Where the fight against energy subsidies stands, by Alex Epstein

The final "Big Beautiful Bill" failed to truly terminate solar/wind subsidies. But there is still the opportunity to do so, along with making other crucial changes to electricity policy.

Since I have been reprinting the great work that Alex Epstein did during the process leading up to the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” or OBBBA, as it is now called, I wanted to reprint the article Alex published after the bill passed the House of Representatives. Since Alex works directly with many elected officials, he has some great observations as well as some lessons learned.

Overall, the final bill represents a significant accomplishment that goes a long way to putting an immediate end to the dark days of the previous administration and its constant attacks on one of the very foundations of a strong and thriving United States—abundant and affordable energy. While the OBBBA is not perfect, it establishes rules that will promote a strong energy sector, maintain the U.S. as a global energy superpower, and foster a vibrant, growing economy. Better yet, we have three and a half years, and hopefully more, to improve and implement more common-sense energy policies.

Alex’s comments follow.

In my last post I summarized the terrible last-second change the Senate made regarding the IRA subsidies: “The Senate bill looks like it has a 2027 "placed in service" cutoff for new solar/wind subsidies. But one last-minute paragraph makes the cutoff worthless—because projects making a recoverable 5% investment in the next 12 months are exempt!” Here’s the whole thing.

Sadly, this didn’t get fixed. The House passed the exact same bill as the Senate.

A lot of Congressmen fought hard to fix it, but in the end they decided to vote for the unchanged Senate bill in part because of the Administration promised to try to offset some of the damage the Senate did. (For reasons outlined at the end of my last post, I am skeptical that the Administration can legitimately do all that much to reduce the uptake of new solar/wind subsidies. However, there is a lot they can do on electricity policy and personnel to offset the damage of extending solar/wind subsidies—and I am actively sharing ideas here with Congress and the White House.)

The main reason that the fiercest opponents of the IRA subsidies said they voted for the Senate bill despite its negation of the 2027 “placed in service” cutoff was they thought it was the best politically possible subsidy reduction achievable (it’s obviously better than the IRA) given threats that pushing the bill back to the Senate would make the bill even worse.

It’s hard for me to evaluate the options available at the very last minute of negotiations. What I am very confident about, though, is that a much better outcome would have happened had my team and I known earlier what we know now.

I am told both by allies and opponents that my educational and advocacy efforts led to considerably more cuts to solar/wind subsidies than would otherwise have occurred. (Here’s coverage of my influence by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and E&E News.) If that is the case, which I think it is, the subsidy-seekers are in big trouble because my team and I now understand the process of reconciliation policy 10 times better than when we started.

Obviously I will fight to cut more subsidies in the next reconciliation process, which will take place with the current Congress and administration. What my team accomplished this time around was purely due to our raw ability (policy, messaging, research, analysis), and to our reputation of integrity. We got what I would now consider seriously involved in the subsidy issue just a month and a half ago, with no full-time person in DC!

Next time we will be educating and advocating from the beginning, and hopefully with a high-powered DC team. (I have the funding to pay for this, I just need to find the talent—see the end of this piece.)

While I’ll be more than ready for the next reconciliation process, my next priority is to advocate for the highest-leverage electricity policy changes. This administration can do a lot via FERC and EPA and NRC to unleash electricity. But there is huge complexity here, with the best ideas and information distributed among hundreds of smart people in government, industry, law, and even academia. I am committed to mining the knowledge of these people and using it to create the ultimate policy roadmap to revolutionize American electricity.

Thanks to everyone who worked hard this go-round to fight the scourge of energy subsidies. It was a lot of fun to fight with you, and we had a big impact even though it wasn’t nearly as big as we wanted. Let’s learn from our many mistakes and come back much smarter and stronger. Energy freedom is the right policy, and those who fight intelligently for it will hugely improve the world and have a lot of fun doing it.

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