A growing group of Republicans and business leaders is rallying behind an unlikely cause. They want to protect Biden-era tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energy.
President Trump has made dismantling federal efforts to address climate change a signature part of his agenda, eliminating environmental regulations, withholding congressionally approved funding, firing workers, halting permitting for wind energy developments and fast-tracking fossil fuel projects.
But the clean energy tax credits, which were signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, have helped spur a boom in manufacturing investment in the United States, especially in Republican districts.
Now, as Mr. Trump pushes Congress to slash federal spending to pay for broad tax cuts, some House Republicans from districts that got billions of dollars in investment from the tax credits have begun a campaign to keep them.
The Republicans are making the case that supporting renewable energy is squarely in line with Mr. Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, despite the president’s rallying against what he calls the “green new scam.”
Last week, a group of 21 House Republicans wrote a letter to Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, asking him to preserve the credits. And in recent weeks, several groups of conservative environmentalists and business leaders have traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress on the issue.
“To meet President Trump’s campaign promises of bringing back manufacturing and taking energy production at home seriously, we need to look at an all-the-above approach to these things,” Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York, who organized the letter, said in an interview. “These credits have been helping do that.”
President Trump has not specifically said which if any of the credits he wants to eliminate, but he regularly talks about repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. The White House declined a request for comment.
The credits, which offer financial incentives to companies producing renewable power and sustainable aviation fuel, making components for clean technology and working to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, have helped push billions of dollars into domestic factory construction in recent years. The United States recorded more than $315 billion in clean energy investments last year, according to the International Energy Agency.
About 80 percent of the investments tied to the bill have gone to Republican congressional districts, according to an analysis by Atlas Public Policy, a research firm. They include battery plants across the Southeast, a lithium mine in Nevada and wind farms in Texas.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has said he wants to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act, and many Republicans in Congress support eliminating all incentives for clean energy.
As Congress works to pass a major fiscal package, the showdown is…
Read More: The Republicans Pushing Trump to Save Biden’s Clean Energy Tax Credits
