Latest news with #AmericanCleanPowerAssociation
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate version of Trump bill would hit renewable energy industry with new tax
Update: This tax provision was removed from the final version of the Senate bill that passed on Tuesday, July 1. Read more here. Our earlier story is below. The latest version of the bill containing President Trump's second term agenda would hobble the renewable energy industry with a new excise tax, in addition to speeding up the sunsetting of tax credits and other benefits. The additional tax on wind and solar projects, which appeared on page 558 in the version of the bill released over the weekend, is estimated to increase consumer energy prices 8% to 10% and would tax clean energy businesses an additional $4-$7 billion by 2036, according to an analysis by the American Clean Power Association. The tax would apply to all projects that go into construction after June 16 through 2036, and it would also apply to projects that are placed into service after 2027, even if they already are under construction. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski told Politico Monday that she planned to introduce an amendment that would tie eligibility for the wind and solar tax credits to a project's construction start date, rather than its service date. The Senate is currently holding a marathon vote series on proposed amendments to the bill. These wind and solar projects would have to pay the tax if a certain percentage of the value of their materials are sourced from prohibited foreign countries, like China. The provision is ostensibly designed to boost domestic manufacturing, but developing these projects by working around Chinese components would be cost prohibitive, and some data and AI companies — which require prodigious amounts of energy — could turn to China or other countries for reliable and affordable power sources, according to clean power experts. The Senate bill also scales back or eliminates renewable energy tax breaks that have been in place since 2005 and revised and expanded a few times since then, including in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The most recent expansion contained tax breaks for individuals for electric vehicles, wind and solar development, and energy efficient appliances and provided tax credits for clean electricity-generating projects that went into service from 2023 through the end of 2032. Both the Senate and the House would end the renewable energy tax credits, but the Senate would accelerate the timeline in the House version, which would end the tax credits for renewable energy projects placed in service after 2028, a year later than the Senate would. Eliminating the existing tax credits would likely kill up to 72% of the new wind and solar installations that were to be completed in the U.S. over the next decade, according to analysis from Rhodium Group, a research firm. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who until Saturday was silent on the bill after his social media spat with President Trump over the House version, said of the Senate bill that it was "Utterly insane and destructive." "It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future," he said in a post on X. And he predicted it would "destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!" Musk also said, "A massive strategic error is being made right now to damage solar/battery that will leave America extremely vulnerable in the future." According to Politico, President Trump asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune to further "crack down" on wind and solar energy by phasing out clean energy credits faster, rather than sunsetting the tax incentives more slowly, which moderate senators favored. Some asked for help easing the hit their states would take as a result of cancelled projects, job losses and higher energy prices. The renewable energy industry, manufacturing unions and even some conservatives also criticized the new tax. Conservative energy expert Alex Epstein, advocates ending the green tax credits, but he appeared to be taken by surprise by the excise tax, saying in a post on X, "I just learned about the excise tax and it's definitely not something I would support." The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also quickly condemned the tax. Neil Bradly, the Chamber's executive vice president, said on social media, "taxing energy production is never good policy, whether oil & gas or, in this case, renewables. Electricity demand is set to see enormous growth & this tax will increase prices. It should be removed." The North American Building Trades Union, in a statement, called the bill potentially "the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country." "Simply put, it is the equivalent of terminating more than 1,000 Keystone XL pipeline projects," the statement continued. "In some cases, it worsens the already harmful trajectory of the House-passed language, threatening an estimated 1.75 million construction jobs and over 3 billion work hours, which translates to $148 billion in lost annual wages and benefits." Robots on verge of outnumbering humans at Amazon warehouses, Wall Street Journal reports Next steps in Sean "Diddy" Combs trial after partial verdict Reporter's Notebook: When politicians cry wolf on fiscal restraint
