Of all the elements of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, perhaps none is as obviously self-defeating as getting rid of tax credits for clean energy. That decision will not simply set back the fight against climate change. Congressional Republicans could also be setting America up for the worst energy-affordability crisis since the 1970s. Unlike then, this time we’ll have imposed it on ourselves.
在《一项大型法案法》的所有要素中，也许没有一个显然是自欺欺人的，就像摆脱清洁能源的税收抵免一样。该决定不会简单地阻止与气候变化的斗争。自1970年代以来，国会共和党人也可能正在为最糟糕的能源劳动危机做好准备。与那时不同，这次我们将自己强加于自己。
Electricity demand in the United States is rising faster than it has in at least two decades. AI data centers are using huge amounts of power to train new models. More Americans are plugging their electric cars and hybrids into the grid. Rising temperatures mean more air-conditioning use. Failure to meet this rising demand with adequate supply results in higher prices. From 2000 to 2022, U.S. electricity prices rose by an average of about 2.8 percent a year; since 2022, they have risen by 13 percent annually.
美国的电力需求的增长速度比至少二十年的时间快。AI数据中心正在使用大量的功率来训练新型号。越来越多的美国人将电动汽车和杂种插入网格中。温度升高意味着更多的空调使用。未能满足这一不断增长的需求，并有足够的供应会导致更高的价格。从2000年到2022年，美国的电价平均每年上涨约2.8％；自2022年以来，它们每年增长13％。
Fortunately, the timing of this demand spike coincided with a boom in renewable energy. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, 93 percent of the electricity capacity added to the grid this year will come from a combination of wind, solar, and battery storage. That trend was set to accelerate dramatically in the coming years thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided tax credits that made building clean power sources cheaper. Investment in those sources has accordingly spiked, and hundreds of new projects could begin generating power over the next decade. The IRA is generally seen as a climate bill, but it was also an energy bill. It provided a jolt to the American power sector at a moment when the sector desperately needed new supply.
幸运的是，这种需求的时机峰值与可再生能源的繁荣相吻合。根据联邦能源信息管理局的数据，今年将增加电网的93％将来自风，太阳能和电池存储的组合。由于降低通货膨胀法，该趋势将在未来几年急剧加速，该法案提供了税收抵免，使建筑清洁能源更便宜。因此，对这些来源的投资已经飙升，数百个新项目可能会在未来十年开始产生权力。IRA通常被视为气候法案，但这也是一项能源法案。当该行业迫切需要新的供应时，它为美国电力部门提供了震动。
Or so it seemed. The Senate version of Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill repeals the clean-energy tax credits in the IRA for all wind and solar projects that don’t begin construction within a year of the bill’s passage or become fully operational by 2028. (And even if a project begins construction in the first half of 2026, it will need to meet extremely onerous domestic-sourcing requirements that many experts believe will be nearly impossible to satisfy.) As a result, future clean-energy projects, including many that have been announced but not yet built, will cost about 50 percent more than those that received the credits, according to an analysis by Jesse Jenkins, who leads the Princeton ZERO Lab. The inevitable result is that far fewer will come into existence. “It’s hard to think of a bigger self-own,” Jenkins told me. “We’re effectively raising taxes on the country’s main sources of new power at a time when electricity prices are already rising.”
大概是这样。参议院版本的唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）的一项大法案废除了IRA中的所有风能和太阳能项目的清洁能量税收抵免，这些项目在法案通过后一年不会开始建设，或者到2028年到2028年才能完全运作。根据领导普林斯顿零实验室的杰西·詹金斯（Jesse Jenkins）的一项分析，尚未宣布但尚未建造的费用将比获得学分的成本高约50％。不可避免的结果是，将会越来越少。詹金斯告诉我：“很难想到一个更大的自我创造。”“在电价已经上涨的时候，我们正在有效地对该国的主要电力来源提高税收。”
Jonathan Chait: They didn’t have to do this
乔纳森·查特（Jonathan Chait）：他们不必这样做
The purported justification for these cuts is that renewables are unreliable energy sources pushed by woke environmentalists, and the country would be better served by doubling down on coal and natural gas. “More wind and solar brings us the worst of two worlds: less reliable energy delivery and higher electric bills,” wrote Energy Secretary Chris Wright in an op-ed last week. In fact, renewable energy is cheap and getting cheaper. Even without the tax credits, the price of onshore wind has fallen by 70 percent, solar energy by 90 percent, and batteries by more than 90 percent over the past decade. The IRA, by making these sources even more affordable, was projected to save American consumers an average of $220 a year in the decade after its passage.
