QTS Data Centers began to consider developing in Wisconsin after working with Alliant Energy on a separate project in Iowa.
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Communities across Wisconsin have taken steps to become more sustainable over the last decade and a half, but a lack of standardized reporting makes it difficult to measure cost savings from those efforts.
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An eleventh hour amendment made in the Senate will allow renewable energy projects that begin construction by 2026 or come online by 2027 to receive tax credits, which is slightly less restrictive than a previous version of the bill.
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Gov. Tony Evers signed a pair of bipartisan bills Wednesday that could strengthen nuclear power in Wisconsin.
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The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine received federal tax credits for installing solar panels. Labor and environmental advocates are attacking the Congressional Republicans' tax cut megabill for rolling back clean energy programs enacted in the Biden administration. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
The tax cut megabill in Congress with a historic rollback on Medicaid also includes provisions reversing U.S. clean energy policies, advocates warned Wednesday, harming not only the environment but the economy.
“This legislation will kill economic growth and jobs, raise energy prices, and cede clean energy technology manufacturing to other countries,” said Carly Ebben Eaton, Wisconsin Policy Manager for the Blue Green Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.
Eaton took part in two online news conferences Wednesday to draw attention to the federal budget reconciliation bill and its repeal of key portions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
The budget bill has been the top priority of the Republican majority in Congress as well as the administration of President Donald Trump. It was drawn up to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that will expire at the end of 2025.
The package returned to the U.S. House for final action after a tied vote in the U.S. Senate that required Vice President JD Vance to pass the measure on Tuesday.
Steep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs have drawn the most attention during debate on the bill, along with the Congressional Budget Office finding that the wealthiest taxpayers will benefit most from its tax cuts.
The bill also includes measures that would undo several provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), one of the signature pieces of legislation enacted during President Joe Biden’s four years in office. After its passage the act was lauded by environmental advocates for provisions to address climate change by encouraging clean energy through tax credits as well as federal investments.
The House version of the GOP bill “already dealt a serious blow to clean energy tax credits and investments,” Eaton said Wednesday, “but the Senate took it even further, doubling down on cuts that will cost jobs, stall progress and raise energy costs.”
The IRA’s tax breaks were designed to encourage consumers to move to energy-efficient and clean energy appliances and vehicles and encourage utilities and other businesses to increase their use of renewable resources such as solar energy and wind power.
Eaton said Wednesday that clean energy tax credits are supporting more than $8.6 billion in private investments in Wisconsin.
Garrik Harwick, assistant business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union Local 890 in Janesville, said that over the past three years more than 300 members have worked on solar projects in Southern Wisconsin. He spoke at a news conference with Eaton and several other union leaders.
The IRA tax breaks have encouraged those developments, Harwick said, and the investments have included increased apprenticeship slots, bringing in new trainees.
“These investments don’t just deliver clean energy,” Harwick added. “They create good paying union jobs that strengthen our local communities.”
He warned that repealing the tax credit will likely reduce the use of clean energy technologies and increase energy costs by 6% for homeowners and more than 9% for business customers.
The IRA’s provisions that encouraged apprenticeships helped “open doors that many didn’t even know existed,” said Andy Buck, government affairs director for the Wisconsin and Upper Michigan district of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.
He said the union has added a number of jobs, including apprentices, installing energy-efficient glass in buildings on projects that were facilitated by the Inflation Reduction Act.
“When someone enters a registered apprenticeship program, they aren’t just learning a trade,” Buck said. “They’re building a career, gaining self-respect, and finding a path to a better life.”
Another provision of the 2022 law opened up tax credits for renewable energy to nonprofit organizations and government agencies, allowing them to receive direct payments to the federal government comparable to the value they’d receive from the tax credit if they paid taxes.
A new middle school being built in Menasha will include solar panels and energy storage, said Matt VanderPuy, a business agent for the Sheet Metal workers union in Sheboygan. The direct pay program will reimburse the district $3 million, he said, while the energy savings is projected at $190,000 per year.
“This is money that they can reinvest into the students, the teachers and the school district,” while saving on property taxes, VanderPuy said.
At another news conference, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes observed that more than 90% of the jobs that IRA incentives helped create are in Republican congressional districts — although no Republicans in the state delegation voted for the bill. Barnes leads Forward Wisconsin, a nonprofit established during Biden’s term in the White House to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.
But business uncertainty this year, which Barnes blamed on GOP positions including Trump’s tariff executive orders, has led nationally to the cancellation of projects worth $15.5 billion, he said.
“The so-called big beautiful bill is going to have some very ugly impacts in Wisconsin, ripping away tax incentives for wind and solar farms, for rooftop solar, for farm sustainability programs, for clean cars and school buses,” said Amy Barrilleaux, communications director for Clean Wisconsin, at the event with Barnes. “And giving more tax breaks to big oil and gas companies does absolutely nothing to create jobs here or any opportunities here — it’s a gift to big oil at the expense of Wisconsin families and at the expense of our environment.”
Heather Allen, policy director for Elevate, an energy efficiency nonprofit, said as many as 11,000 clean energy and manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin could be at risk.
