U.S. House Slashes Clean Energy Tax Credits, Boosts Climate Pollution by a Billion Tonnes Per Year

U.S. House Slashes Clean Energy Tax Credits, Boosts Climate Pollution by a Billion Tonnes Per Year

Full Story: The Energy Mix

 Mitchell Beer

Mitchell Beer/The Energy Mix

By a 215-214 vote last Thursday, the United States House of Representatives adopted a massive tax bill that eliminates hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits to households and businesses and increases the country’s climate pollution by more than a billion tonnes per year in 2035.

The House bill, which must still be taken up by the U.S. Senate, guts key elements of the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats managed to shoehorn through Congress in 2022. Tax credits under the IRA were meant to continue through 2032, but Yale Climate Connections reports that the following measures will be phased out at the end of this year:

• For individuals: Credits for clean vehicles, used clean vehicles, alternative fuel vehicle refuelling, energy efficient home improvements, and residential clean energy;

• For businesses: Commercial clean vehicles, new energy-efficient homes, and clean hydrogen production.

“The bill has climate implications beyond gutting clean energy incentives,” Yale Climate Connection writes, with measures that eliminate the federal tax on methane pollution and speed up approval for new fossil fuel projects. “The bill also proposes major cuts to Medicaid, thus limiting access to health care for many vulnerable people, even as climate change increases health risks from weather disasters, insect-borne diseases, and extreme heat. And if passed, the bill would eliminate environmental and climate justice block grants.”

“This policy about-face couldn’t come at a worse time: Energy prices have surged 30% since 2020,” Ari Matusiak, CEO of the non-profit Rewiring America, said in a statement. “Maintaining these tax credits gives American households an opportunity to offset these price hikes.”

Climate author and Third Act co-founder Bill McKibben has a summary of the day on his The Crucial Years blog.

The House measure, literally titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, eliminates technology-neutral clean energy tax credits for projects that go into service after 2028, or begin construction more than 60 days after the bill is adopted, Utility Dive writes, while allowing longer lead times for nuclear projects. It also creates a “truly untenable” situation for renewable energy developers by tightening restrictions on “foreign entities of concern” like China, one analyst told the industry publication. And it shuts down a tax credit transfer arrangement under the IRA that helped small and medium projects arrange financing and previously had support from Republicans as well as Democrats.

The bill “abruptly dismantles bipartisan, long-standing tax policy that has catalyzed billions in private investment for affordable, reliable energy while sparking a rebirth of manufacturing across America,” said Heather O’Neill, president and CEO of Advanced Energy United. “If enacted as written, this bill will weaken our power system and send shockwaves throughout the U.S. economy by raising electricity prices, killing tens of thousands of jobs, and ceding energy dominance to China.”

“This unworkable legislation is willfully ignorant of the fact that deploying solar and storage is the only way the U.S. power grid can meet the demand of American consumers, businesses, and innovation,” the Solar Energy Industries Association said in a statement. “If this bill becomes law, America will effectively surrender the AI race to China and communities nationwide will face blackouts.”

As recently as March, 21 House Republicans were urging their colleagues to protect the IRA tax credits from a premature phaseout. Last week, 14 of the original signatories were still standing behind the credits, Inside Climate News reports.

In the end, none of them voted against the bill. One of them, Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) missed the vote, but had planned to support the measure.

Related: Moderate Republicans Defended Biden’s Climate Law—Then Voted to Repeal It

“They’re feeling pressure to go along with whatever Trump wants and whatever the [Republican House] leadership wants,” David Spence, a professor and energy law specialist at the University of Texas at Austin, told Inside Climate. “What’s putting counter pressure on them is that for some of them that means giving up a lot of jobs and money” that their districts received thanks to the IRA. “And for others, it’s about how far they can be pushed away from their principles.”

“These clean energy tax credits have been a game changer for communities across the nation, including in the districts of the Republican representatives,” said BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director Jason Walsh. “The GOP caved to the MAGA extremists in their party so they could screw over America’s workers to stuff the pockets of billionaires.”

Princeton University associate professor and energy transition veteran Jesse Jenkins says the bill will:

• Increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 500 million tonnes per year in 2030 and more than a billion tonnes per year in 2035;

• Raise U.S. household and business energy expenditures by US$25 billion per year in 2030 and more than $50 billion in 2035;

• Increase average U.S. energy costs by roughly $100 to $160 per household per year in 2030 $270 to $415 per household per year in 2035;

• Reduce U.S. electricity and clean fuels production by a cumulative $1 trillion through 2035;

• Imperil $522 billion in announced but pending investments in U.S. clean energy supply and manufacturing;

• Reduce annual electric vehicle sales by roughly 40% in 2030 and “end America’s battery manufacturing boom”;

• “Substantially slow” new grid additions, raising national average retail electricity rates and monthly household electricity bills by about 9% in 2030, and up to 17% in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and swing state Pennsylvania;

• Kill off the country’s emerging clean hydrogen, carbon dioxide management, and nuclear power sectors.

