The Latest Senate Bill Is Worse Than Climate Advocates Thought Possible

The bill could pass the Senate in the next 24 hours

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The US capitol at night. Photo by Cameron Smith.

Climate and clean energy advocates thought they had already seen the worst case scenario in previous versions of the Senate’s sweeping reconciliation bill. They were wrong.

The latest bill, released late Friday night, includes a new tax on solar and wind farms that analysts at Rhodium Group estimate will increase the cost of renewable energy projects by 10 to 20%. That’s on top of cost increases that will come from an aggressive phase out of tax credits that have led to a clean energy boom over the last decade.

“It’s a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry,” Adrian Deveny, founder and president of the policy advisory firm Climate Vision, told Politico.

The bill could become law as soon as this evening if the Senate succeeds at bringing it to the floor while most Americans are asleep.

The bill wouldn’t just dramatically slow clean energy’s growth. It would also provide subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. One provision in the bill would exempt oil and gas drillers from paying any corporate taxes. Another provision offers coal producers a production tax credit. These giveaways would add to the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies the industry has received from taxpayers over the last century.

The new fossil fuel subsidies in the bill come after a month of intense pressure from fossil fuel industry lobbyists and advocates. In a lunch with Republican Senators, fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein successfully argued that Senate leaders should go further than the House did in slowing clean energy’s growth.

Last week, Epstein said wind and solar were “a cancer we have to get rid of” before referring to jobs created by the industry as “fentanyl jobs.” He told the New York Times his advocacy is funded by the fossil fuel industry.

The bill would cause irreparable damage

If passed, the Senate’s bill would set America back significantly in its effort to address climate change. By 2035 the United States would emit one billion tons of additional carbon pollution compared to its current trajectory, according to modeling from Princeton University. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan, the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter.

The bill would also lead to a massive wave of clean energy project cancellations at a time when America is already running out of electricity due to a surge in demand from AI data centers. Less electricity supply would boost prices for American families and businesses in every state, with some experiencing price increases of 25% as a result of the legislation.

For once this year, I agree with Elon Musk

Those project cancellations would result in job losses across the country. Yesterday, the trade union that represents three million construction workers in America came out against the bill for that reason. “If enacted, this stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” they wrote in a statement.

Vulnerable Americans would be hurt the most by the bill. The latest Senate version would cut SNAP (food stamps) funding by 22% over the next decade. It would kick 11.8 million Americans off their insurance. The average low-income family would lose $1,600 in benefits.

All of those cuts would fund tax breaks for the richest Americans and corporations. It would be “the biggest wealth transfer in American history,” according to Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

It would do all of this and still add $4.5 trillion to the national debt—more than the US spent on World War II, in today’s dollars.

The Senate wants to pass this bill while no one is looking

Right now the Senate is trying to bring their sweeping bill to the floor for a vote. If the process goes anything like it did in the House, they will start voting later tonight when most Americans are asleep. This is by design.

The mega-bill is deeply unpopular with voters. A Fox News poll of registered voters found that just 38% of voters support the bill, while 59% oppose it.

Even Republican Senators don’t want to vote for it. Yesterday Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) joined Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) in voting against a motion to proceed. The bill moved forward on a razor thin margin.

Other Republican Senators, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) have expressed deep concerns about the bill’s negative impacts on clean energy. But they are feeling pressure from President Trump and far-right members of their party. “We are all afraid,” Murkowski said, in reference to potential retaliation from Trump.

This bill, and its most extreme provisions on clean energy, aren’t destined to pass. This weekend, conservation advocates proved that the bill’s worst parts can be removed when they succeeded in stripping the legislation of a section that would have forced the sale of more than a million acres of public lands.

Only four Republican Senators need to vote no in order to kill the bill. With two—Tillis and Paul—already saying they will oppose it, that leaves just two more Senators. Murkowski and Curtis are considered the most likely to oppose the anti-renewable provisions, according to one Senate staffer we spoke to.

The window to stop this bill—or significantly change it—is rapidly closing. But to do that climate and clean energy advocates need to speak up.

Correction: A previous version of this article said the bill could become law by Sunday night. The bill could pass the Senate by Sunday night. Distilled regrets the error.