Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

How the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Changed America’s Clean Energy Policy

From the Inflation Reduction Act to the Trump mega-law, here are 20 years of changes in one easy-to-read cheat sheet.

Scribbling over renewable energy
Justin Renteria/Getty Images

The landmark Republican reconciliation bill, which President Trump signed on July 4, has shattered the tax credits that served as the centerpiece of the country’s clean energy and climate policy.

Starting as soon as October, the law — which Trump has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — will cut off incentives for Americans to install solar panels, purchase electric vehicles, or make energy efficiency improvements to their homes. It’s projected to raise household energy costs while increasing America’s carbon emissions by 190 million metric tons a year by 2030, according to the REPEAT Project at Princeton University.

The loss of these incentives will in part offset the continuation of tax cuts that largely benefit wealthy Americans. But the law as a whole won’t come close to paying for those cuts in their entirety. The legislation is expected to swell federal deficits by nearly $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. This explosive deficit expansion could make it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, possibly further constraining energy development.

President Trump has described the law as ending Democrats’ “green new scam,” and conservative lawmakers have celebrated the termination of Biden-era energy programs. The law is particularly devastating for programs encouraging electric vehicle sales, as well as wind and solar energy deployment.

But the act is more complicated than a simple repeal of Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In one case, Trump’s big law ends a federal energy incentive that has been in place, in some form, since the 1990s. In others, Republicans have tied up existing energy incentives with new restrictions, regulations, and red tape.

Some parts of the IRA have even remained intact. GOP lawmakers opted to preserve Biden’s big expansion of incentives to support nuclear energy and advanced geothermal development. That said, the Trump administration could still gut these tax credits by making them effectively unusable through executive action.

It can be confusing to keep the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s many changes to federal energy law in your head — even for experts. That’s why Heatmap News is excited to publish this new reference “cheat sheet”on the past, present, and future of federal energy tax credits, compiled by an all-star collection of analysts and researchers.

The summary takes each clean energy-related provision in the U.S. tax code and summarizes how (and whether) it existed in the 2000s and 2010s, how the Inflation Reduction Act changed it, and how the new OBBBA will change it again. It was compiled by Shane Londagin, a policy advisor at the think tank Third Way; Luke Bassett, a former Biden administration official and Senate Energy committee staffer; Avi Zevin, a former Biden official and a partner at the energy law firm Roselle LLP; and researchers at the REPEAT Project, an energy analysis group at Princeton University. (Note that I co-host the podcast Shift Key with Jesse Jenkins, who leads the REPEAT Project.)

You can find the full summary below.

Download the chart here.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Podcast

The Peril of Talking About Electricity Affordability

Rob sits down with Jane Flegal, an expert on all things emissions policy, to dissect the new electricity price agenda.

Power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As electricity affordability has risen in the public consciousness, so too has it gone up the priority list for climate groups — although many of their proposals are merely repackaged talking points from past political cycles. But are there risks of talking about affordability so much, and could it distract us from the real issues with the power system?

Rob is joined by Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute and the States Forum. Flegal was the former senior director for industrial emissions at the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, and she has worked on climate policy at Stripe. She was recently executive director of the Blue Horizons Foundation.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Spotlight

Data Center Support Plummets in Latest Heatmap Pro Poll

The proportion of voters who strongly oppose development grew by nearly 50%.

A data center and houses.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

During his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump attempted to stanch the public’s bleeding support for building the data centers his administration says are necessary to beat China in the artificial intelligence race. With “many Americans” now “concerned that energy demand from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electricity bills,” Trump said, he pledged to make major tech companies pay for new power plants to supply electricity to data centers.

New polling from energy intelligence platform Heatmap Pro shows just how dramatically and swiftly American voters are turning against data centers.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow