Jeffrey Clark, President and CEO
Advanced Power Alliance
The Financial Times headline today is clear, “Cuts to wind and solar subsidies could raise US electricity prices”. The international press is taking note of America’s politically-motivated abandonment of its promising energy technology future. Reports from around the world express shock that American lawmakers could be forced to be so shortsighted in passing energy policies designed to recreate 1950 instead of preparing for 2050. Why would an already-lagging America forfeit the game when beginning to show signs of success?
- ABC Australia News: The Country Which Could Save Our Climate Future. Hint: It’s Not the US
- Thomas Friedman: Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Will Make China Great Again
While every energy industry in America has long received federal support – through tax incentives, direct subsidies, liability caps and exemptions, taxpayer-funded cleanup funds, transportation subsidies, low-cost government-backed loans, enhanced access to capital, and much more – the misinformed political discourse in America fixates on the limited support renewable energy receives.
While the world rapidly deploys new technologies to affordably and reliably meet the energy challenges of the future, the halls of America’s state and federal capitols are flooded with misinformation and propaganda deriding these innovations a “green new scam”. Fearful incumbent fossil fuel producers spend limitlessly to undermine their potential competitors, even encouraging states with no fossil fuels of their own to turn their backs on the chance to harness their own God-given wind and solar energy, instead forfeiting their own economic opportunity and remaining dependent on energy bought elsewhere.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, lawmakers are told that renewables are too expensive and unreliable. Then, with pointing to that propaganda for political cover, they allow the weight of campaign contributions and their fear of special interests to overwhelm the data, setting America’s energy economy back while making American energy policy a target of global derision. Except in China, where business and political leaders are thrilled to see their number one rival harm its own competitive interests.
The current administration is singularly focused on crushing renewables and killing any emerging energy resources that might compete with fossil fuels, and the actions taken through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are the manifestation of this hostility driven by misinformation, actions that will turn back the American energy economy, hurting consumers and our long-term global economic competitiveness. When it comes to electricity, Americans can expect a big bill —but it won’t be beautiful.
We are poised to raise electricity prices for every power user in America while ignoring the obvious reality that America needs all of its energy resources – renewables and fossil fuels alike – to meet rapidly rising demand affordably, reliably, and cleanly.
As our country continues to make irrational, irresponsible, and strategically short-sighted energy policy decisions, rising prices should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers, utilities, and consumers.
Affordable energy for America is too important to be destroyed by American politics.
The Trump administration’s new tax and spending law contains some of the most damaging provisions in recent energy policy, an abrupt rollback of tax incentives for wind, solar, and battery storage, the very resources that have powered America’s energy transition over the past decade. While the rhetoric around energy remains politically charged, the economic consequences are straightforward and painful: higher electricity prices for everyone and slower deployment of the most affordable and scalable sources of new power.
As the FT article notes, this shocking change in policy comes at the worst possible time. Electricity demand is surging, driven by the rapid rise of AI-powered data centers, the onshoring of U.S. manufacturing, and increased electrification across industries. Clean energy, especially wind, solar, and battery storage, has consistently offered the fastest and cheapest way to meet that demand.
Groups like the Rhodium Group and Energy Innovation warn that ending clean energy incentives could shrink grid additions by more than half and increase household power bills by 2 to 4 percent nationwide. In some states—especially in the Southeast—rates could climb by nearly 50%. These aren’t abstract forecasts. These are real, measurable hits to family budgets, business overhead, and industrial competitiveness.
Advanced Power Alliance represents renewable energy companies in many of the states that will be hit the hardest—places that have made tremendous gains in economic development and grid modernization. Those gains now risk being undone by policy choices designed to benefit fossil fuel producers and political donors in other parts of the country, at the direct expense of local ratepayers.
The economic fallout goes far beyond monthly power bills. As Energy Innovation’s Dan O’Brien points out, pulling the rug out from under clean energy will cost the U.S. nearly a trillion dollars in lost GDP over the next decade, with American manufacturing bearing the brunt. Factory projects that could have landed in Texas, the Carolinas, or Ohio will now look elsewhere—seeking more stable markets, predictable policy, and lower-cost power.
These actions also weaken America’s competitive position in the global energy race. While we retreat into fossil fuel nostalgia and political soundbites, China continues to lead in renewables, storage, EVs, and grid technology. America had begun to recognize the strategic urgency of this threat, but in the interest of protecting yesterday’s technologies, we’ve committed an unforced error. We’ve placed ourselves on a path to long-term energy irrelevance.
We’re self-inflicting short term pain in exchange for even more long-term pain. There’s no upside to these irresponsible and irrational actions. For those of us who want America to resolutely lead the future of energy innovation with economic strength and global competitiveness, it’s heartbreaking to see.
If the goal is to outpace China in AI, advanced manufacturing, and clean tech, we need a modern grid and low-cost, reliable electricity to match. That starts by continuing, not cutting, the strategic public-private investments that made clean energy a U.S. success story in the first place. Cleaning up this mess will be costly, assuming we haven’t already lost the race to own the future of energy by the time we wake up from our delusion.