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Anything decarbonization-related is on the chopping block.
The Biden administration has shoveled money from the Inflation Reduction Act out the door as fast as possible this year, touting the many benefits all that cash has brought to Republican congressional districts. Many — in Washington, at think tanks and non-profits, among developers — have found in this a reason to be calm about the law’s fate. But this is incorrect. The IRA’s future as a climate law is in a far more precarious place than the Beltway conventional wisdom has so far suggested.
Shortly after the changing of the guard in Congress and the White House, policymakers will begin discussing whether to extend the Trump-era tax cuts, which expire at the end of 2025. If they opt to do so, they’ll try to find a way to pay for it — and if Republicans win big in the November elections, as recent polling and Democratic fretting suggests could happen, the IRA will be an easy target.
Yes, the law has created a ton of jobs in states and congressional districts controlled by Republicans. Sure, some in the GOP have moderated on climate and stopped denying the science behind the warming of our planet. Absolutely, the IRA is the kind of all-carrot and no-stick approach to energy that Republicans tend to like, and there would be legal and political challenges to accomplishing anything of consequence in today’s polarized and chaotic Congress.
But while some lawmakers may be evolving on climate, the broader GOP under Trump’s control has grown far more willing to spurn its pro-business past and give industries heartburn in pursuit of other ideological or cultural objectives.
“The Republican Party’s traditional views on climate and business are both changing and result in competing pressures,” Alex Flint, a longtime Senate Republican energy staffer, told me. Flint now runs the pro-business climate group Alliance for Market Solutions. “There is less climate denialism. And less support for business. So on the one hand, more Republicans are comfortable supporting climate policies like those in the IRA, but are less responsive to the businesses that want to defend those programs.”
What that means is that, in the event of a big GOP victory, anything impossible to fully repeal may be fiddled with, whether through legislative or administrative means. On top of all the energy and climate regulations that would be targeted in that event, the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels could lose significant federal policy tailwinds.
On the legislative side, there is already broad GOP support for: repealing the consumer electric vehicle and charging station benefits, nixing the methane fee, killing the national “green bank” program, and eliminating any money labeled “environmental justice.” Broader programs with immense importance to decarbonization such as the “clean electricity” investment and production tax credits could be diminished or gutted at the urging of the party’s rightward flank. (See: this GOP committee chair’s IRA repeal bill, which targeted the investment and production tax credits, specifically.)
Anything that cannot be repealed — as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 instructs — Republicans will attempt to modify. Mike Faulkender, a former Trump official at the Treasury Department who is now chief economist for the America First Policy Institute, explained to me for an Axios story last October that if Trump wins, “We are going to review every rule, every notice, everything the administration has done in its implementation of that statute.” Demonstrating his seriousness, Faulkender also pointed to the IRA’s credit for carbon removal. “The dollar values on this are extraordinary … I would go through that statute and see how we, through the rulemaking process, can narrow it as much as possible.”
It is possible to take these threats with a grain of salt. Kimberly Clausing, a former Biden official for the Treasury Department, told me that while she can imagine “one or two elements” of the law being revisited if they’re political priorities, it would require “too many lawyer man-hours” to “justify that kind of wholescale implementation pivot.”
Industries would also lobby heavily to avoid their credits going away. Going after the tech-neutral ITC and PTC, for example, could spark an immense backlash among a swath of energy sectors Republicans do support, including nuclear energy. Same for incentives to advanced manufacturing. Not to mention there are substantial logistical realities to repealing the IRA or changing its programs, as with Obamacare in the past. Such an effort would require organizing GOP lawmakers at a time when infighting has undermined even seeming slam dunks like a ban on gas stove bans.
But seasoned political veterans and D.C. industry pros I spoke with for this story noted that Republicans may be more receptive to tweaking programs in a selective fashion, going after industries like solar and offshore wind that some have long-standing grievances with. For example, it may be too difficult to repeal the “tech-neutral” electricity credits in their entirety, but legislators could try to limit their reach for these less-favored sectors — as some have proposed doing for solar projects on farmland — in the name of saving the government money or helping other favored interests.
Energy lobbying veteran Frank Maisano put it to me this way: “Businesses will support many things that they have their tentacles into and Republicans will support many things that are going on in their districts that constituents like. The reality is, if you’re going to try to repeal it, you’re going to have to do it through Congress and a lot of the action in the energy transition is in Republican districts. It becomes a constituent issue.”
Or, in plain English: If it’s a successful project in a GOP constituent district and their specific voters like it, that will be what has the most sway.
That won’t stop Republicans from claiming that the renewable sector as a whole is flagging. In an interview with E&E News’ Kelsey Brugger, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise responded to the question of whether the jobs created by the IRA would put Republicans in a tough spot on repeal by — dubiously — downplaying the figures. “Overall, there haven’t been many projects built,” Scalise said. “We’re scrutinizing all of it.”
There’s a reason for this: It creates an opening to point to real market struggles (though possibly in a selective fashion) as a predicate for squeezing benefits to renewables. It’s easy to imagine a world where the impacts of tariffs on domestic solar or hurdles facing offshore wind are used as rationale for paring back credits and other federal supports. You might not be hearing much about this right now as the GOP is quietly letting Democrats knife themselves, but it’ll be worth watching the Republican National Convention next week to see if anyone spills the tea on plans for the IRA next year.
