Latest news with #GreenNewDeal
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Florida's solar boom could face federal road block if tax credit eliminated
The Brief Florida just became No. 2 in the U.S. for solar power capacity, surpassing California. A federal budget bill may soon eliminate the 30% tax credit homeowners get for installing solar panels. The bill has passed the House and is now in the Senate, where solar advocates hope key changes are made. TAMPA, Fla. - Florida has seen a massive surge in solar energy, with the state now producing enough solar power to run more than 2 million homes. Nearly 30,000 homeowners installed solar panels this year, taking advantage of a 30% federal tax credit that offsets costs — often saving homeowners thousands of dollars. What we know But that incentive is now at risk. A large federal budget bill coined the "Big Beautiful Bill" moving through Congress includes provisions to eliminate the solar tax credit entirely. The legislation has already cleared the House and is expected to pass the Senate this month. Follow FOX 13 on YouTube What they're saying Solar advocates like Stephen Smith, the CEO of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, warn the move could devastate the solar industry. "Are we really going to, as a nation, just destroy what is one of the biggest booms in clean energy?" Smith said. "It's really just going to kneecap the solar industry in Florida, pull the rug out from under the ability for solar to continue to grow, particularly in the residential sector." The other side The push to cut the solar tax credit comes as part of the Trump administration's broader effort to dismantle pieces of the Green New Deal, which was backed by former President Joe Biden. READ:State testing for possible blue-green algae at Lake Crago in Polk County "I will stop Biden's trillions of dollars in wasteful spending and rapidly terminate the Green New Scam," President Trump has said. The White House press secretary echoed that this year, saying cutting this funding would save Americans tens of millions of dollars. The Source The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Evyn Moon. WATCH FOX 13 NEWS: STAY CONNECTED WITH FOX 13 TAMPA: Download the FOX Local app for your smart TV Download FOX Local mobile app:Apple |Android Download the FOX 13 News app for breaking news alerts, latest headlines Download the SkyTower Radar app Sign up for FOX 13's daily newsletter
Washington Post
23-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Climate dollars gushed to red states. Now senators are in a bind.
Donald Trump campaigned last year on reversing what he called the 'Green New Scam,' but Republican senators now must grapple with the reality behind the slogan: cutting hundreds of billions of dollars of clean energy subsidies that are overwhelmingly flowing to red states. The House advanced a tax measure early Thursday that sets the stage for an epic lobbying battle in the Senate over the future of U.S. energy. Factories that would manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and other crucial pieces of America's energy future as envisioned by former president Joe Biden and Democrats are on the chopping block.
Epoch Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
China's Solar Firms Face Potential Tax Credit Freeze Under House ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
Chinese clean energy companies would be excluded from tax benefits they enjoyed under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), should the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, currently considered by the U.S. Congress, become law. The act, a budget reconciliation package aimed to implement President Donald Trump's policy agenda, was passed by the House of Representatives early Thursday by one vote. China solar importers are asking the Senate to change course in their version of the bill. The IRA, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, is often dubbed the 'Green New Deal.' It provided tax write-offs to clean energy producers and manufacturers, primarily of EV batteries, battery storage, solar, and wind. For China, the IRA was mostly a solar story. China is the world's No. 1 solar manufacturer. Its solar companies account for eight out of the top 10 globally, according to researchers at Since the law, no other country has invested more in solar projects in the United States than China. Related Stories 5/22/2025 5/22/2025 At least seven Chinese solar companies have announced more than a billion dollars in combined investments into new or existing solar projects in states across the country. Prior to the enactment of the IRA, only Chinese solar multinational Jinko Solar, one of the biggest solar companies in the world, had a factory in Jacksonville, Florida. But since 2022, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, New Mexico, and Arizona have been added to the mix. It is unclear what will become of these Chinese solar investments. None of the companies has made any pronouncements at this time. However, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), a trade group that counts Chinese solar companies as members, SEIA president Abigail Ross Hopper never mentioned China, but called changes to the IRA 'willfully ignorant of the fact that deploying solar … is the only way the U.S. power grid can meet the demand of American consumers, businesses, and innovation.' Hopper later