The Senate just passed the big budget bill, 50/50 with VP Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. Senator Murkowski at least extracted some good concessions in return for casting the 50th ‘yes’ vote. Rand Paul voted no over debt concerns, Thom Tills voted no over Medicaid and clean energy concerns, and Susan Collins voted no largely over Medicaid concerns, but perhaps others like clean energy too.
Senators Ernst, Grassley, and Murkowski had proposed an amendment to strip out the new solar & wind tax, and change back to the Finance Committee's original ‘start construction’ standard rather than the last minute ‘placed in service’ standard that was also in the House bill. They couldn't get a vote on that amendment, perhaps in part because they couldn't find a pay-for. But Murkowski essentially got it into a final ‘wraparound’ amendment on the bill.
So the final Senate bill does not include the new solar & wind tax, and it gives new solar and wind projects 1 year to begin construction and qualify for the clean electricity tax credits, which I think is actually a bit better than the Senate Finance version, which phased down the tax credit to 60% for solar and wind in 2026. Solar and wind projects would have to rush to begin construction within the next year, but at least that's something.
It's still a bad bill, but it's not the utter catastrophe that the unamended version of the Senate bill would have been. It will now go to the House to see if they can pass it. Many House Republicans have said they're a ‘no’ on this version of the bill, but there will be immense pressure on them from the White House to vote yes, so we'll see what happens. They may hold a vote on Thursday morning, if they can get the votes.
Although we would have preferred that the bill not pass, we should still thank Senators Murkowski, Ernst, Grassley, and Curtis for negotiating this final amendment to at least significantly lessen the damage that the bill will do to clean energy. It's a small victory that they listened to us and made these important changes.
@Dana Nuccitelli Thank you for the thorough explanation. Still a bad bill, but removal of the renewable taxes is a good save for further development.
@Dana Nuccitelli
Thanks for this recap of the bill. I‘m likely a bit behind on the bill content, but could you let us know where the electric vehicle credits stand? Gone? Phased out?
The EV tax credits would all be repealed by 9/30/25 if the Senate bill becomes law, @Bruce Anderson.
@Dana Nuccitelli perhaps significant that Ernst and Grassley represent a state that gets 60% of its electricity from wind. Iowa.
Yes that's why they introduced the amendment, @Chris Wiegard. Grassley calls himself the father of the wind energy tax credit. Ernst hasn't historically cared about it, but she's up for election in 2026 so it's probably a bad time to cross the Iowa wind industry.
According to Jesse Jenkins' Princeton energy systems modeling team, the Senate version of the bill would be about 25% less-bad for the climate and household energy bills than the House version (but of course both worse than the status quo – urge your Reps to vote no!). See this Nerd Corner post for details 🤓
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