A Push To Revive Clean Energy Incentives

With spiking gasoline prices now intensifying the pain of higher utility bills, there’s an effort afoot in Congress to rework some Trump administration rollbacks of clean energy policies. The Energy Bills Relief Act, sponsored by Democratic Representatives Mike Levin of California and Sean Casten of Illinois, was introduced last week to spur action to help consumers and, by default, the climate.

If enacted–a long shot at the moment, unless House Speaker Mike Johnson is willing to let the bill come up for a vote–it would restore tax credits for residential and system-wide energy improvements eliminated last year by President Trump and congressional Republicans with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Budget Bill. Among other things it pushes for grid upgrades, speeds up the connection of new power sources and incentivizes utilities to help consumers save money by rewarding them for making energy-efficient home upgrades.

It also provides financial assistance to help struggling families avoid having their power cut off. Importantly, it ensures that energy-thirsty data centers pay for their power in ways that don’t raise costs for the surrounding community, a policy Trump has also advocated.

Levin isn’t confident the bill, which doesn’t yet have any Republican cosponsors, can pass in its current form, “but there are pieces where we're going to try to see if we can push on a bipartisan basis,” he told Forbes. “The data center piece–particularly the desire to prevent rate payers from having to foot the bill for all these data centers as they're built out–that should be pretty bipartisan.”

“The president had the big trillion-dollar tech companies come to the White House and sign a pledge that they wouldn't make ratepayers bear the expense, but that pledge is nonbinding. It’s not even an executive order,” he said. “We need some statutory concept, so we'll continue to advocate for that. That might be an area where we could work together this year.”

He’s had positive feedback to the proposed bill from Republican members but doesn’t expect that to turn into firm support.

“Just like the clean energy tax credits went away with the OBBB–even when 20 or 22 of them wrote a letter to the president saying, ‘Please don't take away these credits’–when push comes to shove, are they willing to stand up for what they know to be common sense good policy? Or are they going to allow their decisions or their personal opinions to be subject to the president's anti-wind, anti-solar predisposition?”