went on to say that without solar, of which China is a dominant force, the United States will see higher electricity bills and 'communities nationwide will face blackouts.' Still, amid record solar deployment over the last several years, U.S. electricity rates have gone from 12.65 cents per kilowatt hour for residential use in 2015 to 16.48 cents by 2024, What Would Change for Chinese Solar? Under the new bill, Chinese companies, the dominant force in U.S. solar under the IRA, would lose the tax credits that made it attractive for companies to invest in solar. Congress had already exempted so-called 'foreign entities of concern' from tax benefits in the CHIPS Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Foreign entities of concern are companies from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, or companies with close ties to those governments via corporate management, board members, and investment. However, with the exception of electric vehicle battery components from China, Congress did not apply the same rules to the IRA. The House-passed bill would change all that for China. By applying foreign entity restrictions to the ' If the Senate keeps the language in this bill intact, Chinese-made solar would no longer qualify for 45Y credits beginning in 2026. Chinese solar manufacturers like Jinko in Florida and LONGi Green Energy Technology in Ohio will no longer be able to write off manufacturing costs under the 45x rule, likely by 2027. The Senate could, in theory, change these time frames before sending the Act to the president's desk. Once Trump signs the Act into law, China will no longer qualify for what has amounted to a 'double subsidy'—tax breaks from the United States, plus subsidies and other benefits given to parent companies by Beijing and provincial governments back home. Last year, political risk and business intelligence firm Horizon Advisory warned in a 'America stands at the precipice of a once in a generation opportunity to seize energy independence and the corresponding boons for security and economic development that accompany a resurgence of U.S. production,' report authors wrote. 'Those opportunities risk being wasted if a short term trade off is made to allow Chinese state-backed players to exploit U.S. industrial policy.' From NTD News
Politico
20-05-2025
- Business
- Politico
Mike Johnson's very busy afternoon
Presented by Good Tuesday afternoon. Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill this morning and did what he does best: browbeat, threatened and otherwise demanded that congressional Republicans submit to his will. In one of the more memorable quotes of the whole 'big, beautiful bill' saga, Trump told House Republicans, 'Don't fuck around with Medicaid.' And he urged the blue-state SALT crew to 'leave it alone' and take the offer on the table. It wasn't enough. Members of key holdout factions left HC-5 and told reporters they plan to continue pressing for a better deal. That adds up to a busy day ahead for Speaker Mike Johnson. He already has White House aides James Blair and James Braid planted in his office, ready for members to shuttle in and out through the afternoon and beyond. Hard-right Reps. Andy Harris and Chip Roy just walked in a moment ago. Johnson is also set to brief senators at their policy lunch with a 'progress report,' according to GOP Whip John Barrasso. The speaker said his message will be simple: Time for the Senate to swallow what the House coughs up. (Good luck with that.) Besides the SALT concerns and hard-liners' focus on additional Medicaid cuts, clean-energy incentives remain in flux, our Josh Siegel reports. Inflation Reduction Act tax credits didn't come up in this morning conference meeting with Trump but Budget Chair Jodey Arrington said the question of whether to scale them back sooner remains unsolved even as Trump 'has been crystal clear he wants the Green New Deal tax credits gone.' The clock is ticking on Johnson. House Rules is set to come in at 1 a.m. to start processing the bill; don't be surprised if that meeting gavels in then goes into recess as Republicans try to finalize legislative text. Johnson told us this past hour that he's keeping mum in the meantime: 'I'm not going to comment on anything right now, because I got so much going on.' Be sure to follow Inside Congress Live for all the latest. WHAT'S STILL COMING TODAY: House Judiciary has an ICE oversight hearing — worth watching in light of charges looming for Rep. LaMonica McIver — at 2 p.m. ... Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies at Senate Appropriations at 2 p.m. ICYMI: High-stakes CRA fight incoming — Senate Republicans will move this week to nix California's vehicle emission waivers, per Senate Majority Leader John Thune this morning, setting up a clash with Democrats over the chamber's rules. Thune declined to detail how Republicans will get the resolution to a final vote, saying that it's still a 'little early,' Jordain Carney reports. McIver claps back at Trump's charges — The New Jersey Democrat condemned new federal charges against her as 'political intimidation,' report Nicholas Wu and Hailey Fuchs. 'I'm looking forward to my day in court,' she told reporters while leaving a Democratic Caucus meeting this morning. Her comments come less than 24 hours after the Trump administration announced charges for her involvement in a chaotic scrum at a New Jersey ICE detention center earlier this month.