Plans for a $2.5 billion network of electric vehicle charging stations in the state have stalled, Allen said, and Wisconsin manufacturers that would have supplied components “are going to lose that opportunity now.”
“This legislation is going to strangle our solar businesses with red tape,” Allen said. “What you have here is an attack on small businesses that are delivering clean energy solutions to help families save money on their energy bills. And that includes solar installers, but it also includes other home energy contractors, other construction jobs.”
In four recent polls, a majority of those surveyed disapproved of the Republicans’ megabill — making it “more unpopular than any piece of major legislation that’s been passed since at least 1990,” Barnes said.
At the labor news conference, Emily Pritzkow, the Wisconsin Building Trades Council executive director, said advocates are urging people to contact their members of Congress.
“The polling on this is abysmal, and as long as people continue to call and deliver that message , that is what we need to do right now,” Pritzkow said. “Now is the time to weigh in, not once it’s coming to your front door, impacting you, your community, and people you care about.”
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Gov. Tony Evers signed bills into law launching efforts to bring nuclear power to Wisconsin and creating and expanding programs to help children in crisis. Evers talks to reporters in March. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Ahead of floor sessions for the Senate and Assembly to vote on the budget, Gov. Tony Evers signed bills into law launching efforts to bring nuclear power to Wisconsin and creating and expanding programs to help children in crisis.
The bills passed the Senate and Assembly in floor sessions in June where debate centered heavily on the lack of funding attached to them. Evers had earlier told lawmakers to include the funding or he would veto the legislation, Democrats agreed the funding should be included, while Republicans said the funding would come in the budget if Evers signed the bills without any changes. State funding for the bills was included in the budget plan approved by the budget committee Tuesday.
One law, 2025 Wisconsin Act 11, will create a Nuclear Power Summit Board in Wisconsin responsible for putting on a summit in Madison to advance nuclear power and fusion energy technology.
The summit must be held within one month after instruction starts at the new engineering building at UW-Madison. Construction on the building, which is estimated to cost $419 million, started in April and is supposed to be finished in 2028. The funding for the building was approved by the Legislature and Evers in 2024.
Evers also signed 2025 Wisconsin Act 12, which requires the Public Service Commission to conduct a study to determine potential sites for a nuclear power plant. The state budget bill includes $2 million to fund the study.
Evers said the bills would help the state pursue an “innovative, clean energy future and bring more clean jobs to our state.”
Wisconsin currently has one active nuclear power plant. The Point Beach Nuclear Plant located in Two Rivers, which first came online in the 1970s, has two tractors and provides about 16% of the state’s energy, according to the conservative think tank the Badger Institute. A Kewaunee nuclear power plant shut down in 2013.
“We can’t afford to choose between mitigating climate change and protecting our environment or creating good-paying jobs and building a strong economy, and by working toward clean energy options Wisconsinites can depend on in the future, we’re doing both,” Evers said. “We must continue our efforts to help lower energy costs and improve energy independence by reducing our reliance on out-of-state energy sources, and these bills are an important step in the right direction.”
Evers also signed Senate Bill 106, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 9, that will create psychiatric residential treatment facilities (PRTFs) in the state. The law is the result of a study committee on the emergency detention and civil commitment of minors and aims to reduce the number of youth in crisis who are sent out of state for care by offering long-term mental health treatment closer to home.
The budget will include $1.79 million for grants to psychiatric residential treatment facilities.
Another law, 2025 Wisconsin Act 10, which is also a result of the study committee, instructs the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to create a statewide portal to facilitate the sharing of safety plans for minors with designated safety plan partners. The budget includes about $819,000 in state funding for the program and the agency will get one staff position to run the portal.
Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), who served as chair of the study committee, has championed the legislation this session.
At a press conference ahead of the Senate floor session, James said his focus has been on supporting Wisconsin’s children and that the issues are personal for him as a father and a law enforcement officer.
“I believe there are real positive changes within our reach. It’s about recognizing the opportunities in front of us and taking decisive action when that moment comes,” James said. “This budget is packed with great projects. We increase funding for our child advocacy centers. We take care of our child victims in a safe environment. We establish funding for psychiatric residential treatment facilities to keep children with intense mental health treatment needs closer to home.”
Another law, 2025 Wisconsin Act 13, officially recognizes new child advocacy centers in state statute and expands the number of them that are eligible for the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s child advocacy grant program. The centers work with law enforcement to investigate child abuse and neglect and provide children with resources and support. The budget will include $2 million to support the grants.
The final piece of legislation is 2025 Wisconsin Act 14, to distribute hearing protection devices to state and local law enforcement and firefighters. The budget will include $2.6 million to fund the program.
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As part of the Green Team at Chippewa Falls High School, students pick a two-year passion project related to sustainability. This year’s students chose to make Camp Nawakwa in Cornell more sustainable.
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The U.S. Capitol on June 30, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The final “big beautiful bill” approved by Senate Republicans Tuesday included some last-minute changes on hot-button issues such as safety net programs and clean energy tax credits.
Senate Republicans had wrangled for weeks to deliver legislative text to satisfy concerns from lawmakers who objected to cutting Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income families and some individuals with disabilities.
Other sticking points included threats that the health cuts pose to rural hospitals, and tax revisions that hamper clean energy jobs and investment, most of which are in states that elected President Donald Trump to his second term.
