AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK. The Senate passed a huge tax and spending bill today, which is a cornerstone of President Trump's second term agenda. And if the legislation does pass in the House, it would create problems for America's clean energy industry. NPR's Michael Copley is here to talk about what the impact could be. Hi, Michael.
MICHAEL COPLEY, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so big picture here, what would this bill do to the country's energy industry, do you think?
COPLEY: Yeah, so Republicans are moving to end tax incentives for clean energy sooner than scheduled. So these are incentives that cut the cost of building power plants that don't create climate pollution that's raising global temperatures. And if the project - and if project costs now go up, that could hit consumers with higher energy bills.
CHANG: Which means higher prices - but do you think companies will just keep doing these kinds of projects, even though they don't get the incentives?
COPLEY: Yeah. I mean, according to industry analysts I've been talking to, like Doug Lewin, and that's because the cost of wind and solar has just gotten really cheap. So it's competitive now without subsidies. Now, projects will cost more without incentives, which could mean higher electricity bills for homeowners and businesses, but Lewin says it's not going to kill the market.
DOUG LEWIN: We will still see solar built. We'll just see less of it, and it'll be more expensive.
COPLEY: Now, that would be happening as power demand is growing from things like data centers. And energy executives, like John Ketchum at NextEra Energy, say renewables are critical to meet that demand because they're quick to build and they produce electricity that's relatively cheap.
CHANG: OK. Well, I know that you've been reporting on a boom in U.S. solar manufacturing. What would happen to those factories?
COPLEY: The manufacturers are really worried. So the tax incentives we just talked about were created under the Biden administration, and they encourage companies building power plants to buy American equipment. So the fear is that without those incentives, companies will chase the cheapest equipment they can find and that could well come from overseas. Scott Moskowitz says if that happens, it could threaten a decade-long push to onshore manufacturing. Moskowitz is a vice president at a solar manufacturer called Qcells.
SCOTT MOSKOWITZ: It's not a question of whether or not the country is going to install solar if these provisions are removed or phased out too quickly. It's just a matter of where they're going to get the product from.
COPLEY: And manufacturers worry that the U.S. solar market is going to be flooded with low-cost equipment from China and Southeast Asia.
CHANG: Sure. Well, also, a lot of attention over the past few days was on a new tax that was slipped into the Senate bill, right? Like, what is that tax?
COPLEY: Yeah, so over the weekend, we saw this proposal to tax wind and solar projects that get a certain amount of equipment from Chinese supply chains. That tax was cut from the final bill. The concern was companies building power plants didn't know how they would prove compliance, how they had separated themselves from China's supply chains. So costs would have hit the industry at the same time these incentives we're talking about were winding down.
CHANG: OK. Was the idea to further tax Chinese supply chains as a way to push companies to buy U.S. products?
COPLEY: Maybe, Ailsa, but, you know, one analyst I spoke to said what would be more likely to happen is the U.S. would have just built less solar. Now, to be clear, again, that tax was cut from the final Senate bill. Tax incentives for clean energy are going away sooner than scheduled, and this bill now goes to the House of Representatives, and we'll have to see what lawmakers over there do with it.
CHANG: That is NPR's Michael Copley. Thank you, Michael.
COPLEY: Thanks, Ailsa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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