Forbes
20-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Offshore Wind Reprieve? Trump Allows Restart Of $5 Billion Project
Supply ship visits wind farm near Norfolk, U.K. PA Images via Getty Images Like a 180-degree shift in the winds, the Department of Interior on Monday reversed its order from April for Norwegian energy giant Equinor to halt work on the $5 billion Empire Wind project. The venture – which will feature dozens of turbines dotting 80,000 acres of Atlantic Ocean 15 miles southeast off Long Island, New York – had been in limbo for weeks, and was costing Equinor $50 million a week to keep 10 ships floating on site. Now they can get back to work. In a statement Monday Equinor CEO Anders Opedal thanked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for 'constructive collaboration' with the Trump administration over the issue. The halt work order from the Dept. of Interior followed on a January 20 directive from President Donald Trump ending all offshore wind leasing and permitting pending an investigation into 'deficiencies' in the Biden Administration's practices, 'the consequences of which may lead to grave harm' to marine navigation, national security, and 'marine mammals.' It was hard for Equinor to believe. They had painstakingly navigated federal and New York state regulations since leasing the tract in 2017. And so far work has been 30% completed, with foundations set in the seafloor for turbines so massive that the tips of their blades will slice the skies 900 feet above the waves (nearly as tall as the Chrysler Building), and harvest ocean breezes to generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 500,000 New York City homes. Gearing up for Empire Wind, Equinor created 1,500 jobs and invested $900 million in rebuilding the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal to serve as a staging area for offshore work. After the halt to Empire Wind, Gov. Kathy Hochul had said she would 'not allow this federal overreach to stand.' New York is among 17 states that have sued over Trump's Jan. 20 memo, lambasting the need for 'an amorphous, redundant, extra-statutory, and multi-agency review of unknown duration.' It's unclear what concessions, if any, the president extracted from Hochul. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to see the resurrection of the defunct Constitution gas pipeline project that would carry natural gas from Pennsylvania to western New York. It's an odd change of heart from the Administration. In April Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum promised that no wind permitting would resume until 'further reviews' and that his office had discovered an unpublished Biden-era report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that he said detailed offshore wind's harmful effects on whales, fisheries, and shipping. On May 4 Burgum tweeted that tax dollars would "no longer be wasted on intermittent and costly Green New Deal wind projects." Last week Senator Chuck Schumer complained that Interior refused to share copies of the secret NOAA report. Schumer, in a speech, lambasted Trump for wanting to even the score after waging an ultimately unsuccessful battle to prevent erection of 11 offshore turbines visible from his Trump International golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. 'He fought to kill it, he lost,' said Schumer. 'So now he's taking it out on all offshore wind to the detriment of American energy needs.' Equinor's Opedal also thanked Schumer for his support. *** But you can't just blame Trump for the pending demise of offshore wind in America. Long before his reelection, the industry was having no problem falling apart on its own. In 2023 Avangrid canceled its 800 mw Park City project offshore Connecticut. It was supposed to provide 14% of the state's power, but became 'unfinanceable' at higher interest rates. Also in 2023 Orsted canceled its 2,400 megawatt Ocean Wind I & II project offshore New Jersey. And in 2024 Orsted also withdrew from developing the 966 mw Skipjack I & II off Maryland. Orsted in January 2025 took $1.7 billion of charges against earnings due to the impairment of its Sunrise wind off New York's Montauk. Portugal's EDP Renewables and France's Engie have put on hold a Massachusetts project called South Coast Wind. Also halted, the Icebreaker project planned for Lake Erie. Surfers in Rhode Island watch waves pass Block Island Wind, America's first offshore wind farm, built 2016. Boston Globe via Getty Images Oil giants BP and Shell have also backed away from wind. BP wrote down the value of all its U.S. offshore wind ventures and hived them off into a JV with Japan's Jera. Shell in March exited its Atlantic Shores offshore project with EDF Renewables and took a $1 billion charge after Trump's Environmental Protection Agency withdrew the venture's air permits. Trump had earlier said he wanted to see Atlantic Shores 'dead and gone.' Even Equinor in early 2024 canceled its Empire Wind 2 expansion plan, citing 'inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions.' But the most dramatic illustration of the