City officials and business leaders in the clean energy sector are ramping up efforts to persuade Congress to prevent the budget reconciliation bill from cutting tax credits for clean energy.

The mayors say thousands of jobs in their cities and regions are at risk from the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which would largely eliminate tax incentives for renewable energy such as solar and wind and many types of cleantech manufacturing such as electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries.

New analysis of the House bill’s potential impact by the independent research firm Rhodium Group identified $522 billion worth of clean energy investments linked to the tax credits that have been announced but that have yet to come online—investments that might be at risk.

“Some of these investments have already been canceled in my community,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said on a press call last week, listing a battery factory and solar manufacturer in the Phoenix area that either shut down or scaled back operations amid the uncertainty about federal tax policy.

“These are real impacts, and it will get so much worse if these clean energy tax credits are not extended,” she said. Gallego is chair of a bipartisan coalition called Climate Mayors, and she said 175 mayors and other local elected officials from 45 states joined a letter urging Congress to change the OBBBA to preserve the tax credits.

State-by-state analysis of the OBBBA by the independent research group Energy Innovation shows $18 billion of outstanding private investment has been announced at 132 facilities in Arizona. As passed by the House, the OBBBA would undercut investment at 196 clean energy or clean manufacturing projects in Arizona, the analysis showed.

Across the country in South Carolina, recent expansion by EV battery makers has made the state part of a new “battery belt” in the southeast that stretches from the Carolinas into Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, with facilities already supporting thousands of jobs and promising to generate thousands more. According to Energy Innovation, the clean energy tax credits have generated $7 billion in new private investment since 2022 at 34 energy and manufacturing facilities in South Carolina.

“I think we have once in a lifetime opportunity to transform our economy, unleash clean, reliable and affordable energy and secure good paying jobs,” Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Daniel Rickenmann said on the press call with Gallego.

However, Rickenmann said, some battery and EV facilities in his region are now on hold. Energy Innovation’s analysis found $12.07 billion of announced clean tech investment at risk in South Carolina, with as many as 15,000 jobs at stake in the coming five years.

Later this week, executives at some businesses in the clean tech sector will focus on the state-level impacts of the clean energy tax credits in some states whose Senators could be critical votes on the OBBBA, including South Carolina, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The outreach and state-specific reports are organized by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, a trade group, and will feature executives from Schneider Electric, heating and cooling equipment makers Trane Technologies, and clean power producers Atlantic Energy and Capital Energy, among others.

Some Senate Republicans have indicated they want to make changes to the energy provisions of the bill, and four prominent Republican Senators joined a letter to party leaders cautioning against changes that would put clean energy jobs and projects at risk.

Mayors Rickenmann and Gallego said that in addition to the business impacts, they are also concerned about how the proposed energy changes in the OBBBA will affect energy supply and prices for constituents and their cities’ ability to deal with climate change.

Electricity demand is on the rise, and more than 90 percent of the generating capacity added to the nation’s grid last year came from some combination of renewable energy and battery storage—all sources that would be affected if the tax credits are removed.

In the Rhodium Group’s analysis, the House version of the OBBBA would reduce new clean power generating additions to the grid by anywhere from 57 to 72 percent over the coming decade, a potential blow to meeting energy demand with what are currently the cheapest and cleanest energy sources.

The OBBBA as it passed the House would shift that power demand to more costly and polluting fossil fuel generation, according to Energy Innovation, resulting in far higher energy bills for ratepayers. The state-level analysis found that in Arizona, that would increase annual energy bills by $775 million by 2030.

Mayor Gallego said that on the day of the press call, the temperature in Phoenix had hit 109 degrees Fahrenheit and affordable energy for air conditioning was a necessity.

“Climate change is a real challenge for us today,” she said. “We need these tax credits to make sure that our residents can afford clean, abundant energy in order to thrive.”