Now, after Donald Trump campaigned last year against what he called the “Green New Scam”, Republicans in the U.S. Senate “must grapple with the reality behind the slogan: cutting hundreds of billions of dollars of clean energy subsidies that are flowing to their own states,” the Washington Post reports.

“The majority of the government spending is creating jobs and manufacturing capacity in red states,” Jason Bordoff, founding director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy y, told the Post. “So this puts Republicans, generally and now in the Senate, in the position of having to choose whether to support the party line or maintain support for government programs that are creating a lot of economic activity in their states.”

After the House adopted the bill, the U.S. fossil lobby weighed in in support of a measure it said would “help restore American energy dominance.”

“By preserving competitive tax policies, beginning to reverse the ‘methane fee,’ opening [oil and gas] lease sales, and advancing important progress on permitting, this historic legislation is a win for our nation’s energy future,” American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Senate to strengthen pro-investment provisions and keep America at the forefront of energy innovation.”

But despite the U.S. president’s loud mutterings about his “Drill, Baby, Drill” agenda, the country’s fracking executives say the combination of higher costs due to Trump’s tariff wars and lower prices due to higher OPEC+ output will likely drive down U.S. production, the Financial Times reports this week.

“We’re on high alert at this point,” Devon Energy CEO Clay Gaspar told investors earlier in May. “Everything is on the table as we move into a more distressed environment.”

The Beach Boys - Live in Concert: 50th Anniversary FULL CONCERT HD - great production

What a great production and a monument to time....well done!

Millions of People Depend on the Great Lakes’ Water Supply. Trump Decimated the Lab Protecting It.

by Anna Clark

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Just one year ago, JD Vance was a leading advocate of the Great Lakes and the efforts to restore the largest system of freshwater on the face of the planet.

As a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance called the lakes “an invaluable asset” for his home state. He supported more funding for a program that delivers “the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem” so that the Great Lakes would be protected “for generations to come.”

But times have changed.

This spring, Vance is vice president, and President Donald Trump’s administration is imposing deep cuts and new restrictions, upending the very restoration efforts that Vance once championed. With the peak summer season just around the corner, Great Lakes scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms, which can kill animals and sicken people.

Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.

In addition to a delayed launch, problems with personnel, supplies, vessel support and real-time data sharing have created doubts about the team’s ability to operate the buoys, said Gregory Dick, director of the NOAA cooperative institute at the University of Michigan that partners with the lab. Both the lab and institute operate out of a building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was custom built as NOAA’s hub in the Great Lakes region, and both provide staff to the algal blooms team.

“This has massive impacts on coastal communities,” Dick said.

Multiple people who have worked with the lab also told ProPublica that there are serious gaps in this year’s monitoring of algal blooms, which are often caused by excess nutrient runoff from farms. Data generated by the lab’s boats and buoys, and publicly shared, could be limited or interrupted, they said.

That data has helped to successfully avoid a repeat of a 2014 crisis in Toledo, Ohio, when nearly half a million people were warned to not drink the water or even touch it.

If the streams of information are cut off, “stakeholders will be very unhappy,” said Bret Collier, a branch chief at the lab who oversaw the federal scientists that run the harmful algal bloom program for the Great Lakes. He was fired in the purge of federal probationary workers in February.

The lab has lost about 35% of its 52-member workforce since February, according to the president of the lab’s union, and it was not allowed to fill several open positions. The White House released preliminary budget recommendations last week that would make significant cuts to NOAA. The budget didn’t provide details, but indicated the termination of “a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy” of ending “‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”

An earlier document obtained by ProPublica and reported widely proposed a 74% funding cut to NOAA’s research office, home of the Great Lakes lab.

Vance’s office didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about how federal cuts have affected Great Lakes research. The White House also didn’t respond to messages.

Municipal water leaders in Cleveland and Toledo have written public letters of support on behalf of the lab, advocating for the continuation of its work because of how important its tools and resources are for drinking water management.

