Alex Epstein: Where the fight against energy subsidies stands

The final "Big Beautiful Bill" failed to truly terminate solar/wind subsidies. But there is still the opportunity to do so, along with making other crucial changes to electricity policy.

Alex Epstein
Jul 04, 2025

In my last post I summarized the terrible last-second change the Senate made regarding the IRA subsidies: “The Senate bill looks like it has a 2027 "placed in service" cutoff for new solar/wind subsidies. But one last-minute paragraph makes the cutoff worthless—because projects making a recoverable 5% investment in the next 12 months are exempt!” Here’s the whole thing.

Sadly, this didn’t get fixed. The House passed the exact same bill as the Senate.

A lot of Congressmen fought hard to fix it, but in the end they decided to vote for the unchanged Senate bill in part because of the Administration promised to try to offset some of the damage the Senate did. (For reasons outlined at the end of my last post, I am skeptical that the Administration can legitimately do all that much to reduce the uptake of new solar/wind subsidies. However, there is a lot they can do on electricity policy and personnel to offset the damage of extending solar/wind subsidies—and I am actively sharing ideas here with Congress and the White House.)

The main reason that the fiercest opponents of the IRA subsidies said they voted for the Senate bill despite its negation of the 2027 “placed in service” cutoff was they thought it was the best politically possible subsidy reduction achievable (it’s obviously better than the IRA) given threats that pushing the bill back to the Senate would make the bill even worse.

It’s hard for me to evaluate the options available at the very last minute of negotiations. What I am very confident about, though, is that a much better outcome would have happened had my team and I known earlier what we know now.

I am told both by allies and opponents that my educational and advocacy efforts led to considerably more cuts to solar/wind subsidies than would otherwise have occurred. (Here’s coverage of my influence by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and E&E News.) If that is the case, which I think it is, the subsidy-seekers are in big trouble because my team and I now understand the process of reconciliation policy 10 times better than when we started.

Obviously I will fight to cut more subsidies in the next reconciliation process, which will take place with the current Congress and administration. What my team accomplished this time around was purely due to our raw ability (policy, messaging, research, analysis), and to our reputation of integrity. We got what I would now consider seriously involved in the subsidy issue just a month and a half ago, with no full-time person in DC!

Next time we will be educating and advocating from the beginning, and hopefully with a high-powered DC team. (I have the funding to pay for this, I just need to find the talent—see the end of this piece.)

While I’ll be more than ready for the next reconciliation process, my next priority is to advocate for the highest-leverage electricity policy changes. This administration can do a lot via FERC and EPA and NRC to unleash electricity.

The article continues at the following weblink:

https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/where-the-fight-against-energy-s...