Good news from Congress this week where Republican leaders are standing up to president Trump. Here is hope that essential programs from the Biden presidency to reduce the impacts of global warming will survive.
It is good to hear that there are republicans leaders who are willing to speak truth to power on such a controversial topic. A growing group of Republicans want to protect Biden-era tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energy.
President Trump has made dismantling federal efforts to address climate change a signature part of his agenda, eliminating environmental regulations, withholding congressionally approved funding, firing workers, halting permitting for wind energy developments and fast-tracking fossil fuel projects.
But the clean energy tax credits, which were signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, have helped spur a boom in manufacturing investment in the United States, especially in Republican districts.
Now, as Mr. Trump pushes Congress to slash federal spending to pay for broad tax cuts, some House Republicans from districts that got billions of dollars in investment from the tax credits have begun a campaign to keep them.
These congressional Republicans are making the case that supporting renewable energy is squarely in line with Mr. Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, despite the president’s rallying against what he calls the “green new scam.”
Last week, a group of 21 House Republicans wrote a letter to Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, asking him to preserve the credits. And in recent weeks, several groups of conservative environmentalists and business leaders have traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress on the issue.
“To meet President Trump’s campaign promises of bringing back manufacturing and taking energy production at home seriously, we need to look at an all-the-above approach to these things,” Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York, who organized the letter, said in an interview. “These credits have been helping do that.”
President Trump has not specifically said which of the credits he wants to eliminate, but he regularly talks about repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. The White House declined a request for comment.
The credits, which offer financial incentives to companies producing renewable power and sustainable aviation fuel, making components for clean technology and working to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, have helped push billions of dollars into domestic factory construction in recent years. The United States recorded more than $315 billion in clean energy investments last year, according to the International Energy Agency.
About 80 percent of the investments tied to the bill have gone to Republican congressional districts, according to an analysis by Atlas Public Policy, a research firm. They include battery plants across the Southeast, a lithium mine in Nevada and wind farms in Texas.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has said he wants to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act, and many Republicans in Congress support eliminating all incentives for clean energy.
Energy companies have also hired prominent Republican lobbyists in recent months, with some asking for help preserving the tax credits. And even some fossil fuel companies — including Occidental Petroleum, which has a growing carbon capture business — have come out in support of the tax credits.
Supporters of the tax credits argue that eliminating the incentives would harm consumers. The House Republicans’ letter claims that repealing the tax credits “would increase utility bills the very next day.”
A report from the Clean Energy Buyers Association, an industry trade group, found that repealing two of the tax credits “would raise average U.S. residential electricity prices by nearly 7 percent by 2026,” amounting to an annual increase of more than $110 for the average American residential customer.
Now many members of Congress and business leaders are scrambling to protect projects that are already in the works. Companies plan large investments over long time horizons, and many are counting on the tax credits. Eliminating them overnight would be disruptive, supporters say, and would discourage other companies from investing in the United States.
Some representatives in congress are skeptical that if a spending package comes to a vote and the clean energy tax credits are not protected, House Republicans will vote against their own party.
“I really struggle to believe that if we get all the way to the point of a floor vote on a full reconciliation bill in the House, is anyone really going to step forward and take all that heat from Trump, all that heat from the rest of the party, and vote no?” said Mr. Miller, the analyst. “That’s pretty hard.”
Note:
Information for this story came from stories in the New York Times in March 2025.
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