In a statement to ProPublica, staffers from Toledo’s water system credited the Great Lakes lab and NOAA for alerting it to potential blooms near its intake days ahead of time. This has saved the system significant costs, they said, and helped it avoid feeding excess chemicals into the water.

“The likelihood of another 2014 ‘don’t drink the water’ advisory has been minimized to almost nothing by additional vigilance” from both the lab and local officials, they said.

Remaining staff have had to contend with not only a lack of capacity but also tight limits on spending and travel.

Several people who have worked in or with the lab said that the staff was hampered by strict credit card limits imposed on government employees as part of the effort to reduce spending by the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been spearheaded by presidential adviser Elon Musk.

“The basic scientific supplies that we use to provide the local communities with information on algal bloom toxicity — our purchasing of them is being restricted based on the limitations currently being put in by the administration,” Collier said.

NOAA and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the agency, didn’t respond to messages from ProPublica. Neither did a DOGE official. Eight U.S. senators, including the minority leader, sent a letter in March to a top NOAA leader inquiring about many of the changes, but they never received a response.

The department described its approach to some of its cuts when it eliminated nearly $4 million in funding for the NOAA cooperative institute at Princeton University and emphasized the importance of avoiding wasteful government spending. ProPublica has reported on how the loss of research grants at Princeton and the more significant defunding of the NOAA lab it works with would be a serious setback for weather and climate preparedness.

A number of the staffing losses at the Great Lakes lab came when employees accepted offers of early retirement or voluntary separation; others were fired probationary workers targeted by DOGE across the government. That includes Collier, who had 24 years of professional experience, largely as a research professor, before he was hired last year into a position that, according to the lab’s former director, had been difficult to fill.

A scientist specializing in the toxic algal blooms was also fired. She worked on the team for 14 years through the cooperative institute before accepting a federal position last year, which made her probationary, too.

A computer scientist who got real-time data onto the lab’s website — and the only person who knew how to push out the weekly sampling data on harmful algal blooms — was also fired. She was probationary because she too was hired for a federal position after working with the institute.

And because of a planned retirement, no one holds the permanent position of lab director, though there is an acting director. The lab isn’t allowed to fill any positions due to a federal hiring freeze.

At the same time, expected funds for the lab's cooperative institute are delayed, which means, Dick said, it may soon lay off staff, including people on the algal blooms team.

In March, Cleveland’s water commissioner wrote a letter calling for continued support for the Great Lakes lab and other NOAA-funded operations in the region, saying that access to real-time forecasts for Lake Erie are “critically important in making water treatment decisions” for more than 1.3 million citizens.

In 2006, there was a major outbreak of hypoxia, an issue worsened by algal blooms where oxygen-depleted water can become corrosive, discolored and full of excess manganese, which is a neurotoxin at high levels. Cleveland Water collaborated with the lab on developing a “groundbreaking” hypoxia forecast model, said Scott Moegling, who worked for both the Cleveland utility and Ohio’s drinking water regulatory agency.

“I knew which plants were going to get hit,” Moegling said. “I knew about when, and I knew what the treatment we would need would be, and we could staff accordingly.”

The American Meteorological Society, in partnership with the National Weather Association, spotlighted this warning system in its statement in support of NOAA research, saying that it helps “keep drinking water potable in the Great Lakes region.”

Collier, the former branch chief, said that quality data may be lacking this year, not just for drinking water suppliers, but also the U.S. Coast Guard, fisheries, shipping companies, recreational businesses and shoreline communities that rely on it to navigate risk. In response to a recent survey of stakeholders, the president of a trade organization serving Great Lakes cargo vessels said that access to NOAA’s real-time data “is critically important to the commercial shipping fleet when making navigation decisions.”

Because federal law requires NOAA to monitor harmful algal blooms, the cuts may run against legal obligations, several current and former workers told ProPublica. The blooms program was “federally mandated to be active every single day, without exception,” Collier said.

The 2024 bloom in Lake Erie was the earliest on record. At its peak, it covered 550 square miles. Warming temperatures worsen the size and frequency of algal blooms. While the field season was historically only about 90 days, Collier said, last year the team was deployed for 211 days.

As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is typically first to show signs of problems. But it’s also an emblem of environmental stewardship, thanks to its striking recovery from unchecked industrial pollution. The lake was once popularly declared “dead.” A highly publicized fire inflamed a river that feeds into it. Even Dr. Seuss knocked it in the 1971 version of “The Lorax.” The book described fish leaving a polluted pond “in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”

But the rise of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA, and labs like the one protecting the Great Lakes, along with legislation that protected water from pollution, led to noticeable changes. By 1986, two Ohio graduate students had succeeded in persuading Theodor Geisel, the author behind Dr. Seuss, to revise future editions of his classic book.

