Renewable energy has helped add jobs, lower electricity costs and stave off blackouts in many red states like Texas, Nebraska and Oklahoma thanks to the Obama-era renewable energy policies that launched a wind and solar boom more than a decade ago. But that has not stopped Republican governors from attacking Biden’s bill, even as their states stand to reap financial incentives for wind and solar and benefit from the legislation’s new credits for carbon capture, clean hydrogen, advanced nuclear and energy storage.

Take Oklahoma, for example. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed on to an Aug. 4 statement by 22 of the nation’s 30 Republican governors deriding the bill as a “reckless tax and spending spree.”

“What you’re doing is you’re taking taxpayer dollars and you’re trying to figure out a way to appease some policy of a constituent group or a lobbyist group,” Stitt said in an interview. “And I just believe that you should let the free market work.”

Stitt is proud of the state’s standing as the third largest wind producer in the U.S. — behind only Texas and Iowa. More than 40 percent of Oklahoma’s electricity comes from wind generation, and the state boasts more than 20,000 jobs in clean energy, about 1.3 percent of its workforce. But he disputes the notion that an expansion of wind tax credits could do any more to help his state’s economy.