Weekly Briefing: House Ways & Means Committee passes big rollbacks of clean energy tax credits

May 14, 2025

This week, the House Ways and Means Committee released and marked up its portion of the budget reconciliation bill. After an hours-long overnight meeting, they passed their portion of the bill this morning.

As a reminder, House Ways and Means is the committee we’ve been watching — and lobbying — most closely this spring to protect America’s clean energy tax credits from repeal.

While the committee did not outright repeal the clean energy tax credits, they did propose and pass significant changes that would be dismal for climate and clean energy.

The changes would “raise energy costs for American households by as much as 7% in 2035, stifle energy technology innovation, increase pollution, and could put a meaningful portion of half a trillion dollars of new manufacturing, industrial, and clean electricity investments across the country at risk,” according to an early analysis by Rhodium.

The fight isn’t over — we will push for specific changes before the full budget reconciliation bill comes up for a vote in the full House of Representatives later this month, and we’ll need to grow support in the Senate, too. If you’re represented by a Republican in the House or Senate, send them a message now based on these latest developments.

Read CCL’s new blog post to understand specifically what changes the Ways and Means Committee just passed and the next steps in our defense work for clean energy tax credits.

Read the Blog

In other news this week

• Congrats to Youth Challenge winners: CCL's Youth Action Team just finished round two of their Great School Electrification Challenge. Congratulations to the three student groups who won the challenge: Duluth Climate Club in Minnesota, Durham Sustainable Schools Coalition in North Carolina, and the Palo Alto Student Climate Coalition in California. Those three groups took the most actions to move their schools systems toward a renewable energy future. Great work to those winning teams and to everyone who participated!

Take action this week

If you have a little time: Register for CCL’s Summer Conference before tomorrow's early bird deadline. Join us in D.C. this July for our annual Summer Conference and Lobby Day! Monday, July 21st, will be a jam-packed day of conference programming, focused on giving you all the context and training you need for a successful lobby day. Then on Tuesday, July 22nd, we’ll head to Capitol Hill for meetings with lawmakers. Sign up today at cclusa.org/summer to secure your lobby spot. If you register by May 15, you'll get a $50 early bird discount.

If you have more time: Watch the recording of CCL’s May meeting. Every month, CCL’s national staff holds a virtual meeting for all chapters and volunteers. Our May meeting took place on Saturday and featured a national update from CCL Executive Director Rachel Kerestes. We also walked through CCL’s May Action Sheet and took a few minutes to contact Congress together. Catch up on the recording in case you missed the live meeting.

Featured: Volunteers from DE, CO and TN

On CCL's May meeting over the weekend, we heard from a slate of grassroots superstars:

• Beth Chajes, Delaware State Coordinator (pictured above)

• Luke Clarke and Kyle Kalinich, Group Leaders for the Golden-Jefferson chapter in Colorado

• Frankie Fachilla, Curtis Baysinger, and Fred Lemay, Group Leaders for the Middle Tennessee chapter

Each volunteer shared success stories from their grassroots outreach and lobbying work during Earth Month and throughout the spring. If you weren't able to join the meeting live, catch up on the recording to hear their insights and encouragement! (Jump to 10:15 for the volunteer interviews.)

Watch now

Training topics

WATCH: Fix Our Forests - Senate version - Last week, CCL Research Manager Dana Nuccitelli and VP of Government Affairs Jennifer Tyler walked volunteers through the Senate's version of the Fix Our Forests Act. A version of this bill already passed the House earlier this year and could advance in the Senate as early as this summer. Watch the recording so you're up to speed on the bill and ready to take action when a grassroots push is needed.

5/22: Understanding the Foreign Pollution Fee Act - The Foreign Pollution Fee Act, reintroduced by Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in April 2025, aims to impose a fee on certain imported products based on their level of greenhouse gas emissions. With tariffs in the news, this is an important piece of legislation to understand — and this training will break it down for you. Join us!

WATCH: Navigating Climate Advocacy in a Changing Political Landscape - The budget reconciliation process is just one example of the twists and turns we're navigating in the still-fairly-new 119th Congress. In a training earlier this month, CCL Research Fellow Danny Richter outlined our approach to this political landscape. He detailed our policy priorities, discussed the need to be prepared for multiple swings of the political pendulum, and emphasized maintaining positive relationships with both Democratic and Republican members of Congress. Watch the recording.