The One Big Beautiful Bill Helps Deliver on Trump’s Promise to Terminate the Green Scam on Day One
It was Biden’s biggest “accomplishment.” The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which he later admitted had nothing to do with inflation (it actually did, just not in the direction the name suggested) but was really about dumping billions (really trillions) into subsidizing the green new scam. It was the biggest acceleration towards the “Net Zero” climate scam resulting in utilities across the country, especially here in Arizona, spamming the grid with unreliable energy generation such as solar, wind, and battery storage, driving up rates for utility customers while shattering reliability.
And President Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would terminate it on day one, instead committing to unleash American energy dominance, “drill, baby, drill”, and slash harmful regulations standing in the way of building affordable baseload generation. The recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” was the avenue to do the first.
What finally made it through Congress and was signed into law on July 4th terminated tax credits for electric vehicles, “energy efficient” home improvements, and residential solar this year. As for the much larger credits, those subsidizing grid scale solar and wind farms, it’s much more complicated.
The initial version coming out of the House came the closest to accomplishing what President Trump wanted. But in the Senate, things began to change. A critical element of the rollback in the House was a requirement that a project would have to “commence construction” within 60 days and be placed in service by 2028 to be eligible, when President Trump would still be in office. But this requirement was removed in initial Senate drafts, allowing, as energy expert Alex Epstein noted, for subsidies to continue until Trump’s 94th birthday.
What ended up passing was neither as bad as the initial Senate drafts, nor as strong as the House version. Instead of a “commence construction” and “placed in service” requirement to obtain the credits, the projects would either have to be placed into service by 2027 or “commence construction” within the next year. But that left a big question: what does “commence construction” mean?
Under the Obama administration, the Treasury Department had a definition that captured any project that spent at least 5% of their total costs. As Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling of Always On Energy point out, that would be like having a $2,500 bathroom remodeling project, purchasing a $125 vanity online, and considering yourself to have “commenced construction.” And, in the context of green new scam credits, that would mean projects could run to the trough and gulp up massive subsidies in the next few months that last for 10 years, simply by spending some money and not even touching the dirt once.
Thankfully, following passage, President Trump issued an executive order titled, “ENDING MARKET DISTORTING SUBSIDIES FOR UNRELIABLE, FOREIGN CONTROLLED ENERGY SOURCES” to prevent this language from being gamed to spam the grid with costly and unreliable “renewables.” Last month, the Treasury published that guidance, removing the 5% safe harbor, instead requiring construction of a “significant nature” before qualifying for credits. Meaning they would have to do things that actually resemble beginning construction – pouring concrete footings, building support structures for solar panels, etc… And they excluded all of the expenses these projects were likely counting on – environmental studies, grading, planning, etc…
If strictly enforced, this guidance could protect billions in tax dollars from being wasted on worthless projects around the country. Here in Arizona, dozens of projects are in the queue seeking to cover BLM lands to build massive solar, battery, and solar plus battery projects. Now to qualify for the credit, they will have to begin substantial work by June of next year, while also facing scrutiny from Secretary Burgum, who now must personally review and approve every proposed project. Already, the left is crying about projects in Arizona that will no longer be qualified to gobble up subsidies.
This is a huge step in the right direction. The Green New Scam has already cost taxpayers and ratepayers hundreds of billions and devasted grids across the country with alarming reliability concerns. Now it’s imperative that the Trump administration continue to hold a strict interpretation of the new guidance, that Secretary Burgum hit the brakes on approving any new projects, and that here in Arizona, our elected officials at the Corporation Commission take up the mantle to prevent utilities from raking up subsidies so they can later burden ratepayers with more rate hikes and blackouts.
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