Axios
02-07-2025
- Business
- Axios
Key renewables official looks forward to permitting overhaul
A top renewables industry official is looking ahead to overhauling permitting and having wind and solar meet fast-rising demand, even as the House is weighing the Senate bill that would ax incentives. Why it matters: Absent a dramatic plot twist on Capitol Hill, the industry faces a much tougher future, with the GOP yanking unprecedented Biden-era support. There's no sugarcoating it: analysts now see much slower renewables growth. The body blow could have been even worse. But GOP moderates forced the removal of new taxes on wind and solar projects and softened some deadlines. The intrigue: With the "polarizing" reconciliation fight in the rearview, American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet hopes for a revival of permitting legislation that made progress last year. (ACP's criticism of the reconciliation bill is here.) He told me he sees an opening for the wider energy industry to get back to "advocating for shared interests," noting a "shared frustration we have with the inability to modernize the country." "The administration has expressed significant interest in permitting reform. It's going to require the good old-fashioned, 60-vote, bipartisan legislative process," Grumet said. Friction point: The budget bill pares back tax credits just as U.S. power demand is rising quickly after roughly 15 static years. That means renewables will remain needed resources in a country that needs more electricity — and fast, he said. The big picture:"We're not competing with natural gas because every single electron is needed. And we're certainly not competing with future technologies like geothermal or advanced nuclear," Grumet said of renewables. "The incredible economic demand and the fact that electricity is not a nice-to-have, but it's a must-have commodity, gives us confidence that we're going to continue to see clean power be the fastest to market, and in many parts of the country, the lowest-cost resource." Threat level: The increased U.S. demand — fueled in no small part by AI — has changed the landscape, he said. "When we had no real growth in demand, the country could tolerate bad federal policy, because, you know, you could screw up this side of the economy, you could screw up that side of the economy, but there was enough energy going around to kind of cover the gaps," Grumet said. "Going forward, we do not have that luxury. Skyrocketing demand that strains reliability and increases prices focuses the mind." That creates an opportunity to "build upon the closure of this chapter" and begin building more durable policy. Between the lines: I asked Grumet about a theme running through the budget fight: how IRA red state investments and jobs didn't deter major rollbacks. "It's true that the intense polarization actually overwhelmed the rational self-interests of the majority of the Republican members of the Senate," he said. But Grumet sees shared interests exerting more sway going forward — he was quick to note that senators including John Curtis and Lisa Murkowski helped strip some of the harshest provisions even as they backed the broader bill. The bottom line: "That coalition of the pragmatic has actually just started to reassert itself," he said, "and we're going to, certainly with the permitting reform debate and others, try to now grow that ballast in the system."
CBS News
01-07-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Senate removes excise tax on renewable energy industry from Trump domestic policy bill
The Senate bill containing President Trump's domestic policy agenda at the last minute eliminated a new excise tax that would have hammered the renewable energy industry, a move that likely ensured Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would back the measure. The excise tax would have been imposed on wind and solar energy projects constructed with a certain percentage of materials sourced from prohibited foreign countries, like China. Consumers would see their energy prices rise by around 8% to 10%, and the provision would have cost clean energy businesses an additional $4-$7 billion by 2036, according to an analysis by the American Clean Power Association. The tax was designed to boost domestic manufacturing, but developing these projects by working around Chinese components was likely to be cost prohibitive. The Senate bill also made another key concession: it would phase out wind and solar tax credits for clean energy development on a slower timeline than originally proposed, ensuring that projects that have already been planned, financed and approved would still receive the applicable tax credit, as long as they begin construction before June 2026, or are operational by the end of 2027. But this is still a major modification from the original timeline for the wind and solar tax credit — which wasn't due to expire until 2032 — and it still puts clean energy developers in peril, according to environmental groups. Joanna Slaney, vice president for political and government affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund, said in an email to