Solar & Wind Suffer Under GOP’s BBB Budget Bill
The Trump budget bill, called the “BBB,” was recently passed in July and contains a clear intent and policy for damaging the US solar and wind industries. In the short term, this will:
Reduce employment in these two growth sectors by 300-400,000 employees (e.g., 280,000 are employed in the solar industry alone, in over 10,000 businesses in most states).¹
Cut US manufacturing of solar and wind equipment dramatically, as incentives for increasing US-made components are cut off mid-construction. [See Meyer-Burger Case, below]
Create uncertainty among solar and wind decision-makers as to when and where it might be safe to invest in more generation capacity.
How does one bill inflict such harm?
The BBB rapidly reduces the time to earn the tax credits, from 2032 to 2027, for solar and wind installations and for investments in US factories that produce such equipment. Projects that are not started by July 4, 2026, will lose a 30% federal tax credit.² New factories will lose their tax incentives for opening in the US.³
Increasing bureaucratic interference. Project developers will have to prove that their products do not contain an excess of products originating from specific companies in China. And projects on federal lands will have to be reviewed by the Secretary of the Interior’s Office, rather than by existing experienced teams in the department.⁴ Secretary Burgum is an outspoken critic of wind and solar. These hurdles are unique to these two large and successful forms of renewables, showing that the current Administration is “picking winners and losers.”
Piling on with Executive Orders that go even further. Three days after Congress passed the BBB with no Democratic support (zero votes!), Trump signed an executive order making both the hurdles for tax credits higher and further restricting timing.
Here is an example of what these policies provoked, leaving 340 US workers unemployed and a new factory empty:
Meyer Burger is a Swiss technology company that has developed refinements on solar modules to the point where their modules were the most efficient commercially available worldwide.⁵ In June 2024, with big contracts from DE Shaw and Ikea’s owners, Meyer Burger opened a large module assembly line in Goodyear, AZ. They seem to have invested over $100mm and employed 340 people, assembling using cells made in their own factory in Germany. They began building a cell factory in Colorado to deliver US-made cells to the Arizona factory, but this changed in November 2024. DE Shaw, anticipating changes in US solar policy, cancelled a major supply contract with Meyer Burger. The Swiss firm stopped work on the Cell facility and sought a new lead customer for the volume abandoned by DE Shaw. As legislation was introduced, progressed and neared ratification, the Swiss firm put their German subsidiary into insolvency, then their US business into Ch. 11 bankruptcy 6 days before the BBB was signed into law. All the workers were let go.⁶
The longer-term impacts are profoundly greater:
Without a significant US domestic market for solar modules, solar inverters and racking, wind masts, blades and turbines, global manufacturers will not build factories for this equipment in the USA. And tariffs on this equipment will raise electricity prices.
Despite all the historic innovation in the US application of renewables technology, the next generation of wind and solar innovation will happen outside the US: In China, in Europe, and elsewhere. The next generation of top scientists and engineers in this field will have to move abroad to find the cutting edge.
Global warming will be to a greater and greater extent the fault of the Trump administration, which has basically given up on renewables for four years, with several more years to recover and be rolled back under a new administration. But the instability of US renewables policy and practice will be cemented in the minds of two generations of investors and politicians inside and outside the USA.
This is a profoundly damaging change to the US energy supply sector, the US economy, and the fight against global warming.
Actions to take and to talk about with friends:
Vote: register and vote for candidates who acknowledge climate change is real and caused by human activity, particularly the use of fossil fuels and derivative production
Support businesses that are switching their electrical supply to renewable sources. These are businesses that want to treat their customers and employees as valuable over the long term. Avoid those who deny or evade their responsibility
Keep saving energy: It matters. The less power we use, the fewer greenhouse gases are produced. If solar is a possibility for your home, put it on before 12/31/2025 to preserve your tax credit eligibility.⁷
Let decision-makers know that renewables help reduce the horrors of greater warming, including weather volatility, sea-level rise, and global stress from resource shortages.
RESOURCES
https://seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-q2-2025/
An exception is made for projects that are completed by 12/31/2027 – but this allows only small solar projects (which are quick to build), and basically no wind projects (as these take longer to build).
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/02/45x-tax-credit-transfers-strengthen-us-solar-manufacturing/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/climate/interior-dept-wind-solar.html
Other recent failures of US renewables businesses have included: Mosaic (solar finance), Powin (Battery storage), Titan (resi installer), Sunnova (retail installer)
CNEP does not provide tax advice. See your own tax professional.