The lawmakers debated amendments for more than 24 hours. Even with final changes, now under consideration in the House, three Republicans held out: Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie breaking vote.
Here are several rewrites that popped up in the bill’s final minutes and hours:
Senate Republicans doubled the amount for a rural health “transformation program,” or money to compensate rural hospitals for the funds they would lose as a result of the proposed Medicaid cuts.
The latest proposal sets aside $50 billion, up from $25 billion, and moves up the distribution timeline to begin in 2026, up from 2028.
Collins had unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to bump the fund to $50 billion. Despite some support from GOP colleagues, the amendment was blunted by a technical budget point of order.
The Maine Republican still voted “no” Tuesday on the final bill.
The lawmakers also made a late change to how and when states would begin to shoulder the responsibility for costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
According to the new version, if a state’s payment error rate in 2025 multiplied by 1.5 is equal or greater than 20%, then that state would be permitted to wait until 2029, rather than 2028, to begin footing a portion of the bill for food assistance. A state’s accuracy rate is the annual measurement of over- or underpayments to recipients.
Nine states would hover in the territory of meeting that threshold, according to the Department of Agriculture’s latest error rates published Monday. They are: Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon.
Alaska had the highest payment error rate of all states in both 2023 and 2024. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s final decision on the bill was largely unknown until she cast a “yes” vote Tuesday.
A late amendment to strike the language offered by Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota failed 45-55.
Critics say the measure incentivizes states to keep the payment error rates high this year.
GOP senators late Friday added a clean energy excise tax into the bill, taking the industry by surprise. Then it vanished.
The tax that would have been imposed on new solar and wind projects was no longer in the legislation that senators voted on around noon Eastern Tuesday.
Other text loosened a squeeze on tech-neutral tax credits meant to incentivize the installation of energy systems that do not use fossil fuels. Senate Republicans added a year of leeway for new projects to break ground and avoid cutting short two of the tax credits.
The developer behind the largest solar project ever approved in Wisconsin has agreed to a settlement with a state conservation group aimed at protecting the Greater Prairie Chicken.
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We Energies says the decision comes in response to tightened energy supply requirements and in an effort to boost reliability.
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Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner
The U.S. Senate is currently working on its version of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—a deeply misleading attempt to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and derail America’s clean energy future.
Let’s be clear: This isn’t just political posturing. This bill, backed by fossil fuel interests and already passed in the House, would strip away the very tools Wisconsin families, businesses, farmers and communities are using to lower energy costs, create jobs and build a more resilient future. The damage to our state would be both immediate and long-term.
In Wisconsin alone, 82 clean energy projects are currently in the pipeline. These projects represent not just thousands of jobs and billions in investment — they’re the backbone of a 21st-century economy. From wind turbine manufacturing in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley to solar installations in rural communities, Wisconsinites are hard at work powering our future.
If the “Big, Broken Bill” becomes law, it threatens to cancel or delay many of these efforts. Clean energy tax credits would vanish. The Solar for All program and clean manufacturing investments would be eliminated. Tax incentives for electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, and sustainable agriculture would be repealed. These aren’t just policy tools — they’re direct investments in our people, places and potential. Many Wisconsin communities have used these credits to launch local projects that reduce taxpayer dollars through direct pay for solar, geothermal and clean vehicles.
And we can’t afford to go backward. Energy demand is skyrocketing — especially with the rapid expansion of AI and data centers. Experts warn electricity bills could jump by 70% in the next five years if we don’t act. Clean, renewable energy remains the cheapest and fastest option to deploy. Gutting these investments would lead to higher prices, more power interruptions and less energy reliability — leaving Wisconsin families and businesses to bear the cost.
Without these programs, household energy costs could rise by up to $400 a year. That’s a hidden tax hike on working families — piled on top of rising costs from tariffs and supply chain disruptions already straining our economy.
Even worse, the bill guts EPA pollution standards and allows major polluters to sidestep environmental compliance. It’s a taxpayer-funded giveaway to fossil fuel interests, trading our health, air and water for short-term corporate profits.
Let’s not forget Wisconsin’s farmers, who were just beginning to benefit from billions in IRA investments for conservation, renewable energy and carbon-smart agriculture. With grant contracts abruptly canceled, many family farms are left holding the bag, having made plans in good faith only to be blindsided.
We can do better. Wisconsin has the talent, tools and environmental leadership tradition to lead the clean energy economy. Clean energy already supports more than 71,000 jobs in our state. With the right investments, we could add 34,000 more and grow our economy by $21 billion by 2050.
We’re also home to over 350 clean energy supply chain companies. With support from IRA tax credits and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), we can expand local manufacturing of batteries, solar panels, wind components, EV systems and smart grid technology — positioning Wisconsin as a national clean energy hub.
This is the kind of forward-thinking, common-sense investment we need. It creates good jobs, lowers energy bills, strengthens supply chains and revitalizes communities.
The Senate still has time to act. Let’s urge our lawmakers, regardless of party, to reject this harmful bill and stand with the workers, innovators and families building a cleaner, stronger Wisconsin. Our policies should reflect our shared values of fairness, innovation, resilience and stewardship — not special treatment for polluters.