CBS News, "By making it much, much harder to build new clean energy projects, the bill is effectively cutting off supply of cheap energy right when the U.S. needs it the most." Environmental groups said few gains were to be found in the bill. "If there's a bright spot, it is that the Senate bill would preserve tax credits for newer technologies like advanced nuclear, battery storage, geothermal energy, and carbon capture, as well as advanced manufacturing," Nathaniel Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, said in a statement. The final bill passed by the Senate would largely terminate numerous tax incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy, electric vehicles, and energy efficiency programs that benefited consumers. It would end tax credits for new and used electric vehicles, installation of home EV charging equipment and insulation or energy efficient heating and cooling systems. The bill also ends the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which gives funding to nonprofit organizations providing financing for projects that reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in communities. A new analysis by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions predicted that the changes in the Senate bill would eliminate more than 1.6 million jobs, cause more than $290 billion in lost GDP, increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 8% by 2035 and increase the cost of energy by 4% per megawatt. Climate and environmental groups expressed concern about how the reduction of key tax incentives for clean energy production and energy efficiency will affect the public. "The bill will raise energy costs and make it harder to keep the lights on," said Steven Nadel in a statement, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. "No one asked Congress to make their energy bills even higher. Taking away incentives for energy-saving improvements would raise monthly bills for families and businesses. It will only exacerbate the growing strain on the electric grid." The bill now returns to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson is intent on meeting Republicans' self-imposed July 4 deadline to get the bill to President Trump's desk. To do so, the House will have to pass the Senate version unchanged. Any alteration would mean the bill would have to be considered by a conference committee to reconcile the differences. That's what Murkowski would prefer. "We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination," she told reporters Tuesday. "My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we're not there yet."
El Balad
01-07-2025
- Business
- El Balad
ترقية 7131 موظفا ومنح علاوة تشجيعية لـ 3072 آخرين بوزارة بالعدل
Shares of renewable energy companies are rising after a tax on solar and wind was removed from the Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Senate narrowly passed the legislation Tuesday and will now be considered by the House of Representatives. The American Clean Power Association had warned that tax would up to $7 billion to the wind and solar industry's burden. Clean energy stocks rose on Tuesday after a tax on solar and wind projects was removed from the Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Shares of NextEra Energy, the largest renewables developer in the U.S., rose nearly 3% after the Senate narrowly passed President Donald Trump's bill on Tuesday. AES, a leading renewable provider, rose almost 2%. The megabill will now go to the House of Representatives, where lawmakers will consider the Senate's changes. The clean energy industry was surprised and outraged to find over the weekend that a tax on wind and solar projects had been inserted into a version of the Senate legislation. The tax applied to projects that use components from foreign entities of concern above a certain threshold. Foreign entities of concern is widely understood to basically refer to China. The American Clean Power Association and Solar Energy Industries Association told CNBC that the tax was struck from the Senate legislation. ACP had described the tax as punitive and warned that it would add up to $7 billion to the solar and wind industry's tax burden. The benchmark Invesco Solar ETF (TAN) was up about 4%, while the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN) was trading more than 1% higher after the legislation passed. Shares of First Solar, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the U.S., slipped less than 1%. Sun tracker manufacturers Array Technologies and Nextracker jumped more than 11% and about 5%, respectively. Residential solar installer Sunrun rose 9% while inverter manufacturers SolarEdge and Enphase were up about 8% and 4%, respectively. But the Solar Energy Industries Association cautioned that the improvements in the Senate bill are "limited" and the legislation overall is still harmful to renewable energy. "This legislation undermines the very foundation of America's manufacturing comeback and global energy leadership," CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said in a statement. "If this bill becomes law, families will face higher electric bills, factories will shut down, Americans will lose their jobs, and our electric grid will grow weaker."
