The GOP Tax Bill Will Destabilize Tomorrow's Power Grid
The intensified attack on wind and solar power threatens capacity at a time when AI demand for electricity is surging.
It’s Back to the Past
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North AmericaThe energy provisions in the Senate’s version of the Republican tax bill, released this weekend and now being wrestled toward passage, are best described as steampunk. This offshoot of science fiction imagines a retro-futurist world where industrial steam power remains the cutting edge; think Jules Verne, zeppelins and Babbage machines. The description is all the more apt because the GOP appears to imagine that 19th-century energy sources will underpin US dominance of 21st century fields like artificial intelligence. Far from fostering leadership, it will hamstring America’s efforts.
Contrary to expectations, Republican senators intensified, rather than moderated, their House colleagues’ assault on renewable energy. Not only were phase-outs of tax credits for grid-scale wind and solar projects accelerated, but a new tax was introduced to penalize any projects running afoul of foreign entity of concern, or FEOC, stipulations (previously, those just blocked access to credits). Plus, those FEOC regulations get tightened. Plus, plus, suddenly metallurgical coal, used for steelmaking, gets a tax credit.