This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about economic survival, energy independence and the future we want to leave our children.
It’s time to move forward, not backward, with a smarter stronger, and more sustainable Wisconsin.
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The clock is ticking for Wisconsin homeowners who want to take advantage of tax credits for clean energy and home energy efficiency as Republicans in Congress seek to phase out those incentives.
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Scott Johnson, the founder and director of the Low Technology Institute, visited WPR's “The Larry Meiller Show” to talk about how he's bringing the methods of the past into the future.
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From left to right, Chase Christie, development director for Alaska Solar LLC, Josh Craft, managing partner of Wasilla, Alaska-based Crafty Energy LLC, and Josh Shipley, owner of Alternative Power Enterprises in Ridgeway, Colorado, at the Holiday Inn Express on C Street SW in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, after meeting with staff of U.S. senators about preserving clean energy tax credits in the Republican budget reconciliation bill. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Small business owners and community leaders from rural regions in Western states including Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Utah pressed lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week to preserve clean energy tax credits on the chopping block in the Republicans’ “one big beautiful” mega-bill, now in the Senate.
The suite of investment, production and residential tax credits enacted and expanded under the Democrats’ own big budget reconciliation bill in 2022, titled the “Inflation Reduction Act,” incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of reducing the effects of climate change.
The credits have spurred hundreds of billions in investment dollars in advanced manufacturing and production since 2022, and contributed to job creation, largely in states that elected President Donald Trump to a second term.
Small business operators and community leaders from rural and mountainous areas of the United States that have benefited from the boom in alternative energy sources say the campaign to end the tax credits will also cause job losses and cut options for consumers.
Chase Christie, director of development for Alaska Solar LLC, said his company installs four to five large-scale solar projects per year in remote Alaskan villages and also fits and services smaller residential solar installations.
“They take a lot of planning, a lot of logistics,” Christie told States Newsroom in an interview Wednesday.
“For going into a remote village where there’s tundra, we might need to go there in the dead of winter so we can work on frozen ground,” he added. “Other places we won’t go until summer. So we have these large gaps in between these larger projects, and a company like ours absolutely relies on the residential installations to keep our workforce going.”
Christie, who met Tuesday with staffers for Alaska’s Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, said in January he let a handful of workers go and paused most new hiring.
“Our workforce is roughly half of what it usually is just because we’re not sure which direction things are going to go,” he said.
Christie was among a dozen small energy business owners, municipal government officials and nonprofit employees focused on energy options for low-income households who States Newsroom spoke to Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Sullivan said in a statement: “Senator Sullivan supports energy projects that lower costs for Alaska. The Senator and his team have been meeting with a number of Alaskans about energy tax credits. As we wait for text from the Senate Finance Committee, the Senator is working with his colleagues to ensure that the bill strikes the right balance between promoting stable and predictable tax policy, advancing projects that benefit Alaska, and addressing the need to reduce the federal deficit.”
Murkowski’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senators are hashing out language for the massive Republican agenda bill that will extend and expand the 2017 tax law, costing roughly $3.8 trillion, and cut spending in other areas to offset the price tag.
A contingent of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam,” won on accelerating the expiration of the energy tax credits and tightening restrictions on eligibility as a way to pay for individual and corporate tax cuts that Trump campaigned on.
The language in a section of the House bill, passed 215-214 on May 22, titled “Working Families Over Elites,” terminates the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Tax Credit, worth up to $3,200 for homeowners who make energy upgrades to their property.
Among the slate of other affected IRA tax credits, the House bill also speeds up the expiration of the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit, a credit dating back decades that was updated in 2022.
The credit is available to taxpayers who invest in “energy property,” including solar installations to provide electricity and heat, fuel cells, small wind turbines, geothermal pumps, and other electricity-producing technologies.
House Republicans wrote provisions to eliminate the credit for facilities placed into service after 2028 and end eligibility for projects that don’t begin construction within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.
The credit is worth up to 30% of the cost of the project, plus two bonus credits up to 10% each if the project includes mostly domestically produced material and if it’s located in an “energy community,” meaning a place where a coal plant has closed or where unemployment reaches a certain threshold.
The bill also repeals a taxpayer’s ability to transfer the tax credits as a way to finance a project, and introduces restrictions on foreign-made components that industry professionals say essentially makes the credit unworkable.
Critics point to the cost of the tax credits.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated, as of June 4, the elimination of the clean energy investment and production tax credits will save roughly $249 billion over the next decade.
Alex Muresianu, senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a right-of-center think tank that advocates for lower taxes, said Thursday in a new analysis that “The final House bill makes impressive cuts to the IRA green energy tax credits, but it does so in part by introducing more complexity.”
The group is advocating for senators to reduce the tax credit rates and make clearer complicated language, like the provision around “foreign entities of concern.”
But Logan Smith, weatherization program manager for the Human Resource Development Council in central Montana, argues the credits have been a lifeline for lower-income rural residents.
“If I can get solar panels on each of the clients’ homes, that means that their power is going to stay on in the middle of winter,” Smith said. “Because every winter we plan for losing power for about a week, that’s just something we grew up with. … But if we have solar panels, the power stays on, the heat stays on.”