“Which of [these] forces prevail on any specific IRA program and on the totality of the IRA package is impossible to predict,” said Flint, “because members – Republicans who acknowledge the need to address climate – may be aligned with companies that receive those subsidies. But on the other hand, populists not closely aligned with business interests may be willing to criticize those programs without regard to their climate benefits. So what happens to climate policies and all of the IRA is a test case for the future of the Republican Party.”
Developers are starting to ask questions about the durability of IRA programs, Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told me. Hopper’s optimistic that the marketplace will continue to favor solar. But she is clear-eyed about the risks ahead for certain aspects of the IRA – naming bonuses and the transferability of credits — that may not survive in their current form.
“People ask me all the time about, ‘How do I make educated opinions, not prognostications?’” she said. “There is this kind of built in uncertainty because of the partisanship that clean energy has unfortunately [had] imposed upon us … I am in agreement that the pace of decarb is going to be impacted by these elections and policy decisions. [But] I am not persuaded that we’re going to stop these efforts.”
To Hopper and others, at most risk is any unspent money or unused spending authority left over at agencies at the conclusion of Biden’s first term. Those supports face “probably the highest risk of clawback or not being spent,” she said.
Some agencies are still moving at a brisk pace that has reassured those in industry and advocacy spaces. The Treasury Department has signaled it may complete implementation of several key IRA credits — including the “clean electricity” investment and production tax credits — before Jan. 20, 2025. And the Environmental Protection Agency’s been quite successful at doling out dollars that would otherwise be targeted in a future GOP-controlled Congress, such as those the IRA provided for the Solar For All program and the green bank initiative. These dollars will live on independent of who remains president because once they’re given to states or nonprofits, those parties get to decide how to spend them.
But there are still billions that may wind up in Trump’s control should he win in November. One example is the Department of Energy’s home electrification rebates, which received $8.8 billion. Despite almost all states applying for at least some of the funding, per DOE’s own tracker, only five have been accepted, and only one – New York – had made those rebates available as of this week.
“I’m under the assumption that if it’s not going out in January 2025, then it’s not going out the door,” Harrison Godfrey, who works for energy policy shop Advanced Energy United, told me. “If the dollars get out the door, then the story of ‘25 is that regardless of who’s president, the states are in the driver’s seat.”
There are aspects of the IRA that could survive even a Republican trifecta. The law’s support for low-carbon fuels enjoys apparent bipartisan backing because of the lifeline it can offer corn-based ethanol as the federal renewable fuel standard wanes in relevance. And despite grousing about Biden’s implementation of the hydrogen tax credit, it’s easier to imagine industry lobbying for a rule change under Trump than it is a full-scale repeal of a credit that could be a boon to the oil and gas sector.
Meanwhile, the administration and other industry groups continue to sound an optimistic note.
“The Inflation Reduction Act credits have spurred a clean energy boom in communities across the country and markets have responded overwhelmingly,” Treasury spokesperson Michael Martinez told me in a statement. Jason Ryan, a spokesperson for American Clean Power, said that “with the new tax credits in place,” more than $488 billion investments have been announced, including new or expanded utility-scale manufacturing plants, and that “with over a third of those manufacturing facilities already up and running or under constructions, these numbers translate to real-world positive impacts.”
But even if some of the IRA remains, without regulations to drive demand for decarbonization solutions, its climate benefits would be substantially undermined. One must look only at research from Clausing and others, who found even a partial IRA repeal combined with weakened EPA regulations could significantly harm odds of meeting the current administration’s goal of slashing emissions in half by 2030.
In other words, deep breaths! It’s only four months until the election and six months until the tax conversation begins.
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On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.
From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.
The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.
Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.
The city of Halstead, under pressure from these locals, is now developing a battery storage zoning ordinance – and explicitly saying this will not mean a project “has been formally approved or can be built in the city.” The backlash is now so intense that Halstead’s mayor Dennis Travis has taken to fighting back against criticism on Facebook, writing in a series of posts about individuals in his community “trying to rule by MOB mentality, pushing out false information and intimidating” volunteers working for the city. “I’m exercising MY First Amendment Right and well, if you don’t like it you can kiss my grits,” he wrote. Other posts shared information on the financial benefits of building battery storage and facts to dispel worries about battery fires. “You might want to close your eyes and wish this technology away but that is not going to happen,” another post declared. “Isn’t it better to be able to regulate it in our community?”
What’s happening in Halstead is a sign of a slow-spreading public relations wildfire that’s nudging communities that were already skeptical of battery storage over the edge into outright opposition. We’re not seeing any evidence that communities are transforming from supportive to hostile – but we are seeing new areas that were predisposed to dislike battery storage grow more aggressive and aghast at the idea of new projects.
Heatmap Pro data actually tells the story quite neatly: Halstead is located in Harvey County, a high risk area for developers that already has a restrictive ordinance banning all large-scale solar and wind development. There’s nothing about battery storage on the books yet, but our own opinion poll modeling shows that individuals in this county are more likely to oppose battery storage than renewable energy.
We’re seeing this phenomenon play out elsewhere as well. Take Fannin County, Texas, where residents have begun brandishing the example of Moss Landing to rail against an Engie battery storage project, and our modeling similarly shows an intense hostility to battery projects. The same can be said about Brooklyn, New York, where anti-battery concerns are far higher in our polling forecasts – and opposition to battery storage on the ground is gaining steam.