“I should no longer be saying bad things about a body of water that is now, due to great civic and scientific effort, the happy home of smiling fish,” Geisel wrote to them.

Early this year, headlines out of the Midwest suggested that “Vance could be a game-changing Great Lakes advocate” and that he might “save the Great Lakes from Trump.”

A 2023 report to Congress about the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a popular funding mechanism for projects that protect the lakes, including the research lab’s, described the lab’s work on harmful algal blooms as one of its “success stories.” Last year, with Vance as a co-sponsor, an act to extend support for the funding program passed the Senate, but stalled in the House. Another bipartisan effort to reauthorize it launched in January.

Project 2025, the plan produced by the Heritage Foundation for Trump’s second term, recommended that the president consider whether NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

NOAA is “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” the plan said, and this industry’s mission “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

“That is not to say NOAA is useless,” it added, “but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”

When asked at his confirmation hearing in January if he agreed with Project 2025’s recommendation of dismantling NOAA, Howard Lutnick, head of the commerce department, said no.

One month later, the Great Lakes lab’s probationary staff got termination notices. That includes Nicole Rice, who spent a decade with NOAA. A promotion made her communications job vulnerable to the widespread firings of federal probationary workers.

In recent testimony to a Michigan Senate committee, Rice expressed deep concern about the future of the Great Lakes.

“It has taken over a century of bipartisan cooperation, investment and science to bring the Great Lakes back from the brink of ecological collapse,” Rice said. “But these reckless cuts could undo the progress in just a few short years, endangering the largest surface freshwater system in the world.”

Vernal Coleman contributed reporting.

Only two boats finish Swiftsure’s signature race - Victoria Times Colonist

Only two boats finish Swiftsure’s signature race - Victoria Times Colonist

Only two boats finish Swiftsure's signature race, just 10 minutes apart

Sir Isaac, skippered by John Bailey out of the Orcas Island Yacht Club, nipped Ged McLean’s Hana Mari from the Royal Victoria Yacht Club after a neck-and-neck final leg

Jeff Bell
about 14 hours ago

Racers position near the start of Swiftsure International Yacht Races at Clover Point on Saturday. DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST

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00:02:59

Just two of the seven sailboats in the 138.2-nautical-mile Swiftsure Lightship Classic finished Sunday due to light winds, separated by just 10 minutes as they crossed the finish line.

Sir Isaac, skippered by John Bailey out of the Orcas Island Yacht Club, nipped Ged McLean’s Hana Mari from the Royal Victoria Yacht Club after a neck-and-neck final leg, finishing around 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

The 80th Swiftsure event, which also included the Cape Flattery course at 101.9 nautical miles and the 78.7-nautical-mile Juan de Fuca Race, started Saturday morning with a total of 98 entries.

Final results in all races will be determined with a handicapping system that allows boats of different specifications and capabilities to compete against each other.

Event chair Kirk Palmer, who pulled double duty by sailing in the Cape Flattery race, said light winds at the start, combined with a flood tide flowing the opposite way of the racers, had most of the field anchored off Race Rocks and in Race Passage waiting for the tide to change just a few hours after the start.

“They would have arrived at Race Rocks or Race Passage by about noon or 12:30 on Saturday and basically had to anchor until 3 o’clock,” Palmer said.

While the tide issue has happened before, it’s a relatively rare occurrence, he said.

Palmer said winds, while low at the start, eventually rose to about eight to 10 knots from the west, then got as high as about 15 knots all the way to Cape Flattery, at the tip of Washington state.

He said his boat, Light Scout, finished the Cape Flattery course about 10:30 a.m. Sunday — far from record time.

“We’ve finished at 10:30 Saturday night before in the same race.”

Last year was much windier, with winds up to 25 knots at the start as opposed to two or three knots this year, Palmer said.

“It’s different every year, and it’s part of the game,” he said. “Once you get a weather report you’re strategically trying to figure out what’s the best route to get up the strait.”

There were just a few mishaps for the field of boats during the weekend, he said, including a few that hit rocks heading out from Race Rocks as they tried to avoid the current.

Palmer said that three or four boats “bumped off the bottom,” but didn’t sustain serious damage.

He said there will be a “debrief meeting” in about a week for the Swiftsure organizing team.

“We’ll try to make notes of some things that we can improve and talk about what went well,” he said.

After a bit of a break for the summer, organizing efforts for the 81st Swiftsure will begin in September, Palmer said.