Ralph Waters, owner of SBS Solar in Missoula, Montana, became emotional when talking about how an early termination of the tax credits could slow his business and result in having to lay off half his workforce.
He criticized the politicization of the tax incentives.
“Montana is deeply red, but it’s also a very practical place. And so green energy renewables becomes a taboo phrase somehow,” Waters said. “The practical energy needs are undeniable, and so if we can get past our disagreements about the phraseology and realize that it’s electrons, watts, and amps. And it’s cheaper.”
The offices of Montana GOP Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy did not respond to a request for comment.
Anti-Line 5 graffiti at Enbridge’s pumping station in Mackinaw City, Mich. (Laina G. Stebbins | Michigan Advance)
Canadian energy company Enbridge’s Line 5 traverses an extremely sensitive ecological area across northern Wisconsin, 400 rivers and streams as well as a myriad of wetlands, in addition to a path under the Mackinac Straights between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, all the while skirting the southern shore of Lake Superior. Such close proximity to the Great Lakes, lakes that hold over 20% of the world’s fresh surface water, lakes that supply drinking water to nearly 40 million people, yes, that does indeed make Line 5 a ticking time bomb.
Northern Wisconsin is also a very culturally sensitive area, home to the Bad River Reservation. The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa were guaranteed rights to their lands by an 1854 treaty with the U.S. government. The easements for Line 5 across the reservation, granted to Enbridge by the Chippewa, expired in 2013 and the Bad River Band chose not to renew them. Enbridge continues to operate the line, illegally and in direct violation of the Bad River Band’s right to sovereignty over their land.
The Bad River Band has a guaranteed legal right to their land. They also have a right to Food Sovereignty, the internationally recognized right of food providers to have control over their land, seeds and water while rejecting the privatization of natural resources. Line 5 clearly impinges on the Band’s right to hunt, fish, harvest wild rice, to farm and have access to safe drinking water.
A federal court ruled that Enbridge has been trespassing on lands of the Bad River Band since 2013 and ordered the company to cease operations of Line 5 by June of 2026 (seems that immediate cessation would make more sense), but rather than shut down the aging line, Enbridge plans to build a diversion around the Bad River Reservation. They plan to move the pipeline out of the Bad River Band’s front yard into their back yard, leaving 100% of the threats to people and the environment in place.
Liquid petroleum (crude oil, natural gas and petroleum product) pipelines are big business in the U.S. With 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, the U.S. network is the largest in the world. If we continue our heavy and growing dependence on liquid fossil fuels, we must realize that we will continue to negatively impact the climate and the lives of everyone on the planet.
Instead of moving to a just transition away from fossil fuels, liquid or otherwise, the government continues to subsidize the industry through direct payments and tax breaks, refusing to acknowledge the cost of pollution-related health problems and environmental damage, a cost which is of course, incalculable.
There are nearly 20,000 miles of pipelines planned or currently under construction in the U.S., thus it would appear that government and private industry are in no hurry to break that addiction, much less make a just transition. While no previous administration was in any hurry to break with the fossil fuel industry, they at least gave the illusion of championing a transition to cleaner energy.
The current administration is abundantly clear. Their strategy is having no strategy. They don’t like wind and solar and they plan to end any support for renewable energy. They don’t care if they upend global markets, banking, energy companies or certainly any efforts to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels.
Pipelines are everywhere across the U.S., a spiderweb connecting wells, refineries, transportation and distribution centers. The vast majority of pipelines are buried and many, if not all, at some point cross streams, rivers, lakes and run over aquifers. Pipeline ruptures and other assorted failures will continue and spillage will find its way into the bodies of water they skirt around or pass under. It’s not a question if they will leak, but when.
Enbridge controls the largest network of petroleum pipelines in the Great Lakes states, and they are hardly immune to spills. Between 1999 and 2013 it was reported that Enbridge had over 1,000 spills dumping a reported 7.4 million gallons of oil.
In 2010 Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured and contaminated the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Over 1.2 million gallons of oil were recovered from the river between 2010 and 2014. How much went downstream or was buried in sediment, we’ll never know.
In 2024 a fault in Enbridge Line 6 caused a spill of 70 thousand gallons near Cambridge Wisconsin. And Enbridge’s most infamous pipeline, the 71-year-old Line 5 from Superior Wisconsin to Sarnia Ontario, has had 29 spills in the last 50 years, loosing over 1 million gallons of oil.
Some consider Line 5 to be a “public good” because, as Enbridge argues, shutting the line down will shut down the U.S. economy and people will not be able to afford to heat their homes — claims they have never supported with any evidence. A public good is one that everyone can use, that everyone can benefit from. A public good is not, as Enbridge apparently believes, a mechanism for corporate profit.
Line 5 is a privately owned property, existing only to generate profits for Enbridge. If it were a public good, Enbridge would certainly be giving more attention to the rights of the Bad River Band, the well-being of all the people who depend on the clean waters of the Great Lakes and to protecting the sensitive environment of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. They are not. Their trespassing, their disregard for the environment, their continuing legal efforts to protect their bottom line above all else, only points to their self-serving avarice.
