How the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Will Affect Clean Energy Jobs

When President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, or OBBBA, into law earlier this month, he delivered on his pledge to end many forms of federal support for clean energy—or, as Trump calls it, the “green new scam.”

The OBBBA rapidly phases out most tax credits for renewable energy deployment and the manufacturing of clean energy equipment, batteries and electric vehicles while promoting fossil fuels. Most independent analyses of the bill’s energy impact forecast the loss of billions of dollars of planned investments.

Research firm Rhodium Group previously identified $522 billion worth of announced clean energy investments linked to the tax credits that are yet to come online—and could now be at risk. Trade groups for the cleantech sector warned that Congress was pulling the plug on jobs.

Jason Grumet, CEO of American Clean Power Association, or ACP, said in a statement that Congress was “disrupting the good faith investments of American companies that are powering our economy and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Solar Energy Industries Association CEO Abigail Ross Hopper called the bill “a significant step backwards for our nation’s energy economy at a time when we can least afford it.”

A few final-hour changes in the Senate eased the pain a bit, slightly extending the timeline for some companies to claim credits, but clean energy largely lost despite a vigorous campaign by companies in the sector and climate action groups.

The Fallout

Analysis by clean energy think tank Energy Innovation found that the bill threatened thousands of clean energy projects, likely resulting in the loss of 760,000 jobs in the sector by 2030. By reducing access to cheaper renewable energy, the OBBBA will also sharply increase household energy bills, the analysts found.

“It’s terrible,” Robbie Orvis, senior director of modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, told Newsweek. “It’s potentially hundreds of billions in investment that will be vaporized and the long-term ramifications for U.S. manufacturing are potentially very negative.”

Waves of well-known company executives lobbied lawmakers over the past five months on behalf of the clean energy sector with arguments tailored to appeal to Republicans. Some Senate Republicans had indicated they want to make changes to the energy provisions of the bill that had passed the House, and four prominent Republican senators joined a letter to party leaders cautioning against changes that would put projects at risk.

The clean energy proponents felt they had a solid pitch. After all, most cleantech investment dollars were flowing to red states and districts, such as the “battery belt” of EV and grid-scale battery manufacturing that has rapidly grown in the Southeast and Midwest.

Many places that now stand to lose the most from the bill’s changes are represented by the GOP and voting against home state job growth would be “political malpractice,” as former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Newsweek last year.

Cleantech trade groups dropped the emphasis on climate action in favor of economic appeals, even adopting Trump’s “energy dominance” rhetoric to make their case. If Republicans want to win the artificial intelligence race with China, bring down energy prices and boost domestic manufacturing, the argument went, then clean energy is the way to go.

Incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 have stimulated at least $321 billion in new private energy and manufacturing investments, analysts said. Solar, wind and batteries, especially, have seen phenomenal growth in the U.S., accounting for more than 90 percent of the new generating capacity to the U.S. electric grid last year, according to the Energy Information Administration. And as AI data centers demand more power, we will need every electron we can get.

These arguments won pledges of support from at least two dozen Congressional Republicans but, in the end, did not translate into votes.

Connecting the Dots

So why did clean energy policy meet such an ugly end in the OBBBA? Part of the answer is in the name: Combining tax cuts, border security and other major Republican policy goals in one big bill made it harder for the few advocates for clean energy in the caucus to elevate the issue.

The announced jobs and local investments for cleantech manufacturing had not yet had time to fully develop and, in many areas, not enough people connected the dots between the bill and local livelihoods.

Trump’s unshakeable antipathy to clean energy was also a factor. Late in the debate, Trump used cable network interviews and his social media platforms to remind Congress that he “hated” support for wind and solar.

Then, of course, there’s campaign cash to consider. Lobbyists for clean energy interests are vastly outspent by those for fossil fuels, campaign finance disclosures show. The oil and gas industry spent a record amount in the 2024 election on behalf of Trump and conservative causes, and fossil fuel donations flow disproportionately to Republican candidates.

On the day of the OBBBA’s passage, the American Petroleum Institute said, “We applaud Congress for unleashing our nation’s oil and natural gas resources.”

Emphasis on Fossil Fuels

The OBBBA caps a larger effort by the Trump administration to steer the country’s energy economy back toward greater reliance on fossil fuels. The administration has pulled the U.S. out of international climate agreements, expanded oil and gas industry access to public lands and scrapped regulations on emissions from autos and the power sector.

On June 11, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is seeking to repeal two President Joe Biden-era rules on power plant pollution, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin saying this will eventually save U.S. ratepayers more than $1 billion a year.

“These rules have saddled our power sector with expensive, unnecessary and burdensome regulations,” Zeldin said. The EPA wants to repeal the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which would limit power plants’ greenhouse gases, and the 2024 changes to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that would have reduced emissions of harmful metals, primarily from coal.

Republican members of Congress from coal and gas-producing states said this would allow them to keep in place fossil-fueled plants that might otherwise be shuttered. Twenty years ago, coal was the nation’s top fuel source, providing a little over half of the country’s electricity. By 2023, it was providing only about 16 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Department of Labor statistics show about 45,000 people were employed in coal mining in 2023, 60 percent less than a decade earlier. West Virginia Representative Carol Miller, a co-chair of the Congressional Coal Caucus, said the U.S. should “not bury [coal] under red tape.”

The EPA argued that U.S. power plants do not contribute a significant amount to global greenhouse gas emissions. “No power plant will be allowed to emit more than they do today,” Zeldin said.

However, the U.S. power sector is responsible for about one-quarter of the country’s total emissions, second only to transportation, and the EPA’s own data estimates that the 2024 carbon pollution standards would prevent about 1,200 premature deaths in 2035.

Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, deemed Zeldin’s actions “extraordinary and reckless.” She told Newsweek: “The fleet of power plant smokestacks in our country are the single largest industrial source of carbon pollution in the nation.”

The EPA proposals are in the public comment phase, with decisions expected later this year.

With the OBBBA’s passage, U.S. policy is starkly at odds with global energy trends. A recent International Energy Agency report found that of the $3.3 trillion total expected energy investments made this year, about $2.2 trillion is going to renewables, nuclear, grids, energy storage, low-emissions fuels and electrification—twice as much as the money going to fossil fuels.

America’s energy policy shift could mean that money will just flow elsewhere, especially as China accelerates production of clean energy and EVs.

‘China Watching With Delight’

Asked prior to the bill’s passing how it could affect U.S. competitiveness, Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun—a leading home solar panel and battery storage company—told Newsweek: “We don’t have a chance of winning the race with China if we don’t scale at a faster clip in terms of our own energy capacity.”

Orvis echoed her fears. “China is sitting there, I’m sure, just watching this with delight,” he said. “It’s handing it to them on a silver platter.”

Clean energy executives and advocates in the U.S. are regrouping and looking to market fundamentals as their path through the new policy landscape. The surging demand for electricity did not end when the bill passed, after all.

Those who make the most affordable and available electricity sources are banking that practical necessity will eventually win over political ideology. As the ACP’s Grumet said, “It is time for the brawlers to get out of the way and let the builders get back to work.”