As tax credits expire, Asheville energy businesses face ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ impacts

ASHEVILLE — Though only a few employees milled about the West Asheville-based renewable energy provider on July 10, Sugar Hollow Solar is busy these days. All of the company’s vans were out on job sites, making solar panel installations on hot rooftops or maintaining systems.

Despite steady business, shifting federal policies have the company of around 65 people bracing for impact. Federal support for residential solar panel installations will wind down later this year.

“It’s going to be bad for our economy and just overall in our industry,” Sugar Hollow Solar’s co-founder and CEO Doug Ager said. “There are going to be some job losses.”

The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into office by President Donald Trump on July 4, will wind down many renewable energy tax credits that incentivized investment into residential renewable energy technologies. Tax credits for residential solar, wind and geothermal installations will end later this year and installations for commercial renewable energy and sustainable homebuilding are set to wind down in 2026 and 2027. The changes give companies like Sugar Hollow Solar mere months to adjust.

For years, Sugar Hollow’s residential customers could expect to receive tax credits for installing solar panels. The Residential Clean Energy Credit covers 30% the cost of new residential renewable installations and saved consumers roughly $8,000 to $12,000 per installation, the company’s COO Clary Franko said in an interview.

After the bill’s passage, the credit, which traces its roots back to the Energy Policy Act signed by President George W. Bush in 2006, will end Dec. 31, giving customers a strict deadline to qualify for lower-cost installations.

“Like everyone in the industry, it’s not like we’re scheduling for tomorrow,” Franko said of solar panel installations. “We’re already scheduling a couple few months out. It just doesn’t give people a lot of time.”

Investments in innovation, halted

The credits have widely been seen as short-to-mid term investments into the renewable energy sector, which has seen a period of intense growth and innovation in recent years.

From 2012 to 2024, renewable energy production has doubled its share of the country’s energy generation growing from 12% to 24%, according to the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. The credits also came as increased demand for data centers and A.I. are expected to increase energy demands and as renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind, have become cheaper than fossil fuels. But now some are wondering whether that innovation will slow down.

“They were funding innovation and now they are not. I think that’s a mistake,” said Donald Nicholson, who co-owns the family business Nicholson and Sun, which builds net-zero homes across Asheville.

Nicholson’s company utilizes the New Energy Efficient Home Credit, which provided $5,000 in credits to contractors that construct and sell homes that are so “energy efficient that a renewable energy system could offset most or all the home’s annual energy use,” according to the official Zero Energy Ready Home webpage. It was established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and set to phase out in 2032, the Big Beautiful Bill will end the program on June 30, 2026.

For more attainable sustainable homebuyers, the “party’s over,” Nicholson said, as the credit repeal will likely impact pricing. At his company’s net-zero community in West Asheville, most available homes fall below the city’s current median cost of $507,000. The money makes a difference for homeowners on a tighter budget.

“We try to build entry-level, attainable homes where $5,000 is actually a significant profit,” Nicholson said. Similarly, Ager expects the residential credit changes to make it harder for lower income residents to invest in renewable technology like solar panel installations.

“Especially in middle income families. It’ll make it harder for them to invest in this long-term,” Ager said

Shifting business, surviving Helene

While utility-level renewable residential credits exist in North Carolina, Sugar Hollow Solar expects to shift it’s business from mostly residential installations to a “50-50” split with commercial projects, Ager said. Tax credits for commercial projects will expire in 2027, with some credits for battery installations lasting longer.

But, still, at the beginning of 2026, they expect a lull or even contractions in the industry, Ager told the Citizen Times. The business is still optimistic, however. Sugar Hollow Solar’s offices had been located along Thompson Street when Tropical Storm Helene hit. The Swannanoa River swamped their offices and led to a roughly $1.4 million loss. A swath of flooded solar panels sit outside their offices, and though they were muddied in the storm, they still work. Ager is considering donating them to a partner in Ukraine.

Two weeks after the storm, the company began making installations again. The company plans to continue through the Big Beautiful Bill’s changes.

“We’ll be here. We’re not going anywhere,” Ager said.

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Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com or message will_hofmann.01 on Signal.