The Bad River Band wants Enbridge out, and in their eyes it is not a case of “not in my back yard” they do not want Line 5 in anyone’s back yard.
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A worker installs a solar panel on a roof. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Clean energy manufacturers and advocates say they’re perplexed how the repeal of tax credits in President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” will keep their domestic production lines humming across the United States, particularly in states that elected him to the Oval Office.
While some Republicans have labeled the billions in tax credits a “green new scam,” statistics reviewed by States Newsroom show the jobs and benefits would boost predominantly GOP-leaning states and congressional districts. Now the industry is already slowing amid Trump’s back-and-forth tariff policy and mixed messaging on energy and manufacturing.
Trump vowed in early April that he would “supercharge our domestic industrial base.”
“Jobs and factories will come roaring back to our country, and you see it happening already,” he told a crowd in the White House Rose Garden while unveiling his new trade policy.
But as a way to pay for the $3.9 trillion price tag of extending and expanding the 2017 corporate and individual tax cuts, U.S. House Republicans found billions of dollars in savings by slashing over a dozen clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.
Critics say the mega-bill, which passed the GOP-led House on May 22 in a 215-214 vote, would effectively strip away the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit and other incentives.
They have bolstered the production of batteries and solar components in numerous states — top among them North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Illinois and Oklahoma, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
U.S. senators are now negotiating the massive budget reconciliation legislation.
Kevin Doffling, CEO and founder of Project Vanguard, an organization that connects veterans to clean energy jobs, warned pulling the plug on the clean energy tax credits will stifle progress the U.S. has made against other countries, namely China.
“We’re just going to see a huge pullback from investments inside of advanced manufacturing here in the U.S., and then we’ll go source it from other places, instead of doing it here,” Doffling said on a May 28 press call pressing for senators to protect the tax credits.
Doffling’s organization works in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington and Utah.
The suite of tax credits enacted under the IRA incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of a reduction in the effects of climate change.
For example, the IRA’s Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit is awarded per unit produced and sold, and in some cases the capacity of energy output.
Battery cell manufacturers can earn up to $35 per battery cell multiplied by potential kilowatt hours. In the case of solar, the credit offers producers 7 cents per solar module multiplied by wattage output. For mining operations extracting critical minerals, such as lithium, companies can receive a 10% tax break on the costs of production.
Most credits phase out by 2032 under the Biden-era law, except those for critical mineral mining, which continue.
A group of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam” — echoing Trump’s rhetoric — pushed to accelerate the expiration in the final version of the mega-bill, even for critical mineral mining and production. The federal government classifies critical minerals as crucial to national security.
The House-passed bill also severely tightens language around foreign components, titled “foreign entities of concern,” making the credit practically unusable as many parts of the clean energy manufacturing supply chain are global, industry professionals say.
The legislation also repeals “transferability,” which allows companies with little or no tax liability to sell the credits.
For example, a critical mineral mining company would not turn a profit during an initial phase and could sell the credits to offset the cost of operations.
Schneider Electric, a global corporation with a U.S. base in Massachusetts, has facilitated 18 transfer deals worth $1.7 billion in tax credits for U.S. companies since 2023. In a statement, Schneider said the deals “reflect growing market interest in flexible financing mechanisms that directly fund renewable projects.”
Silfab Solar, which recently built a solar cell manufacturing and module assembly plant in Fort Mill, South Carolina, announced in mid-May the sale of $110 million in Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credits to help fund its expansion. The company already runs a solar manufacturing site in Burlington, Washington.
Spurred by the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit, known as 45X, actual investment in clean energy manufacturing since August 2022 reached $115 billion in April, up from $21 billion over the same length of time prior to the IRA, the Clean Investment Monitor found.
Of the 380 clean technology production facilities announced since the third quarter of 2022, 161 are now operational, according to CIM data.
The credit spurred a “sea change” in U.S. clean energy manufacturing, said Mike Williams, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and former deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which advocates for the joining of labor and environmental organizations.
Despite solar technology’s roots in the U.S., the nation “didn’t even have a toe” in solar manufacturing, Williams said. Other countries, most notably Germany and then China, have dominated the industry.
“But after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, all of a sudden we see panel manufacturing, we see parts and components manufacturing, absolutely exploding. Plants have announced and started construction in Georgia, in Oklahoma,” Williams said in an interview with States Newsroom.
Active manufacturing of solar components, advanced batteries and wind turbines and vessels is concentrated in rural areas. Most are located in states that went red in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Clean Power America Association’s May 2025 State of Clean Energy Manufacturing in America report.
The renewable energy policy group estimated the industry supports 122,000 full-time manufacturing jobs across the U.S.
Active solar manufacturing sites and expansions are clustered in Texas, Ohio and Alabama, according to data from the association. Should major project announcements in Georgia pull through, the state would surpass Alabama for third place.
Advanced battery manufacturing spans 38 states, with the largest concentrations in California, Michigan and North Carolina.
But various parts of the battery production process stretch throughout the country — for example, battery cell production in Nevada and Tennessee and module production in Utah. Other supporting hardware is made in South Carolina, Arizona and Texas.
