The Republicans Who Could Save The IRA

These House districts have benefitted the most from the IRA. Will their Republican leaders have the courage to save it?

Since Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, America has seen a clean energy boom. More than 100 GW of new solar, wind, and storage capacity has been built in hundreds of different counties across the country—everywhere from Los Angeles to rural Maine.

This week, House Republicans released their long awaited reconciliation bill that aims to slow all that clean energy progress to a halt. The proposed budget bill targets everything from solar, wind and storage tax credits to consumer EV incentives. It even guts incentives for the carbon-free technology Republicans love: nuclear. It’s about as close to a full Inflation Reduction Act repeal as anyone expected when Republicans took Congress and the White House in November.

Using data from Cleanview's project tracker, I analyzed every clean energy project that has been built since the IRA passed—3,570 in all—to understand which House Districts would be impacted the most by the proposed budget.

The upshot: The proposed budget bill would hurt Republican districts the most.

78% of new solar, wind, and battery projects have been built in Republican districts. 77.7 GW of clean energy capacity has been built in these districts since August 2022, bringing in roughly $100 billion in private investment.

That’s all to say the IRA and its clean energy policies have been a boon for Republican districts. It’s created jobs, built factories in hallowed out blue collar towns, and funded crumbling schools. It’s been an economic lifeline for communities at risk of being left behind in the 21st century.

Republicans want to put an end to all that.

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The House Republicans that could go rogue

The proposed budget bill is far from becoming law. Over the coming months it will have to make its way through committee votes, closed-door negotiations, and floor votes. That’s all before it even makes it to the Senate where it faces an even tougher set of rules and procedures. That means that there’s still much that clean energy advocates can do to prevent its passage.

And there’s good reason to hope such advocacy could be effective. In March, a group of 21 House Republicans signed a letter asking House Speaker Johnson to keep many provisions of the IRA intact. These legislators argued that a full IRA repeal would increase energy prices, slow manufacturing investment, and make America less competitive on the global stage.

Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents a rural district in my home state of Colorado, was one of the signatories of that letter. In the chart above, you can see that 1,200 MW of new clean energy capacity has been built in his district since the IRA was signed—more than most others in the country.

Pueblo, Colorado is one of the communities that Rep. Hurd represents and in recent years it has become a poster child for the clean energy transition in America. Up until recently, two of the biggest employers in Pueblo were the Comanche coal plant and Evraz steel mill. In 2022, Xcel Energy announced that it would close Pueblo’s coal plant to meet Colorado and the company's climate goals. That left a gaping hole in the city's future budget and put thousands of blue collar jobs at risk.

Just a few months after Xcel announced it would close the Comanche coal plant, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act and breathed new life into Pueblo’s economic future. CS Wind decided to expand their wind turbine factory making it the largest in the world. The company credited the IRA when it made the decision. NextEra Energy built two of the state’s largest solar and battery projects in Colorado in Pueblo in the years that followed. The company says the projects will create millions in tax revenue and create hundreds of jobs. Evraz, the steel company, recently built a huge solar farm to manufacture green steel.

But all of this progress will slow if House Republicans like Rep. Hurd vote for the proposed budget bill.

Take the Sun Bear solar and storage project as an example. The 756 MW project promises to bring in $1.5 billion of investment to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Hurd’s district. It's scheduled to be completed in May 2029. But the proposed budget bill would begin phasing out the solar and storage tax credits starting in 2028, potentially putting the entire project at risk.

Sun Bear isn’t the only project at risk and Colorado’s 3rd District isn’t the only Republican district that would see investments dry up if the current bill passes.

California’s 20th and 22nd Congressional Districts are home to Kern County, which has built more clean energy capacity than any county in America to date. 2,400 MW of clean energy capacity has been built in the two districts since the IRA was signed. Developers would like to build a lot more. 92,692 MW of clean energy capacity is trying to connect to the grid over the coming decade, according to Cleanview’s CAISO interconnection queue tracker. But much of it would come online after the tax credits phase down in 2028, putting them at risk.

The two Republican representatives in these districts—Rep. Vince Fong and Rep. David Valadao—signed the March letter urging caution in repealing the IRA. But they haven’t said anything publicly about how they may vote for the current version of the bill.

As these Republican representatives weigh their votes on the budget bill, they face a choice between loyalty to President Trump and their districts’ prosperity. Over the coming weeks it’s up to clean energy advocates to encourage them to choose the latter.