Preliminary results from Swiftsure weekend are available at swiftsure.org/results/swiftsure-2025.

jbell@timescolonict.comroperties

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Swiftsure yacht races gets off to gentle start - Victoria Times Colonist

Swiftsure yacht races gets off to gentle start - Victoria Times Colonist Only a light breeze to help boats along when the race got underway.

Michael John Lo
a day ago

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1 / 4 Racers make their way past the Olympic Mountains during the Swiftsure International Yacht Race at Clover Point on Saturday. DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST

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00:03:20

The 80th Swiftsure Lightship Classic got off to a gentle start on Saturday as crews sought out the right combination of tide and wind to give them the edge in the largest competitive yachting event on North America’s west coast.

There was only a light breeze off Clover Point to help boats along when the race got underway at 9:05 a.m.

But the wind shifted south and began picking up slightly about half an hour later, just in time for a later group of vessels to make use of their colourful spinnaker sails.

The slow winds led to delays at the start for the Cape Flattery and Juan de Fuca races.

It very different from last year’s 25-knot, gear-busting winds that caused several skippers to call it quits shortly after the start of the race.

But light conditions come with challenges of their own.

Ged McLean, who is skippering the 43-feet Hanah Mari in the Lightship Classic race this year, said the complex currents, tides and conditions of Swiftsure means that it’s common even for experienced teams with a well-tuned boat to fail to finish the race.

People often drop out of the competition when they find out that there won’t be enough wind to get back to Ogden Point by the race deadline of midnight on Sunday, he said.

“Anyone who goes out and sails across the Strait is worthy of respect,” he said. “You’re racing against weather, you’re racing against the tide, you’re racing against other boats and you’re racing against yourself — because you’ve got to overcome your own fears and your prejudices.”

Out of the 98 competing vessels this year, seven are taking in the 138.2-nautical-mile Lightship Classic, Swiftsure’s marquee race.

98 yachts ready to set sail at Victoria's 80th annual Swiftsure Race - Oak Bay News

98 yachts ready to set sail at Victoria's 80th annual Swiftsure Race - Oak Bay News

Yachters enjoy the 75th Swiftsure International Yacht Race. (The Oak Bay News file photo)

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00:02:52

Dozens of yachts will fill the Strait of Juan de Fuca from May 23 to 25, ready to race for glory at the Swiftsure International Yacht Race. 

Hosted by the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, the annual event tests sailors’ endurance and strategy in three trials: the Swiftsure Lightship Classic (138 nautical miles), the Cape Flattery Race (100 nautical miles) and the Juan de Fuca Race (75 nautical miles).  

So far, 98 boats, operated by experienced amateurs and long-time professionals, are registered. 

While the Cape Flattery and Juan de Fuca races take between 10 and 15 hours to complete, the Lightship Classic is a 24- to 36-hour test, which means sailors race through the night. 

“Some nights you have surprisingly good visibility if there's not too much cloud cover and there's a moon out,” said Kirk Palmer, who oversees the event's organization. “Sometimes, if it's cloudy and it's kind of dark and the visibility is poor, you're blasting along and you basically can't see anything.” 

All three of the races begin just off Clover Point on May 24. The Lightship Classic starts at 9:05 a.m., Cape Flattery Race at 9:15 a.m., and the shortest race at 9:25 a.m.  

On the day prior, May 23, the Inner Harbour's gates will be open until 9 p.m. so the public can check out participating yachts and chat with racers. Starting at 7 p.m., a live band will play on the dock.

Palmer, who has competed in the Swiftsure more than 40 times, is one of the sailors taking part in this year’s middle-distance race. Part of what draws him and dozens of others to take part in the world-renowned events is the excitement they boast.

“It's funny – I think it's a diversion,” he said. “When we're racing, I'm not thinking about work or worrying. It's a getaway. We're just focused on the job at hand.” 

“I enjoy getting all my buddies together, people I've raced against, people I've raced with. We have a good time, you know,” he added.  

But it’s not all fun and games.

“When it's really windy, that's when it's challenging – just trying to keep the boat balanced and not flipping over on its side,” he said. “There are a lot of things you have to do at the same time. That's the most exciting part.” 

The shorter races end at the Inner Harbour on May 24, with the Lightship Classic racers coming in on May 25. Race officials in Esquimalt will keep track of boats crossing an invisible finish line between McLoughlin Point and the Ogden Point Breakwater. 

Last year’s winners are set to receive awards at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club on May 23, from 2 to 5 p.m.