state of offshore wind in America had to be the disintegration last July of a 350-foot-long blade on a G.E. Halide X turbine at the Vineyard Wind project. For days, pieces of the fiberglass blade fell into the Atlantic then washed up as sharp chunks on the beaches of Nantucket. In response, G.E. Vernova reexamined 8,300 ultrasound images per blade and physically inspected them with 'crawler' drones, before deciding in late 2024 to remove some faulty blades already installed and strengthen others. G.E. Vernova subsequently delayed the commercialization of its even bigger 18 mw Halide wind turbines, to the consternation of developers planning to deploy them, like billionaire Michael Polsky's Invenergy, which now has no turbines for its planned 2,400 mw Leading Light project off New Jersey. In 2024 G.E. Vernova's wind turbine business lost nealy $600mm on $10 billion revenues. It's ironic, notes analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith at Jefferies, that the outlook for offshore wind is deteriorating despite a giant projected increase in U.S. electricity demand. That's because those new sources of demand – from gigascale artificial intelligence data centers – require 24/7 reliable power, which intermittent wind can't deliver. They also want more power cheap and fast – of which offshore wind is neither. According to analysts, Orsted and Eversource are looking to raise $8.5 billion for its Sunrise project, which would price it at $9,200 per kilowatt and $150 per megawatt-hour. Perhaps the most expensive non-nuclear power project in history. *** So beyond the anti-green political posturing, could the Trump administration really have legitimate reasons to bring to a full stop an industry already on life support? A report from the Government Accountability Office, commissioned by Congress and released April 14, is not encouraging. Authored by 23 experts who consulted 22 tribal groups, among other stakeholders, the GAO report details numerous gaps in oversight leading up to the wave of wind farm approvals. Lingering concerns include: turbine blade interference with radar systems for defense and maritime navigation; injury to marine creatures from noisy seafloor pile driving; blocked access to commercial and recreational fishing; and the ongoing deaths of countless birds and bats. The report further criticized the Biden Interior department for insufficient consultation with tribal stakeholders. It says several tribal groups never heard back from Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management explaining the reasoning behind why 'tribal suggestions were not incorporated or that consensus could not be attained.' Tribes are bothered by changes to the uninterrupted horizon and blinking red lights on the turbines that 'may disrupt traditional prayer and dance ceremonies.' Also mentioned by the GAO are the 500 scallopers and fisherman of the port of New Bedford, Mass., who bring in the most highly valued catch in the country, valued at $380 million, and whose gear is at risk of entanglement with newly installed subsea infrastructure and transmission cables. To be sure, the offshore wind ramp-up brought big investment to New England's ports, with Massachusetts funding 7 redevelopment projects for $180 million including $45 million for New Bedford. Meanwhile, an 11-state Fisheries Mitigation Project is still trying to figure out how to establish a process by which the wind developers will compensate fishermen for messing up their industry. And there's not yet any absolution on the issue of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, a couple dozen of which have died in recent years, out of some 370 remaining. While fisheries scientists from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have said in published reports that they do not anticipate any death or serious injury of whales from offshore wind activity, other independent researchers believe that pile driving, acoustic seafloor testing and added ship traffic are endangering the whales. Dominion Energy is in litigation with environmental groups alleging that permits for its 176-turbine Commercial Virginia Offshore Wind project 25 miles off Virginia Beach ought to be revoked to save the whales. Whale lovers can hope that Congress, in its final version of the ongoing budget reconciliation bill, might deter future investment in offshore wind by rolling back and sunsetting federal green energy subsidies like those enshrined in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that enable developers to take tax credits of up to 40% of the cost of building projects. For example, under existing law, when and if they finish the accident-plagued $4 billion Vineyard Wind project developers Avangrid and Copenhagen Investment could get back $1.6 billion in tax credits. According to analysis from consultancy WoodMackenzie, the credits would stay at full value for projects completed by 2028, then phase out entirely by 2032. The Netherlands this year made its first attempt to conduct an offshore wind lease under a new zero-subsidy model. No developers were interested.
