Green Scam Wounded Or Not? Epstein vs. Blackmon on Significance of What Happened with Senate Bill at Last Minute.
It’s hard to think of two individuals whom I trust more on energy issues than Alex Epstein and David Blackmon. But they have different views on what just happened in the Senate regarding the green energy provisions in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Who is correct?
Well, here’s what Epstein says:
As of the evening of June 30, the Senate was set to pass a bill that would cut off subsidies for new solar and wind projects not “placed in service” by the end of 2027. This would have been a huge victory for electricity in America, nevermind the hundreds of billions of future dollars saved by the government.
From my private conversations with Senators, many of them thought they were signing a bill with the 2027 “placed in service” cutoff. But in fact, a last-minute paragraph inserted by lobbyists and agreed to by leadership totally destroys the “placed in service” language.
The paragraph says that the bill’s crucial “placed in service” provisions don’t apply to projects that have already begun “construction” or, most importantly, begin “construction” in the next 12 months.
Under current administrative law, which the bill explicitly preserves:
It is incredibly easy to meet the standard of “construction”: all you have to do is commit 5% of expected project cost to buying re-sellable assets like solar panels.
Once you easily meet the standard of “construction” you have a 4 year “safe harbor” to be “placed in service” and start collecting subsidies. Therefore a “construction cutoff” of July 2026 is really a “placed in service” cutoff of July 2030.
With the earlier Senate 2027 “placed in service” cutoff—no exceptions—new subsidized solar/wind projects would slow to a crawl by early 2026. And President Trump could ensure that subsidies would terminate during his term.
Under the final Senate bill's exemption for projects in "construction" by July 2026, new unreliable projects will spam our grid at least through 2030. Big Green now has 12 months to initiate as many subsidized projects as it wants using the insanely-easy-to-meet "construction" threshold.
Blackmon offers a more pragmatic view:
In the end, Majority Leader John Thune and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski reached a compromise that left no one completely satisfied. That has historically been an indicator that the compromise did a good job of balancing a wide variety of interests.
The Senate Finance Committee's version of the OBBBA, released on June 16, 2025, served as the working baseline on those provisions. Unlike the House version, which imposes a strict 60-day construction start deadline and a 2028 placed-in-service requirement, the Senate’s initial change would have allowed full incentives for projects beginning construction by the end of 2025, with a stair-step phase out through the end of 2028.
But over the weekend, the bill was amended with a more restrictive requirement that projects be “placed in service” by the end of 2027. The change aligned more closely with the House's stricter timeline and would significantly limit eligibility for projects not operational by 2027, posing challenges for developers with longer project timelines.
To almost everyone’s surprise, the revised language also imposed a new excise tax to be placed on any project which could not prove it was free of Chinese components. That would present a practical impossibility given China’s dominant position in the renewable energy space.
A Reuters report quotes several wind/solar developers and boosters saying the stricter provision and new tax would do severe damage to an industry which many critics say wouldn’t exist without massive government subsidies. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk, who has invested heavily in the solar industry, said on X that the new language “would be incredibly destructive to America!”
But Energy Secretary Chris Wright shot back, posting on his own X feed, "The more we load our grid with intermittent generation, the worse the grid performs during times of maximum demand.”
An amendment offered Monday by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Iowa Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst would have enabled many developers to game the system and qualify projects for the incentives on which progress had barely begun by a more generous deadline.
Rather than requiring projects to be “placed in service” by the end of 2027, the amendment would go back to the June 16 draft’s requirement for projects to “commence construction” by the end of 2028. That lesser restriction would enable developers to claim the incentives for any project on which they had turned a small amount of earth with a bulldozer…
The final compromise, as reported by Politico at 11:30 a.m. ET, was not surprising: In addition to eliminating the new tax, it includes a fairly minor tweak that will give some planned wind and solar projects one year after the bill is enacted to commence construction, while still retaining the hard, end-of-2027 deadline for them to be placed into service.
This change will result in a year-long flurry of activity as developers of wind and solar projects meet the diminimus requirements to achieve the “commenced construction” definition. But, the reality that the vast majority of projects which meet this definition are never placed into service due to long interconnections queues, rising costs, supply chain challenges and other deterrents would render it a short-lived mini-boom.
Even this softer language, if included in the final version of the OBBBA, would severely inhibit the future growth of an industry which has literally been built atop a federal subsidy house of cards. Also of note, the Senate bill kills the excise tax on natural gas approved by Democrats and President Biden in the IRA.
If, and it’s a big “if” given the remaining steps to final passage, these and other energy provisions remain in the final OBBBA, then the onus will fall to more traditional sources of power generation – gas, coal, and nuclear – to meet the future requirements of rapidly expanding power demand. Those industries say they’re ready for the challenge. They may well get the chance to prove their case.
I’m biased, as I have known and admired David Blackmon for some time, but I do think he has the better of the arguments. We know, for instance, the PJM grid is struggling to slow down intermittent green energy projects, and that's why Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has gone to war with them, of course. They have no choice, though, but to resist and that's why they’re pushing natural gas these days — they need reliable energy and the whole green scam and its consequences are becoming better known every day.
This is why any restriction on the scam is a probable killer for the grifters. They are hanging on for dear life, and the Trump Administration will remain on their case continually, probably with more requests to rescind previous budget authorizations, for example. The grifters may be able to take advantage of a putrid Congressional swamp, but they have to fight Chris Wright, too, as well as the public’s growing awareness of what green energy is doing to our grid.
This is why I favor David's analysis, and it's not over yet either. What's your view?
#Murkowski #Ernst #GreenScam #SenateBill #Lobbyist #NaturalBill #GreenEnergy
Alex still makes a good point regarding the waste of taxpayer dollars. Maybe the waste will be tens of billions instead of hundreds, but it’s real money just the same. And, who knows what will happen in another couple of years. Republicans and Democrats have been complicit in renewing these taxpayer giveaways for the past 30+ years. Now is the best chance to eliminate the destructive and expensive federal subsidies.
I'd prefer they kill every subsidy and claw back every unspent cent, but Blackmon's argument is somewhat reassuring, especially after having read Epstein's critique yesterday eve. The bit that concerns me the most is the potential for the subsidies to survive until the next time a different congress has the opportunity to kick the can down the road again. Government programs of any sort are like cockroaches; it sometimes seems the only way to ensure their death is to burn down the whole thing.