• US House clears ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ which makes massive cuts to funding and programs for renewable energy projects
• Developers will need to start construction on pipeline of projects within 60 days of enactment
• Tax transferability survives, but with the credits expiring in 2028, trading market will last three years

The US House of Representatives may have passed the ‘One Big Beautfiul Bill Act’ on May 22, but industry experts and stakeholders describe the bill as anything but beautiful when it comes to green energy.

In contrast, the words used to describe the bill were “devastating,” “disaster,” and “reckless.”

“The changes made by the House this morning will be devastating to the renewable energy industry, its employees and the United States’ investment in energy infrastructures,” said Heather Cooper, Partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, in a statement to NPM.

“Developers will need to scramble to start construction on their pipeline projects within 60 days of enactment; typically by making large procurement orders,” Cooper said. “There is going to be tremendous pressure on developers to find suppliers and manufacturers with queue capacity. Once that deadline passes, developers are out of luck and will be ineligible for credits on energy generating projects.”

Inigo Rengifo, co-founder and CEO of Concentro, told NPM that the bill as it stands would be a disaster for the industry across the board and a big hit to the AI race.

“While it is true that there are a lot of projects safe harbored—and we’ll see a big race to get more safe harbored in the coming months—that means that a big share of the market will operate ‘as-is’ for the coming couple of years,” Rengifo said. “It will be very difficult to get new or existing projects financed with clear risks around deadlines and qualification.”

Bryen Alperin, Partner & Managing Director at Foss & Company, told NPM that the House text effectively freezes the post-IRA build-out. A 60-day start-construction limit and a hard deadline of December 2028 for projects placed-in-service, which means the tech-neutral PTC and ITC will only reach projects that are shovel-ready today.

Many late-stage solar and storage projects, especially those meant to serve new AI or data-center loads, fall outside that window, according to Alperin.

Transferability survives in the text, but with the credits expiring in 2028, the trading market will last only three years.

Manufacturing tax credits can be sold through 2027, however the credits will likely become unusable, Alperin said. The change appears to retroactively undercut finance plans for blade, module, and battery factories that were being built and relying on a 10-year stream of tax credits.

“On reliability, pulling the credit rug just when grids need fresh capacity will delay or cancel utility-scale projects,” Alperin said. “Interconnection queues assume current IRA rules, so a sudden shrink in the pipeline drives up capacity prices and, ultimately, customer bills.”

Additionally, Alperin explained that the foreign-entity-of-concern rule, a provision in the bill restricting foreign entities from benefitting from tax credits, is unworkable as drafted.

“Developers would need to certify that fewer than 5% of all O&M over ten years touch any supplier with even minimal Chinese ownership,” Alperin said. “Given today’s global supply chains, that threshold is close to impossible to verify, let alone meet, so the rule will chill investment until Treasury or Congress fixes it. Tax equity investors will struggle to accept a 10-year tax credit recapture risk for something they cannot control.”

House members’ attempt to save tax credits

House members spent 21 hours debating the bill, with seemingly never-ending testimony from lawmakers proposing amendments to various provisions in the bill including Medicaid cuts and cuts to certain women’s reproductive and family services.

The House ultimately passed the bill in a narrow 215-to-214 vote.

“This bill represents a historic opportunity to deliver economic freedom for working families, farmers, and small businesses,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith in a press statement. “The House has acted. Now the Senate must do its part and send this bill to President Trump’s desk.”

During the hearing, House Rep. Mike Levin proposed an amendment to ensure that key provisions in the bill, particularly those that eliminate support for clean energy and roll back environmental protections, do not take effect unless the US Energy Information Administration confirms that they will not increase monthly household utility bills.

“That’s it,” Levin said. “If the policies in this bill are truly going to reduce costs, then this amendment simply adds a commonsense verification step to confirm it. Nothing more.”

Levin argued that a recent independent analysis of the bill found that it will raise energy cost for American families by at least 7%. While clean energy is already the cheapest source of power in many markets, the transition still requires upfront investment, Levin said.

“We need to build transmission lines, upgrade the grid, and scale American manufacturing. The credits help unlock those investments and deliver long-term savings to consumers,” Levin said. “Without tax credits, we’re not creating a level playing field. We’re favoring the status quo at the expense of innovation and competition.”

US Rep. Mike Thompson proposed an amendment to strike the energy provision entirely and restore the green energy tax credits.

“This reckless bill would gut America’s clean energy production, raising the energy costs for millions of families and killing hundreds of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs,” Thompson said.

Clean Energy is the industry of the future, Thompson said, adding that 93% of all new American energy supplied last year came from solar, wind, and battery storage.

“When we passed the clean energy credit, we deliberately paired supply and demand side incentives,” Thompson said. “By repealing some of these credits, you put at risk the entire supply chain at a time when the need for energy has never been greater. And just as energy demands dramatically increase with AI and crypto—my colleagues on the other side of the isle are looking to decrease our nation’s ability to meet this demand.”

Neither of the amendments were adopted.

More cuts

In addition to repealing the IRA and recinding the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and various other clean energy programs, unobligated funding under the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) would also be slashed.

The LPO, which provides loans and loan guarantees to help deploy various energy initiatives, touted earlier this year that the last four years have been the most productive in LPO’s history with 53 deals totaling approximately USD 108bn in committed project investments.

LPO’s portfolio of almost USD 100b in closed loans include projects across the country that were bolstered mostly by its Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program, where projects like NextEra Energy Resources’ 550 MW Desert Sunlight project was made possible after receiving about USD 1.5bn under the program.

The bill also rescinds more than USD 60m from the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, more than 53m in federal energy management programs, more than USD 262.5m for State and Community Energy Programs, nearly USD 402m for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and nearly USD 45m for the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs.

The bill does, however, specifically note that funding appropriated under the IRA may not be rescinded, despite the administration already attempting to do so when it froze Solar for All funds already obligated to states earlier this year.

Will the Act clear the Senate?

Industry stakeholders and policy experts interviewed for this story say no—at least not as is. Some Republican Senators have also voiced opposition of the bill ahead of its Senate hearing.

“We believe that there is no world in which something like this can pass the Senate, where Senators will be looking out for individual states’ interests—given the impact of the IRA in Republican States, we expect a big pushback,” Rengifo said.

“Historically the Senate trims the House opening bid; Build Back Better Plan versus the final IRA is a good comparison,” Alperin said. “Look for restored phasedowns and a softer foreign-entity rule when the Senate mark appears.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM US subscribers.

New Project Media (NPM) is a leading data, intelligence, and events business covering the US & European renewable energy and data center markets for the development, finance, advisory & corporate community.