Mint
01-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
The renewable-energy sector's relative winners and losers in the megabill
The Senate's latest version of the megabill caught the renewable-energy sector off guard with a new tax on wind and solar projects that, together with the quick end of lucrative tax credits, would devastate the industry. Clean-energy companies say the U.S. risks a slowdown in power delivery during the global artificial-intelligence race by ending the tax credits that were part of former President Joe Biden's landmark Inflation Reduction Act. The U.S. is also poised to cede advances in technologies from solar panels to batteries and electric vehicles to China. 'The big-picture outlook for energy is we are going to be less competitive because of this law," said Nick Nigro of Atlas Public Policy. 'Ten years from now we could look back on this moment as the time in which the U.S. pulled back and essentially lost the transition to clean energy." With each new version of Trump's 'big beautiful bill," the outlook for the renewables sector has shifted. These are the relative winners and losers in the current version: Not only did Senate Republicans outline plans to phase out tax credits for wind and solar projects more quickly, they proposed a new excise tax on future projects. The tax would apply to wind and solar projects completed after 2027 if those projects use a certain percentage of components from China, the industry's primary supplier of everything from critical minerals to batteries. Jason Grumet, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, called the plan a 'fundamental break in the compact between Congress and the private sector." Meanwhile, large-scale wind and solar projects would qualify for tax credits only if placed in service by the end of 2027. A prior version of the bill allowed projects to qualify based on their construction start date, a timeline that is easier for developers to control. They have less influence over when their projects connect to the power grid, where lines are long. Republican Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, along with Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have proposed repealing the excise-tax proposal and delaying the phaseout of the credits by maintaining them for projects that begin construction by the end of 2027. Solar and wind power make up more than 60% of the generation capacity that is expected to be added to the grid this year in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration. The proposed wind and solar excise tax could offer salvation to companies that have been investing in U.S. factories for wind, solar and battery components. Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, or SEMA, said the tax might encourage project developers to continue ordering domestic equipment. Companies making factory investments have been worried that without a reason to do so, U.S. developers would return to buying the cheapest solar panels on the market, likely those subsidized by China. 'It is the only lifeline on offer right now in the bill," Carr said. 'Panicked manufacturers are drowning." Shares of U.S. manufacturer First Solar climbed Monday. The struggling rooftop solar industry faced a potentially fatal blow after the version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives called for sunsetting tax credits by the end of this year. The latest Senate version is a little more generous. It instead would extend the credits for leased solar projects to the end of 2027, giving rooftop-focused companies more time to regroup. Tax credits for those who buy their own systems instead of leasing would phase out at the end of this year. That's likely a smaller portion of the population, however. Guggenheim Securities has estimated that about 70% of the residential solar industry is supported by leasing or other financing arrangements. Shares of residential solar companies Sunrun and SolarEdge Technologies popped Monday. Hydrogen also caught a break in the latest version of the bill. Projects can qualify for a tax credit if they begin construction before 2028. Under the House version, that deadline was the end of this year. The Senate version would also make hydrogen fuel cells, which use chemical reactions to generate electricity, eligible for tax credits. Shares of hydrogen fuel cells makers Plug Power and Bloom Energy soared Monday. Beyond its regular uses in oil refining and ammonia for fertilizers, hydrogen is viewed as a fossil-fuel alternative for industries including transportation, power generation and shipping. Widespread use has remained elusive because of cost, but new projects are under way along the U.S. Gulf Coast and in Saudi Arabia and Europe. Big oil-and-gas companies are among hydrogen's backers. The Senate bill would end tax credits for the purchase of EVs after September. That's even quicker than the House version, which called for eliminating them for the most part by the end of the year. That would lead to higher EV prices, analysts say, when the auto industry already faces a slower EV market. Elon Musk, whose relationship as a key adviser to the president recently unraveled, called the latest version of the bill 'utterly insane and destructive" on X. He didn't advocate for the EV credit but said that damage to the solar and battery industry would 'leave America extremely vulnerable in the future." He also railed against the legislation's potential increase to the deficit and renewed promises to form a new political party. Late Monday, Trump shot back on Truth Social. 'Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE," Trump wrote.
