Will The OBBB End Heavily Subsidized Wind And Solar Generation Projects?

What does the future hold as to large additions to heavily subsidized wind and solar electricity generation capacity in the U.S.?  For those paying attention, the legislative back-and-forth of the One Big Beautiful Bill, as it made its way through Congress, has been something of a roller coaster ride.  At this point, I am betting that the utility-scale wind and solar industries are near the end of their line.  This post reports on the latest development, which is an Executive Order signed by President Trump on July 7.  But count on the wind and solar subsidy farmers to keep fighting to the last dollar of their government handouts.

Note that it is my view, from extensive study of the subject, that wind and solar generators of electricity are essentially useless, not to mention dangerous and costly, for a modern grid that needs reliable generation 24/7/365.  Nobody will invest private capital in them without huge government subsidies.  To date those subsidies have been provided mostly in the form of tax credits under the Internal Revenue Code.  Those tax credits have existed since 1978 (and since 1992 for an additional tax credit for wind generation), always with expiration dates that, however, have time and again been extended as the deadlines neared.

I have had two previous posts about provisions in the OBBB on this subject:  this one from May 24 (immediately after the House had passed its version of the Bill), and this one from July 6 (after the President had just signed the final Bill into law).  As I reported in the May 24 post, the version of the OBBB passed by the House had such strict limitations on further qualification for the wind and solar tax credits that it was likely that few if any additional projects would be able to qualify.  Projects would have had only 60 days after enactment to begin construction, and would have had to enter service by 2027 — that is, before President Trump would leave office.  That would mean that any attempt to revive the subsidies before they expired would have to overcome Trump’s veto.  In other words, if the language in that version of the Bill had survived, the wind and solar industries were basically finished.

But as I then reported in the July 6 post, the final language of the OBBB as enacted appeared to give the big wind and big solar industries the chance to fight another day.  The time to commence construction and qualify for the tax credits had been extended to a year (thus, to July 4, 2026), and the time to enter service had been extended to four years after that (thus, in 2030, which would be well beyond President Trump’s term).  Big wind and solar would thus get a substantial window to commence new projects, plus an opportunity to lobby Congress for further extension of the credits in 2029 and 2030, after Trump had left office.  The post quoted energy writer Alex Epstein as pointing out that the IRS rules on what constitutes beginning of construction were so lenient and flexible as to pose no real constraint on how many economically useless projects could qualify for a decade of taxpayer subsidies.