WASHINGTON — In his four years as President, Joe Biden moved aggressively to go green. He created tax credits and other initiatives to boost the production of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy and reduce reliance on oil, coal and gas.

The massive Republican bill to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda would roll back many of those policies.

“It will make data centers less competitive. It will make it harder to build manufacturing, and it will raise household energy costs,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director for modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank that promotes policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Republican legislation could cost Wisconsin 27,000 jobs over 10 years, according to an Energy Innovation report on Wisconsin. That same report found energy bills could also go up if there are cuts clean energy tax credits, which encourage investment in renewable energy.

“For the first time in about 20 years, electricity demand in the United States is growing very rapidly, principally due to data centers and artificial intelligence,” said Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University Center for Environmental Policy. “We need all the energy domestically we can get right now, so this is a very bad time to be cutting incentives for the production of energy.” 

The version of the bill that Republicans pushed through the House would end the tax credits for any project that doesn’t start within 60 days of the legislation’s passage. Senate Republicans want a slower phase out, ending the credit in 2028.

Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, said he supports the more immediate phase out.

“What we did in there is going to protect the electrical grid and make sure electric costs stay low here in America, or that they come down here in America, because we cannot have prosperity without having low-cost energy,” Tiffany said.

Both Bledsoe and Orvis said the studies don’t support that view.

“When electricity demand is increasing, you want to increase incentives for electricity production, not decrease them,” he said. “This is bad policy.”

Some Republicans have expressed concerns, but ultimately, many said the green energy tax credits add to the government’s deficit. They argued the market should determine the best energy sources without government intervention.

“In the last few years, solar energy with battery storage has accounted for 80% of the new installed electricity capacity throughout the United States, including in states like Wisconsin, because it’s very cheap and because you can install very small amounts at a time,” Bledsoe said. “And so it’s been a really great boon to customers, to reducing emissions and to keeping costs down. Now, with the Republicans looking like they’re going to repeal the incentives, those investments are not going to be made, and it’s going to drive up the cost.” 

Orvis said the U.S. cannot build gas turbines fast enough to meet demand. 

“It’s been well documented that you can’t even get a new gas turbine until 2029 or later right now, because they are completely backlogged,” he said. “Wind, solar and storage are the things we can build. They also happen to lower costs and make our industry more competitive, and removing tax credits for doing that will cause less of it to be built, and will also cause energy costs to go up.” 

On social media this week, President Trump railed against green tax credits, writing, “I would much prefer that this money be used somewhere else.”

“None of it works without massive government subsidy (energy should NOT NEED SUBSIDY!),” the President went on to say. “Also, it is almost exclusively made in China!!! It is time to break away, finally, from this craziness!!!”

Bledsoe argued opposition to clean energy incentives is driven more by the culture wars than economic principles.

“We should be using natural gas and solar and other forms of renewable energy together to meet this new demand from AI, but unfortunately, the Republicans are going in the other direction,” Beldsoe said.

The president and House speaker have a self-imposed deadline of July 4 to pass the big tax and spending bill. Republicans in both the House and Senate will have to reach a compromise on phasing out the green energy tax credit in order to include it in the final legislation.

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