CLIMATE
In a big bill that hurts clean energy, residential solar likely to get hit fast

Republicans in Congress have advanced a bill cutting clean energy tax credits, and the industry is bracing for the impacts. (AP Video by Allen Breed. Produced by Julián Trejo Bax)

BY MICHAEL PHILLIS
Updated 4:38 PM EDT, July 2, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Republicans in Congress rushed forward with a massive tax and spending cut bill, a North Carolina renewable energy executive wrote to his 190 employees with a warning: Deep cuts to clean energy tax credits were going to hurt.

“(The changes) would almost certainly include the loss of jobs on our team,” wrote Will Etheridge, CEO of Southern Energy Management in Raleigh. “I’m telling you that because you deserve transparency and the truth — even if that truth is uncomfortable.”

The bill now in the House takes an ax to clean energy incentives, including killing a 30% tax credit for rooftop residential solar by the end of the year that the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act had extended into the next decade. Trump has called the clean energy tax credits in the climate law part of a “green new scam” that improperly shifts taxpayer subsidies to help the “globalist climate agenda” and energy sources like wind and solar.

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