Will "Big Beautiful Bill” Derail Clean Energy Growth?

BloombergNEF’s Derrick Flakoll discusses the outlook for U.S. clean energy development under the House version of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

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On May 22, the House of Representatives passed its version of what President Trump has dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a sweeping budget package addressing taxation, federal spending, and the debt ceiling. Now headed to the Senate, a revised version is expected to emerge by early July.

The House bill proposes deep funding cuts to programs like Medicaid and extends the Trump-era tax cuts from 2017. For the clean energy sector, however, the most consequential provisions are those targeting the Inflation Reduction Act. As written, the legislation would significantly curtail tax credits for renewable energy projects and the domestic manufacturing base that supports them. Incentives for electric vehicles and EV charging infrastructure, as well as battery storage, hydrogen, and nuclear power would also be sharply reduced or eliminated altogether.

Derrick Flakoll, U.S. Policy Expert at BloombergNEF, examines what this could mean for the future of clean energy in the United States. BloombergNEF recently released an analysis projecting the impacts of the House bill on clean energy growth and investment. Flakoll outlines the report’s findings, including the resilience of clean energy markets without IRA tax credits, which sectors face the greatest risks, and how the proposed “Foreign Entity of Concern” provisions could further complicate project development.

He also considers how the Senate might alter the legislation and whether any of the IRA’s clean energy incentives are likely to remain intact.

Derrick Flakoll is Policy Expert for the United States and Canada at BloombergNEF

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Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu

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