Senate Republicans Look Ready to Kill Clean Energy & EV Tax Credits — Shocker

Last Updated on: 18th June 2025, 12:36 am

We’ve covered this topic countless times now, so let’s just do a recap with a short bullet list before getting to the latest news:

Republican politicians have been heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry for decades.
Therefore, even as we have learned more and more about the harms of air pollution, water pollution, and global heating, Republican politicians have often been opposed to any legislation that tries to limit fossil fuel use, including legislation that supports clean energy, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles. (Of course, just because you get funding from an industry/company doesn’t mean that you can’t use your conscience and vote for good things instead of bad things, but it seems they don’t know that.)
Democrats passed big clean energy, energy efficiency, and electric vehicle tax credits when they controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate in 2022. This was largely done through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Now that Republicans control the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate again, it’s been expected they would repeal those tax credits for clean energy, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles.
The House of Representatives passed a budget bill doing this, sending it to the Senate.
More than a dozen Republican members of the House then petitioned their colleagues in the Senate to change the bill to not kill some of these cleantech incentives, even though they passed the bill in the first place.

Now, news in DC is that the Senate looks set to phase out clean energy and energy efficiency tax credits, but a bit less slowly than the House bill would require. Meanwhile, electric vehicle incentives would be rapidly and brainlessly slashed.

“This is a 20-pound sledgehammer swung at clean energy. It would mean higher energy prices, lost manufacturing jobs, shuttered factories, and a worsening climate crisis,” commented Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“They want everybody to believe that after the flawed House bill, that they have come up with a much more moderate climate approach,” noted Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. “The reality is, if the early projections on the clean energy cuts are accurate, the Senate Republican bill does almost 90%.” Sounds horrible. I’m shocked. Are you shocked?

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