据称这些削减的理由是，可再生能源是唤醒环保主义者推动的不可靠的能源，并且通过将煤炭和天然气加倍来更好地为该国提供服务。能源部长克里斯·赖特（Chris Wright）在上周的一本专辑中写道：“更多的风和太阳能使我们成为两个世界中最糟糕的世界：可靠的能源交付和更高的电费。”实际上，可再生能源便宜且越来越便宜。即使没有税收抵免，在过去的十年中，陆上风的价格下跌了70％，太阳能下降了90％，电池的价格下降了90％。IRA通过使这些来源更加负担得起，预计在通过后的十年中，每年平均每年为美国消费者节省220美元。
The cost savings from renewables are so great that in Texas—Texas, mind you—all of the electricity growth over the past decade has come from wind and solar alone. This has made energy grids more reliable, not less. During the summer of 2023, the state faced several near failures of its electricity grid; officials had to call on residents to conserve energy. The state responded by building out new renewable-energy sources to stabilize the grid. It worked. “The electrical grid in Texas has breezed through a summer in which, despite milder temperatures, the state again reached record levels of energy demand,” The New York Times reported last September. “It did so largely thanks to the substantial expansion of new solar farms.”
可再生能源的节省成本是如此之大，以至于在德克萨斯州（德克萨斯州，请注意），过去十年中的所有电力增长都来自风和太阳能。这使能源网格更加可靠，而不是更少。在2023年夏季，该州面临其电网的几乎几乎失败。官员不得不呼吁居民节省能源。该州的回应是建立新的可再生能源来稳定电网。它起作用。《纽约时报》据《纽约时报》报道：“得克萨斯州的电网在一个夏天都变得微风，尽管温度较轻，但该州再次达到了创纪录的能源需求水平。”“这很大程度上要归功于新的太阳能农场的大幅扩展。”
In fact, the energy secretary’s description of wind and solar—as unreliable and expensive—is more aptly applied to fossil fuels. Coal is so costly relative to other energy sources that investment in building new plants has dried up. The natural-gas industry is facing such a crippling supply-chain crisis that the wait time for a new gas turbine—the combustion engine that converts natural gas into usable energy—can be as long as seven years. “What we’ve consistently heard from the industry is that, right now, there is just no way to get a new natural-gas plant running before 2030, and quite possibly even later,” Robbie Orvis, the senior director for modeling and analysis at the think tank Energy Innovation, told me. The cost of actually building one of those plants, meanwhile, has more than doubled in the past few years, pushing utilities to invest heavily in renewable sources, which can be built much faster and often at a lower cost.
实际上，能源部长对风和太阳能的描述（不可靠且昂贵）更适合地应用于化石燃料。相对于其他能源而言，煤炭是如此昂贵，以至于建造新工厂的投资已经干燥。天然气行业正面临着如此残酷的供应链危机，以至于新的燃气轮机的等待时间（将天然气转换为可用能源的燃烧发动机）将长达七年。“我们一直从该行业中听到的是，目前，无法在2030年之前乃至以后才能使新的天然气体植物运行，”智囊团能源创新建模和分析的高级总监Robbie Orvis告诉我。同时，在过去的几年中，实际建造其中一种工厂的成本增加了一倍以上，促使公用事业公司投资于可再生能源，这些资源可以更快地建造，并且通常以较低的成本进行。
Now Congress has decided to kneecap the energy sources that could meet rising demand. Orvis predicts that this could result in one of the fastest, sharpest rises in energy prices since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, which featured record-high oil prices, long lines and rationing at gas stations, and a nationwide inflation spike. An Energy Innovation analysis of an earlier, similar version of the bill found that, by 2035, the average yearly energy bill will be $473 higher in Michigan, $590 higher in Maryland, $668 higher in California, and $777 higher in Texas than it would have been if the IRA credits had remained in place. (Several other sources have produced similar results, including analyses of the final Senate bill.)
