More than a dozen House Republicans are urging party leaders to undo key rollbacks of Democrats’ clean energy credits that the Ways and Means Committee pushed through Wednesday as part of the party’s megabill.
Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) and 12 other moderate Republicans, warned in a statement that abruptly cutting off Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, imposing onerous restrictions and changing provisions that help fund projects more quickly could stifle investments in new energy technologies.
“We must ensure certainty for current and future energy investments to meet the nation’s growing power demand and protect our constituents from higher energy costs,” Kiggans said in the statement with Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Young Kim (R-Calif.).
The Republicans stopped short of vowing to reject the party-line package if it isn’t changed before it moves to the House floor, which leadership intends to do next week. But their pressure could give cover to Senate Republicans who have already pledged to ease some of the rollbacks once the bill moves to their chamber for consideration.
The House Republicans said the Ways and Means Committee’s rewrite of IRA credits includes “reasonable phase-out schedules,” but they called for three changes to provisions that they suggest could undermine the intent of the credits to grow energy production and manufacturing.
First, they said so-called foreign entities of concern requirements applied to various tax credits — which are intended to curtail the ability of Chinese companies to benefit from the subsidies — are “overly prescriptive and risk undermining U.S. competitiveness by restricting domestic energy production.”
Second, they criticized the Ways and Means Committee’s mandate that access to tax credits is available only once a project starts producing energy, as opposed to when construction starts, which they say risks projects not getting built in time to meet the scheduled phaseout.
And lastly, they pushed to enable businesses to buy and sell clean energy credits — an option known as transferability — for a longer period to match the full phaseout period for various credits to provide “businesses with the flexibility necessary to make long-term investments in American energy.”
The committee’s bill bans the practice after only two years.
Despite the unlikelihood of House leadership allowing these changes, Ways and Means Committee leaders are acknowledging the Senate could act as a backstop.
Ways and Means vice chair Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), a defender of IRA clean energy credits, said in an interview Wednesday he hopes Senate Republicans will make changes to his committee’s rollback of incentives.
“There’s gonna be a lot of changes. It’s not over. We’re in the first quarter,” Buchanan said.
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