Regulatory Chaos Could Disrupt US Solar Manufacturing And Implementation

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The Inflation Reduction Act has been spectacularly successful. According to a recent White House press release, in the two years since its passage, clean energy projects including new solar installations have created more than 330,000 jobs in nearly every state in the country. In addition, companies have announced $265 billion in new clean energy investments in virtually every state. A study for the Blue Green A lliance by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found the more than 100 climate, energy, and environmental investments in the Inflation Reduction Act will create more than 9 million good jobs over the next decade, many of them for underemployed or disadvantaged Americans.

Of course, helping actual Americans achieve economic success is anathema to the MAGAlomaniacs who will be running the country for the next four years. They are laser focused on finding enough money to cut taxes for the wealthiest people and corporations. The only way to do that is to claw back as much of the money being handed out to ordinary Americans as possible so they can give it to the those who already have more money than they could possibly spend in a dozen lifetimes. Nothing says success in America quite like stealing from ordinary citizens and giving it to the filthy rich. It’s the American way in the 21st century, and that suits most voters just fine, or so it would seem.

Kill All The Solar Tax Credits!

One of the primary goals of the next administration is to dismantle the IRA and all the other government programs initiated by the Biden administration. Some of the key features of that legislation are production tax credits — incentives for manufacturing the products needed to make a transition to a renewable economy possible. But since the new administration does not believe there is a climate emergency, why waste money on such boondoggles when it can be given to those who ~~bought and paid for~~ donated money to the victors? With the provisions of the IRA now up in the air, some companies that were planning to invest in clean energy products are now standing on the sidelines, waiting to see which way the political winds will blow.

One of those is Heliene, a Minnesota company that manufactures solar modules in the US and Canada using domestic suppliers. CEO Martin Pochtaruk told Renewable Energy World recently that his company would hold off on leasing the building for its previously announced solar cell plant in the Minneapolis—St. Paul area, a joint venture with India’s Premier Energies. It will also wait to order the necessary equipment for the facility until after the next president decides the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act. If the 45X production credits are eliminated, that factory may never get completed and those domestically produced solar modules will never get made. “The 45X Investment Tax Credits are an important factor for investment in the US,” Pochtaruk said. “Until there is certainty on the new administration’s view on them, it would not be cautious to proceed with the very large investment in Heliene’s JV with Premier Energies for solar cell manufacturing.”

The Minnesota solar cell manufacturing facility was planned to be the second one operational in the United States. Suniva’s facility in Georgia was the first. Earlier this year, Heliene announced a three-year sourcing contract to produce the first “made in the USA” PV module eligible for the IRA’s domestic tax credits. The first modules were shipped in late 2024, a landmark moment for stateside solar manufacturing.

“My job,” Pochtaruk said, “is to ensure that at the end of the month, everybody has a job and that everybody will have a job for years to come. So that’s why it’s important that we all work, and by that, I mean everybody in the industry, to ensure that we maintain an equitable, fair market. To ensure the things that everybody’s counting on — from tax credits for power generation to tax credits for manufacturing — stay in place and our industry is sustainable.” Regulatory chaos is the best way imaginable of convincing companies like Heliene to sit on the sidelines rather than making the investments needed to keep the solar revolution in America moving forward.

Solar For All May Survive

One of the many clean energy initiatives promoted by the Biden administration is the Solar For All initiative, a $7 billion program designed to make solar power available to lower utility bills for some 900,000 low income residents in disadvantaged communities. But low income people didn’t pay to get the next president elected, so funk that. Let’s take that money and give it to billionaires instead! Ann Talnaes has captured this perfectly in her latest cartoon, the one the Washington Post refused to publish. Here’s a link so you can view it for yourself. It is brilliant political satire and the fact that it has been suppressed gives us a pretty clear indication about what to expect from the news industry over the next four years.

According to Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action, it may be too late for the next administration to follow through on threats to defend the Solar For All program. EPA officials say program funds have already been “obligated,” which means the 60 initiatives are on track to be implemented this year. But while those in the solar power industry are cautiously optimistic about its future, there are still ways the Trump administration could undermine the Solar for All program.

“I think one of the things we are concerned about is will there be speed bumps from the incoming EPA (administration) effectively administering these dollars and making sure payments are made to recipients in a timely fashion,” said Ben Norris, vice president of regulatory affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association. He said one thing the program has going for it is the estimated 200,000 jobs it is expected to create, which will be hard for detractors to ignore. “The Trump administration wants to hear about that story. Job creation is a story that we talk about with both sides of the aisle.”

Most of the state agencies and nonprofit recipients that Floodlight spoke with feel confident the change in administration won’t derail their plans to roll out Solar for All. In New Mexico, the Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department is using the $156 million it’s receiving to deploy rooftop solar systems on single-family homes as well as apartment buildings. It also plans to upgrade the grid infrastructure to help local utility companies seamlessly integrate solar power into the electric grid. Sidney Hill, a spokesman for the state’s energy department, said, “New Mexico’s Solar for All program will focus on rural and tribal communities first. These are areas in which many residents have not been well positioned to take advantage of the solar tax credits because they lack the funds to pay for a solar system upfront.”

The Nevada Clean Energy Fund, a local nonprofit, is getting $156 million to provide financial assistance for solar projects on single-family homes, apartments, and commercial buildings at no upfront cost to applicants through grants or loans. “Over the five year performance period, the Nevada Solar for All program targets reducing energy costs for over 20,000 Nevada households and creating 900 solar jobs,” said Kirsten Stasio, chief executive officer for the Nevada Clean Energy Fund. “We have already begun implementing the award funds. Moreover, the need for these funds in our communities will persist through the change in administration.”

Throwing Sand Into The Gears Of Government

Since the 2024 elections, the indications from the next administration have been that it intends to roll back the climate related funding in the IRA, especially dollars left unspent by the time he takes office in January. But Ted Toon, an EPA senior advisor, said Solar For All doesn’t rely on annual agency appropriations from Congress. That would essentially protect it from the Republican wave taking over the White House and both chambers of Congress next year. “Obligation means that the government and grant recipients have entered legal contracts known as award agreements, commitments that create a legal liability of the government for the award. Once signed — and as long as the recipient complies with the award agreement — the obligated funds are committed to that purpose.”

That emphasis on compliance could be an opportunity for opponents of the program. Romany Webb, deputy director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told Floodlight the Trump administration might lean hard into ensuring grantees follow the stipulations of those agreements to the letter, using any breach as a way to claw back funds. In addition, it might try to redistribute unspent money from the IRA, refuse to allocate any additional dollars, or close the pipeline of information available to the public on how to access the funds.

But she added the withholding of IRA funds without congressional approval could violate federal appropriations law. “The government efficiency push that [the next president] has said he plans to advance has a lot of cuts in the federal workforce, and so those sorts of things could have really significant consequences for IRA implementation,” including Solar for All, Webb said. If there are no federal employees to run the government, all government operations will grind to a halt and nothing will get done, which may be precisely what the DOGE crowd is hoping for. The Tea Party mantra was to shrink the size of government until it was small enough to drown it in a bathtub. Soon we may be at precisely that point.