现在，国会已决定屈服可能满足需求不断上升的能源。Orvis预测，这可能会导致自1970年代阿拉伯石油禁运以来的能源价格最快，最急剧上涨，该公司的油价高创纪录，加油站的高线和分配以及全国性的通货膨胀率峰值。对该法案的早期版本的能源创新分析发现，到2035年，密歇根州的平均年度能源账单将高473美元，马里兰州高590美元，在加利福尼亚州高668美元，在得克萨斯州高777美元，如果伊拉卡信贷（Ira Credits）的消失，则在得克萨斯州高777美元。（其他几个来源也产生了类似的结果，包括对最终参议院法案的分析。）
Blackouts and grid outages will become more frequent. Power-intensive industries such as AI and manufacturing will struggle under the weight of higher energy costs. China will solidify its dominance over clean-energy supply chains. “Just think of Trump’s own priorities: lower energy prices, becoming an AI superpower, reindustrializing America, outcompeting China,” Princeton’s Jenkins said. “Getting rid of these credits hurts all of those goals.”
停电和电网中断将变得更加频繁。AI和制造业等电力密集型行业将在更高的能源成本的重量下挣扎。中国将巩固其对清洁能源供应链的主导地位。普林斯顿的詹金斯说：“只要考虑特朗普的优先事项：降低能源价格，成为AI超级大国，重新工业化，胜过中国。”“摆脱这些学分会损害所有这些目标。”
But there is one priority missing from that list: owning the libs. Partisan polarization around clean energy has grown so extreme since the passage of the IRA that Trump and many other Republicans apparently see destroying it as an end in itself. An earlier version of the Senate bill went further than repealing subsidies. It included an excise tax on solar and wind energy—the Republican Party, taxing energy—that would have added an additional 10–20 percent cost onto most projects. That provision was scrapped after a handful of moderate senators objected, but the fact that it ever existed is stunning enough. As the bill headed to the House of Representatives for final consideration, some members claimed that they wouldn’t support it without even harsher restrictions on clean energy. Representative Chip Roy of Texas attacked the Senate bill for not targeting clean-energy tax credits more aggressively, calling it “a deal-killer of an already bad deal” and setting up the absurd possibility that the IRA would be saved only by Republicans’ inability to agree on how badly to eviscerate it.
但是，该列表中缺少一个优先事项：拥有Libs。自IRA通过以来，围绕清洁能源的党派两极分化变得如此极端，以至于特朗普和其他许多共和党人显然认为将其摧毁是本身的目的。参议院法案的较早版本比废除补贴要远。它包括对太阳能和风能的消费税（共和党，征税能源），将在大多数项目中增加10-20％的成本。这项规定是在一些温和的参议员反对的情况下取消的，但是它曾经存在的事实已经足够了。当该法案前往众议院进行最终考虑时，一些成员声称，如果没有对清洁能源的严格限制，他们也不会支持它。德克萨斯州的代表奇普·罗伊（Chip Roy）袭击了参议院法案，因为不对清洁能源税收抵免率的目标更为积极，称其为“本来就已经很糟糕的交易的交易杀手”，并设立了只有共和党人无法同意对它的不利地同意的荒谬可能性。
Jessica Riedl: Congressional Republicans might set off the debt bomb
杰西卡·里德尔（Jessica Riedl）：国会共和党人可能会爆发债务炸弹
The desire to stick it to liberals is so intense that Republicans are evidently willing to inflict disproportionate economic pain on their own voters. The Energy Innovation analysis found that the states that will experience the sharpest increase in electricity costs as a result of the bill are Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Missouri, and Kentucky. A separate analysis found that of the 10 states that will lose the most total renewable-energy capacity as a result of the repeal, nine voted for Trump last year.
坚持自由主义者的愿望是如此强烈，以至于共和党人显然愿意给自己的选民带来不成比例的经济痛苦。能源创新分析发现，由于该法案，堪萨斯州，德克萨斯州，俄克拉荷马州，南卡罗来纳州，密苏里州和肯塔基州的电力成本将最大增加的州。另一项分析发现，在废除废除时，将失去最多可再生能源能力的10个州中，去年有9票投票赞成特朗普。
Congressional Republicans might be betting that the consequences of their legislation will take long enough to materialize that they won’t be blamed. Thanks to the numerous clean-energy projects in the pipeline today, the sharpest energy-price increases won’t come into effect until after 2030. By that time, a Democratic president could very well be in office, stuck with the higher energy costs sown by their predecessor, reaping the political whirlwind.
国会共和党人可能会敢打赌，他们的立法的后果将需要足够长的时间来实现，以至于不会被责备。得益于当今管道中众多的清洁能源项目，直到2030年以后，最高的能量价格提高才能生效。到那时，民主党总统很可能会任职，坚持其前任播种的较高的能源成本，从而赢得了政治旋风。