Lithium, a critical mineral for battery production, is currently mined in Nevada and California. And investors are eyeing other spots in the U.S., namely Alaska, to mine and produce graphite, another critical mineral.
China largely dominates the world’s critical mineral supply chain, according to U.S. Geological Survey data for 2024.
When accounting for the full suite of clean energy tax credits that were enacted in 2022 — including residential, electric vehicles and clean electricity credits — just over 312,900 new jobs are linked to the industry, the bulk in Republican-led congressional districts, according to the advocacy group Climate Power’s 2024 report on clean energy employment.
Troy Van Beek, CEO and founder of the Iowa-based solar company Ideal Energy, said his business weathered the pandemic and has been able to add jobs, but is now facing uncertainty again.
“We’re getting our feet under us and really starting to operate. I went from 20-some jobs to over 60 jobs, and those are good-paying jobs for people and their families. So we need that stability in the industry,” said Van Beek, who spoke on the call with Doffling.
“What troubles me is the rocking of the boat to such a degree that we can’t get anything done, and that’s been very difficult to deal with,” he said.
The industry has seen a pullback since January and the beginning of the Trump presidency.
Six announced projects representing $6.9 billion in investment were canceled in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Clean Investment Monitor’s latest State of U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains report. While investment in clean energy overall continues to grow, the beginning of 2025 shows a slowdown from where the industry was a year ago.
Van Beek, whose solar company provides construction and installation among others services, said recent talks to strike a deal with a solar manufacturer collapsed after threats to the tax credits.
“We had worked an entire year on putting together (a deal) with one of the leading manufacturers in the world that has U.S. manufacturing to actually have joint ventures and work with them on projects,” Van Beek said. “And when this came up, that deal came to a screeching halt.”
Van Beek did not name the company on the call and did not respond to a request for a follow-up interview.
Several companies declined States Newsroom’s requests for comment while senators negotiate the bill.
Spencer Pederson of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said the unpredictability is interrupting how operators are planning for the coming years.
“Whether large or small, just the business certainty and the ability to plan out your business is disrupted when you have any type of tax mechanism that is abruptly halted when you’re doing business planning at five- or 10-year intervals,” said Pederson, the association’s senior vice president of public affairs.
Some House Republicans, led by Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, urged party colleagues to protect the clean energy tax credits — for example by removing the “overly prescriptive” restrictions on foreign entities of concern and keeping in place transferability of tax credits.
Kiggans wrote to House Republican tax writers in mid-May that “the last thing any of us want is to provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families.”
Her co-signers included Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Dave Joyce of Ohio and Dan Newhouse of Washington, who all eventually voted for the final bill.
Far-right House members won on not only shortening the lifespan of the credits, but also on keeping the restrictive foreign entity language and on repealing a company’s ability to transfer credits.
The right-leaning National Taxpayers Union hailed the “commonsense changes” championed by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, under the leadership of Maryland Rep. Andy Harris.
The organization, which favors cutting government spending and lowering taxes, pointed to the cost. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the credits as of 2022 were valued at roughly $384.9 billion over ten years.
“The longer these subsidies remain in law, the more expensive they will become and the harder it will be for Congress to remove them. Now it’s up to the Senate to support the Green New Deal Rollbacks,” Thomas Aiello, NTU’s senior director of government affairs, wrote in the days following the House vote.
But representatives from multinational corporations to mid-size businesses and sizable trade associations are now looking to the U.S. Senate to restore measures that they say created a boom time for investment, production and new energy on the grid.
Jeannie Salo, chief public policy officer at Schneider Electric, said in a statement to States Newsroom that “The Senate should restore and extend the timelines for key energy and manufacturing credits and their transferability to ensure the nation continues to attract key investments and projects that will power the U.S. economy and help make energy more affordable.”
Pederson said the restrictions on foreign components and company ties are “particularly restrictive coming out of the House.”
“So we’re hoping to work with the Senate Finance Committee and some of the members of the Senate who have indicated some willingness to make the foreign entity of concern language a little bit more workable,” Pederson said.
Doffling believes senators have a “longer term vision” of the nation’s energy strategy than House members who face reelection every two years.
“They see what’s happening not just in their district, but in the entire state that they represent,” Doffling said.
The House bill just sets the U.S. “further behind,” he added. “This bill is all about going backwards in time and hoping for the best.”
“I wish they could look at the numbers and understand the economic impacts it’s gonna have. … But somehow we’re talking about the fact of hamstringing a whole entire industry itself over verbiage of the word ‘clean.’”
Hydrogen has the potential to be a climate-friendly fuel since it doesn’t release carbon dioxide when used as an energy source. Currently, however, most methods for producing hydrogen involve fossil fuels, making hydrogen less of a “green” fuel over its entire life cycle.
A new process developed by MIT engineers could significantly shrink the carbon footprint associated with making hydrogen.
Last year, the team reported that they could produce hydrogen gas by combining seawater, recycled soda cans, and caffeine. The question then was whether the benchtop process could be applied at an industrial scale, and at what environmental cost.
