, hired Barker Leavitt and Patel Partners in June, contributing to a 600 percent increase in its lobbying expenditures.
T1 Energy, a solar and battery manufacturer, signed with Continental Strategy and Checkmate Government Relations in June and spent $260,000 in the quarter, after not having any lobbyists before November 2024.
The clean energy industry similarly carried out an intense lobbying campaign in 2022 in the lead-up to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. But the sharp increase in lobbying expenditures in 2025 was unprecedented.
ACP, for instance, had never exceeded $700,000 in one quarter since it launched in 2021. Its predecessor, the American Wind Energy Association, spent a record $1.8 million in the second quarter of 2009, at the peak of debate over climate change legislation. SEIA's previous quarterly record was $710,000, set in the first quarter of 2025.
Reporter Nico Portuondo contributed.
This story also appears in Climatewire.