For the environmentally conscious, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) appears anything but beautiful. Passing on July 4, it terminated federal funding for nascent wind and solar projects. The environmental downsides of the bill extend far beyond clean energy; for example, the bill eliminated tax credits for electric vehicles, reversing a decade of progress.
Princeton University’s Zero Lab estimated that by 2035, the U.S. would lose 300 gigawatts of capacity, roughly the amount it would take to charge every electric vehicle in the nation at the same time.
Katherine Park, youth director of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, has led multiple lobbying efforts that facilitate the Bay Area’s transition to wind- and solar-generated electricity. The OBBBA’s funding cuts reduce the profitability of sourcing from renewable energy.
“I was in disbelief,” Park said. “Especially for the U.S.’s energy infrastructure, this bill is going to set us back a lot. The headlines were very shocking to me — I guess that’s the point of headlines. But there is still a large range of opportunities for clean energy sources.”
Indeed, mainstream media coverage has overwhelmingly highlighted the bill’s harms. Yet the bill maintains upsides: Congress did not change federal funding for nuclear, geothermal and hydropower projects, showing a bipartisan commitment to continue at least some clean innovation. The Biden administration originally instituted these credits in 2021.
For all three energy sources, the government continues to finance 30% of the construction cost and provide 2.75¢/kWh in tax breaks. U.S. electricity currently costs 17¢/kWh on average, meaning that power companies receive a 16% discount for sourcing from nuclear, geothermal or hydropower.
Nuclear energy in particular has generated interest from AI juggernauts like Meta and Google for its sheer efficiency, as the MIT Technology Review reports. Despite the excess fear associated with nuclear power, chemistry teacher Jane Gorninski argues that only the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters had caused any loss of life in the past 50 years.
“Nuclear has been proven to work very well and very cleanly,” Dr. Gorninski said. “If it’s well-engineered, it will never produce a problem. The very few times it did, we know what happened. That’s why people avoid nuclear, but it produces a lot of energy relative to [wind and solar].”
While nuclear, geothermal and hydropower stay unscathed, a new technology dubbed carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) takes a leap forward. Carbon capture plants chemically suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and either stash it deep underground or feed the CO2 into industry.
While capturing CO2 out of the atmosphere does not generate any renewable energy, it reverses the damage done by past years of fossil fuel consumption. Lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations reduce risks of wildfire, among other deadly natural disasters.
Under the OBBBA, the tax credit for utilizing captured CO2 has ballooned from $60/ton to $85/ton. The sudden change can be linked to Republican support for a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery, where oil drillers inject captured CO2 into oil reservoirs to increase extraction efficiency.
However, more climate-minded researchers have been searching for CO2 utilization methods that do not support the oil industry. Injection into concrete manufacturing is the most common application, but a 2021 study found that this actually increased the concrete’s carbon footprint: The increased porosity made the concrete more brittle, necessitating more of it to be made.
Under the new incentives, research and development of new utilization technologies suddenly becomes 40% more profitable. Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability researcher Shrish Premkrishna discussed the business implications of the tax credit.
“This is going to enable a lot more companies to get into carbon capture profitably,” Premkrishna said. “There are a lot of use cases [for captured CO2]: You can use that CO2 to create biofuels, for example. But there’s nothing commercially proven, so we need more research and funding, which the bill helps with.”
Although agreeing that carbon capture is important, Dr. Gorninski also warns against losing sight of more effective solutions like recycling.
“Once you release CO2, it’s tough to capture,” Dr. Gorninski said. “There are methods via amines and other compounds that are energetically inefficient. But we must work in pre-combustion, not post-combustion. For example, if we can reuse plastics and metals, we are going to release less CO2 from manufacturing.”
Ultimately, Dr. Gorninski sees a shift in consumer attitudes as the root fix for global warming. Decreases in manufacturing caused by less customer demand may well save more emissions than marginal technological optimizations. Echoing Dr. Gorninski’s words, Katherine stressed how legislators and climate tech companies aren’t the only ones who should act — we citizens should too.
“We’ve all seen the orange skies during the pandemic,” Katherine said. “We don’t want that to become something that’s usual. We need to appreciate being able to go outside and enjoy the clean, fresh air, instead of wearing masks for pollution and staying indoors from the air.”