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The Hill
6 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
Trump eyes additional barriers to solar and wind energy
The Trump administration is eyeing additional barriers to the development of solar and wind energy on public lands. In a memo made public late Friday, the administration said that it would seek to block projects that take up a lot of room, calling wind and solar 'highly inefficient uses of Federal land.' The memo said that the administration would 'only permit those energy projects that are the most appropriate land use when compared to a reasonable range of project alternatives.' In doing so, it will put together a report of further actions that are needed to accomplish this goal. 'Gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects hold America back from achieving U.S. Energy Dominance while weighing heavily on the American taxpayer and environment,' said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a written statement. The renewable industry balked at the effort – saying it could have significant impacts on developing wind and solar on public lands. 'Depending on how it's ultimately implemented, it could have serious implications for new projects moving forward,' said Gene Grace, general counsel for the American Clean Power Association, a renewable lobbying group. John Hensley, the organization's senior vice president for Markets and Policy Analysis, also said that while wind and solar projects may be large, that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad for the environment. 'In the case of wind and solar, they do require much larger total project footprints, but the amount of land that's actually disturbed…is a fraction of the total project size,' said Hensley noting that wind in particular is very efficient if you consider land that's actually disturbed rather than the entire size of a wind farm. It's the latest in a long string of actions taken by the Trump administration to hamper wind and solar, including on public lands. President Trump's big beautiful bill cut tax credits for these energy sources. Separate memos issued by the Trump administration said it would consider barring future wind projects and subject wind and solar to an elevated review process, which is likely to slow them down.
Technical.ly
29-07-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
How wind and solar power helps keep America's farms alive
This is a guest post by Paul Mwebaze, an economist and project manager for the Sustainably Colocating Agricultural and Photovoltaic Electricity Systems (SCAPES) project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A version of this article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Drive through the plains of Iowa or Kansas and you'll see more than rows of corn, wheat and soybeans. You'll also see towering wind turbines spinning above fields and solar panels shining in the sun on barns and machine sheds. For many farmers, these are lifelines. Renewable energy provides steady income and affordable power, helping farms stay viable when crop prices fall or drought strikes. But some of that opportunity is now at risk as the Trump administration cuts federal support for renewable energy. Wind power brings steady income for farms Wind energy is a significant economic driver in rural America. In Iowa, for example, over 60% of the state's electricity came from wind energy in 2024, and the state is a hub for wind turbine manufacturing and maintenance jobs. For landowners, wind turbines often mean stable lease payments. Those historically were around US$3,000 to $5,000 per turbine per year, with some modern agreements $5,000 to $10,000 annually, secured through 20- to 30-year contracts. Nationwide, wind and solar projects contribute about $3.5 billion annually in combined lease payments and state and local taxes, more than a third of it going directly to rural landowners. These figures are backed by long-term contracts and multibillion‑dollar annual contributions, reinforcing the economic value that turbines bring to rural landowners and communities. Wind farms also contribute to local tax revenues that help fund rural schools, roads and emergency services. In counties across Texas, wind energy has become one of the most significant contributors to local property tax bases, stabilizing community budgets and helping pay for public services as agricultural commodity revenues fluctuate. In Oldham County in northwest Texas, for example, clean energy projects provided 22% of total county revenues in 2021. In several other rural counties, wind farms rank among the top 10 property taxpayers, contributing between 38% and 69% of tax revenue. The construction and operation of these projects also bring local jobs in trucking, concrete work and electrical services, boosting small-town businesses. The U.S. wind industry supports over 300,000 U.S. jobs across construction, manufacturing, operations and other roles connected to the industry, according to the American Clean Power Association. Renewable energy has been widely expected to continue to grow along with rising energy demand. In 2024, 93% of all new electricity generating capacity was wind, solar or energy storage, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration expected a similar percentage in 2025 as of June. Solar can cut power costs on the farm Solar energy is also boosting farm finances. Farmers use rooftop panels on barns and ground-mounted systems to power irrigation pumps, grain dryers and cold storage facilities, cutting their power costs. Some farmers have adopted agrivoltaics – dual-use systems that grow crops beneath solar panels. The panels provide shade, helping conserve water, while creating a second income path. These projects often cultivate pollinator-friendly plants, vegetables such as lettuce and spinach, or even grasses for grazing sheep, making the land productive for both food and energy. Federal grants and tax credits that were significantly expanded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act helped make the upfront costs of solar installations affordable. However, the federal spending bill signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, rolled back many clean energy incentives. It phases down tax credits for distributed solar projects, particularly those under 1 megawatt, which include many farm‑scale installations, and sunsets them entirely by 2028. It also eliminates bonus credits that previously supported rural and low‑income areas. Without these credits, the upfront cost of solar power could be out of reach for some farmers, leaving them paying higher energy costs. At a 2024 conference organized by the Institute of Sustainability, Energy and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I work as a research economist, farmers emphasized the importance of tax credits and other economic incentives to offset the upfront cost of solar power systems. What's being lost The cuts to federal incentives include terminating the Production Tax Credit for new projects placed in service after Dec. 31, 2027, unless construction begins by July 4, 2026, and is completed within a tight time frame. The tax credit pays eligible wind and solar facilities approximately 2.75 cents per kilowatt-hour over 10 years, effectively lowering the cost of renewable energy generation. Ending that tax credit will likely increase the cost of production, potentially leading to higher electricity prices for consumers and fewer new projects coming online. The changes also accelerate the phase‑out of wind power tax credits. Projects must now begin construction by July 4, 2026, or be in service before the end of 2027 to qualify for any credit. Meanwhile, the Investment Tax Credit, which covers 30% of installed cost for solar and other renewables, faces similar limits: Projects must begin by July 4, 2026, and be completed by the end of 2027 to claim the credits. The bill also cuts bonuses for domestic components and installations in rural or low‑income locations. These adjustments could slow new renewable energy development, particularly smaller projects that directly benefit rural communities. While many existing clean energy agreements will remain in place for now, the rollback of federal incentives threatens future projects and could limit new income streams. It also affects manufacturing and jobs in those industries, which some rural communities rely on. Renewable energy also powers rural economies Renewable energy benefits entire communities, not just individual farmers. Wind and solar projects contribute millions of dollars in tax revenue. For example, in Howard County, Iowa, wind turbines generated $2.7 million in property tax revenue in 2024, accounting for 14.5% of the county's total budget and helping fund rural schools, public safety and road improvements. In some rural counties, clean energy is the largest new source of economic activity, helping stabilize local economies otherwise reliant on agriculture's unpredictable income streams. These projects also support rural manufacturing – such as Iowa turbine blade factories like TPI Composites, which just reopened its plant in Newton, and Siemens Gamesa in Fort Madison, which supply blades for GE and Siemens turbines. The tax benefits in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act helped boost those industries – and the jobs and local tax revenue they bring in. On the solar side, rural companies like APA Solar Racking, based in Ohio, manufacture steel racking systems for utility-scale solar farms across the example of how renewable energy has helped boost farm incomes and keep farmers on their land. As rural America faces economic uncertainty and climate pressures, I believe homegrown renewable energy offers a practical path forward. Wind and solar aren't just fueling the grid; they're helping keep farms and rural towns alive.
E&E News
24-07-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Lobbyists spent millions to save green energy. Wins were few.
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. Advertisement '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.
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."