Now, the researchers have carried out a “cradle-to-grave” life cycle assessment, taking into account every step in the process at an industrial scale. For instance, the team calculated the carbon emissions associated with acquiring and processing aluminum, reacting it with seawater to produce hydrogen, and transporting the fuel to gas stations, where drivers could tap into hydrogen tanks to power engines or fuel cell cars. They found that, from end to end, the new process could generate a fraction of the carbon emissions that is associated with conventional hydrogen production.
In a study appearing today in Cell Reports Sustainability, the team reports that for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, the process would generate 1.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide over its entire life cycle. In comparison, fossil-fuel-based processes emit 11 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilogram of hydrogen generated.
The low-carbon footprint is on par with other proposed “green hydrogen” technologies, such as those powered by solar and wind energy.
“We’re in the ballpark of green hydrogen,” says lead author Aly Kombargi PhD ’25, who graduated this spring from MIT with a doctorate in mechanical engineering. “This work highlights aluminum’s potential as a clean energy source and offers a scalable pathway for low-emission hydrogen deployment in transportation and remote energy systems.”
The study’s MIT co-authors are Brooke Bao, Enoch Ellis, and professor of mechanical engineering Douglas Hart.
Gas bubble
Dropping an aluminum can in water won’t normally cause much of a chemical reaction. That’s because when aluminum is exposed to oxygen, it instantly forms a shield-like layer. Without this layer, aluminum exists in its pure form and can readily react when mixed with water. The reaction that occurs involves aluminum atoms that efficiently break up molecules of water, producing aluminum oxide and pure hydrogen. And it doesn’t take much of the metal to bubble up a significant amount of the gas.
“One of the main benefits of using aluminum is the energy density per unit volume,” Kombargi says. “With a very small amount of aluminum fuel, you can conceivably supply much of the power for a hydrogen-fueled vehicle.”
Last year, he and Hart developed a recipe for aluminum-based hydrogen production. They found they could puncture aluminum’s natural shield by treating it with a small amount of gallium-indium, which is a rare-metal alloy that effectively scrubs aluminum into its pure form. The researchers then mixed pellets of pure aluminum with seawater and observed that the reaction produced pure hydrogen. What’s more, the salt in the water helped to precipitate gallium-indium, which the team could subsequently recover and reuse to generate more hydrogen, in a cost-saving, sustainable cycle.
“We were explaining the science of this process in conferences, and the questions we would get were, ‘How much does this cost?’ and, ‘What’s its carbon footprint?’” Kombargi says. “So we wanted to look at the process in a comprehensive way.”
A sustainable cycle
For their new study, Kombargi and his colleagues carried out a life cycle assessment to estimate the environmental impact of aluminum-based hydrogen production, at every step of the process, from sourcing the aluminum to transporting the hydrogen after production. They set out to calculate the amount of carbon associated with generating 1 kilogram of hydrogen — an amount that they chose as a practical, consumer-level illustration.
“With a hydrogen fuel cell car using 1 kilogram of hydrogen, you can go between 60 to 100 kilometers, depending on the efficiency of the fuel cell,” Kombargi notes.
They performed the analysis using Earthster — an online life cycle assessment tool that draws data from a large repository of products and processes and their associated carbon emissions. The team considered a number of scenarios to produce hydrogen using aluminum, from starting with “primary” aluminum mined from the Earth, versus “secondary” aluminum that is recycled from soda cans and other products, and using various methods to transport the aluminum and hydrogen.
After running life cycle assessments for about a dozen scenarios, the team identified one scenario with the lowest carbon footprint. This scenario centers on recycled aluminum — a source that saves a significant amount of emissions compared with mining aluminum — and seawater — a natural resource that also saves money by recovering gallium-indium. They found that this scenario, from start to finish, would generate about 1.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram of hydrogen produced. The cost of the fuel produced, they calculated, would be about $9 per kilogram, which is comparable to the price of hydrogen that would be generated with other green technologies such as wind and solar energy.
The researchers envision that if the low-carbon process were ramped up to a commercial scale, it would look something like this: The production chain would start with scrap aluminum sourced from a recycling center. The aluminum would be shredded into pellets and treated with gallium-indium. Then, drivers could transport the pretreated pellets as aluminum “fuel,” rather than directly transporting hydrogen, which is potentially volatile. The pellets would be transported to a fuel station that ideally would be situated near a source of seawater, which could then be mixed with the aluminum, on demand, to produce hydrogen. A consumer could then directly pump the gas into a car with either an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.
The entire process does produce an aluminum-based byproduct, boehmite, which is a mineral that is commonly used in fabricating semiconductors, electronic elements, and a number of industrial products. Kombargi says that if this byproduct were recovered after hydrogen production, it could be sold to manufacturers, further bringing down the cost of the process as a whole.
“There are a lot of things to consider,” Kombargi says. “But the process works, which is the most exciting part. And we show that it can be environmentally sustainable.”
The group is continuing to develop the process. They recently designed a small reactor, about the size of a water bottle, that takes in aluminum pellets and seawater to generate hydrogen, enough to power an electric bike for several hours. They previously demonstrated that the process can produce enough hydrogen to fuel a small car. The team is also exploring underwater applications, and are designing a hydrogen reactor that would take in surrounding seawater to power a small boat or underwater vehicle.
This research was supported, in part, by the MIT Portugal Program.
© Credit: Courtesy of the researchers
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