Barring an overnight amendment, Senate Republicans are poised to place a surprise new tax on wind and solar power — a move that business groups, energy experts and many GOP senators fear will jeopardize American energy security and raise electricity prices across much of the country.
On Friday night, the Senate released its final draft of the reconciliation bill, and it included a surprise: further rollback of clean energy tax credits and a new tax on virtually all new solar and wind projects (based on a certain threshold of materials from China, which most projects well exceed).
The excise tax measure, which took some senators and industry leaders completely by surprise, imposes a tax on any solar and wind developers that source a certain percentage of materials for their projects from “prohibited foreign entities.” Before this weekend, a tax like this had never been publicly discussed or proposed during reconciliation negotiations.