Trump signs ​‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ spelling disaster for clean energy

President Donald Trump signed the ​“Big, Beautiful Bill” on Friday, taking an axe to clean energy, though it was slightly blunted in Senate negotiations last week.

On Thursday, the House voted 218-214 to send the bill to Trump’s desk by a self-imposed July 4 deadline. Trump then signed the bill during a Fourth of July ceremony.

The legislation, which effectively repeals or dilutes much of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to have a devastating effect on the development of clean energy, increasing utility costs and worsening climate change as a result.

“This measure props up the dirty and expensive technologies of the past, while strangling the clean energy investments that are creating millions of jobs across the country,” Natural Resources Defense Council President Manish Bapna said in a statement. ​“At a time when we need new energy more than ever, Republicans are punishing the plentiful wind and solar power that can be quickly added to the grid.”

The development comes after the bill cleared the Senate by a knife’s edge on Tuesday. The final vote was split 50-50, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joining Democrats in voting against the bill. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted for the bill, said she hoped the House would further revise it. (It did not.)

Notably missing from the final bill is an excise tax on wind and solar development that cropped up in the Senate version late last week, to the apparent surprise of many GOP senators. It was removed in a wraparound amendment passed by the Senate just before the chamber voted on the final bill on Tuesday. The tax would’ve affected wind and solar projects that used components from China and other ​“foreign entities of concern,” and would’ve had a devastating effect on clean power development and the economy as a whole.

The final legislation will still require solar and wind projects to start service by the end of 2027 if they want to access 45Y or 48E production and investment tax credits. But if they begin construction within a year of the bill’s signing, they’ll have longer to use the incentives. That said, projects that start construction after this calendar year face burdensome ​“foreign entity of concern” provisions that tax experts have said are unworkable, amounting to an effective repeal of the incentives not only for solar and wind, but for technologies like storage and geothermal, too.

The rest of the bill’s energy-related provisions looked pretty close to what was finalized a week ago. Here’s a recap:

Efficiency: Tax credits for energy-efficient home improvements would only be available to projects that are finished before the end of this year. To access energy-efficient home and commercial building incentives, developers would have to start construction by June 30, 2026.

EVs: In what is the most aggressive phaseout in the legislation, tax credits for new or used clean-vehicle purchases, as well as clean commercial vehicle purchases, would end after Sept. 30, 2025. Tax credits for installing charging stations at a home or business would expire on June 30, 2026.

A provision to force the U.S. Postal Service to scrap its new EVs and a proposal to charge an annual fee on EV or hybrid vehicle registration did not make the final bill.

Nuclear, hydropower, and geothermal: They’ll all be able to tap incentives if they start construction by 2033.

Hydrogen: 45V clean-hydrogen tax credits will expire on Jan. 1, 2028. That’s a small win for the beleaguered industry — the House version passed in May had the incentives dead at the end of this year.

Transferability: Tax credit transferability, an Inflation Reduction Act provision that allows clean-energy project and factory developers to sell their tax credits directly to other companies, was left untouched in the final bill. The House version passed in May had eliminated it for certain energy-related tax credits.

And the bill repeals unobligated Inflation Reduction Act funding for a whole slew of offices and programs, including:

• The Loan Programs Office 

• The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which helped fund local emissions-reducing projects

• Decarbonizing federal buildings

• Using low-carbon materials in new transportation infrastructure construction

• Grants for states, municipalities, and tribes to make and implement emissions-reduction plans

• A program to help gas and petroleum companies reduce waste and methane emissions

• Transmission development, including for offshore wind projects

• Tribal energy loans

• A low-emissions electricity program to help states, tribes, and municipalities lower electricity use and emissions

• Clean heavy-duty vehicles

The bill also modifies the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program to remove a requirement that projects receiving loans ​“avoid, reduce, utilize, or sequester” emissions. Instead, it’ll prioritize ​“known or forecastable electric supply” — also known as fossil fuels. The bill also adds another $1 billion to the originally $5 billion program.

An update was made on July 7, 2025: This story was updated to reflect that President Trump has signed the ​“Big, Beautiful Bill.”