Republicans must be ‘more thoughtful members’ around solar energy, Moore tells developers

While many renewable energy developers in Utah argue they don’t largely rely on subsidies to survive, they’d like officials in Washington, D.C., to lower the temperature in the politicization of energy resources, as they face bigger business uncertainties with Republicans betting on fossil fuels and nuclear projects.

That’s what members of the solar and wind energy industry told Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore, a member of the Ways and Means committee, the U.S. House tax-writing body that made major decisions around the reconciliation package known as the “big, beautiful bill.” The renewable energy representatives met with the congressman Friday after touring an 80-megawatt solar farm in Box Elder County.

Ultimately, green energy tax credits targeted as the bill was considered lived to see another day, with developers still able to capture them if they begin construction before July 4, 2026, and some tax transferability provisions remaining intact.

“I go through this entire experience with this topic knowing that something is better than nothing,” Moore told the executives. 

But, Moore added, if an industry is at risk of ceasing to exist because it isn’t able to sustain itself, some decisions must be made about how much support to give, especially if the country wants to see more power production.

“We’re going to have less power, less electricity, if these renewables are not on the grid. And if there needs to be some type of tax incentive to make sure that they can be on the grid and build an all-of-the-above approach, we have to be more thoughtful members,” Moore said. “There are so many of my colleagues on the Republican side that don’t care leading to this and don’t want to be thoughtful about it. (They) don’t really see how it affects people in America, right?”

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Depending on the makeup of Congress in the next five years, there may be more opportunities to “reconcile with this,” Moore said. 

However, energy developers, like Liz Peyton from D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, disputed the notion that utility scale solar relies on subsidies in a meaningful way, saying the company she works at deploys 1.5 to 2 gigawatts of projects per year, equating to about $1.5 to $2 billion of investment. 

“There’s a general question on what role you want policy to play in terms of how much people have to pay for it,” Peyton said. But, there’s also another part of that question that’s more complex, she added. 

“What are you incenting? And I think if it’s local jobs, local investment, domestically produced equipment working in energy communities that are seeing other power plants dispatched down, there’s a loss of jobs. Or you can see a benefit there beyond just the cost of the subsidy,” she said.

However, Moore expressed concern about further driving the country’s deficit up to support renewable energy subsidies. Still, he said, if Democrats were to gain the majority in the U.S. House, he believes there could be an opportunity to bring back some of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act programs. 

Theresa Foxley, chief of staff at rPlush Energies, a company building one of the largest solar energy parks in the country, also chimed in, saying her major heartburn related to the “big, beautiful bill” is that it disrupted consistency. 

“We make investments in personnel, we put down equipment deposits, we outlay a significant amount of capital, and then to have that shift is what is really difficult. So it’s trite,” she said. “You hear it at every roundtable you ever go to, but just consistency and policy is what is going to ultimately determine which of these technologies that end up deployed.”

Most industry players are confident in their deployment plans for the next five years. But after that, “who knows what the world will look like from a political makeup. But what we do know is that it appears that demand is going to be updated, both domestically and abroad,” Foxley said.