The stakes of OBBB

This week, the dust of the One Big Beautiful Bill began to settle. And the clean energy industry is already running the numbers. 

According to initial analysis, OBBB’s energy provisions will have far-reaching consequences for grid capacity, electricity prices, reliability, and economic growth. Latitude’s reporting this week has dived into those impacts — even as the Trump administration releases new reports, orders, and tariff plans that are already changing the landscape.

In a special live briefing yesterday, Latitude reporter Maeve Allsup spoke with Power Brief CEO Jason Clark to unpack the legislation, from the implications of safe harbor strategies amid new policy risk, to understanding how new rules around foreign entities of concern will impact renewable energy and storage project development. See our roundup below for some excerpts from their conversation. (If you missed it and want to watch the recording, you can by filling out the form here.)

Also: we're still gathering questions for an Ask Me Anything episode of the Catalyst podcast in August, where host Shayle Kann will weigh in on the state of climate tech and the energy transition. Please submit yours to catalyst@latitudemedia.com. 

And we’ve got an exciting line up of guests coming up on Open Circuit. On Monday, former national economic advisor Brian Deese will join the hosts to riff on the impact of the Reconciliation Bill, how to flex America's infrastructure muscles, and how to build a coalition that promotes abundance over obstruction. Then author and journalist Michael Grunwald will be on the show to talk about his new book, "We Are Eating the Earth” and how to solve our agricultural emissions problems. And three weeks from now, Sheldon Kimber of Intersect Power will be on to give a breakdown of the state of large-scale solar and storage development — a market now in flux from tariffs, permitting threats, changing tax laws, and data center demand pull.

THE ROUNDUP

Unpacking the OBBB's implications

After securing President Trump’s signature last weekend, the OBBB is now law. But there’s still substantial uncertainty for clean energy developers — particularly for wind and solar — about whether and how they’ll be able to qualify for Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

The law gives wind and solar projects until July 4, 2026, to “commence construction” and thereby lock in an additional four years to build and come online. (Other technologies, like storage, maintained the previous, longer timeline. 

Today’s uncertainty largely stems from how the federal government will determine whether a project has commenced construction in time, clean energy policy expert Jason Clark explained at a Latitude Media briefing this week.

Developers today have generally relied on a well-understood Treasury Department framework for proving that construction has started on a particular project: either by spending at least 5% of project costs, or by beginning physical work. Meeting either threshold secures a “safe harbor” period, currently four years, for the developer to complete the project and place it in service.

But the executive order Trump issued at the beginning of this week, which focused specifically on wind and solar, is likely to upend that framework. The order instructs the Treasury to issue “new and revised guidance” including “restricting the use of broad safe harbors.”

In other words, it may become significantly harder — or even impossible — for many projects to qualify for safe harbor. The EO gives the Treasury 45 days to issue that guidance, and those types of regulations generally come with a 60-day buffer before implementation, explained Clark, who is the CEO and founder of clean energy policy firm Power Brief.

The big question now, he added, is how much the Treasury changes that guidance, and in what way. 

One caveat though: regardless of how much those rules change, Clark is confident that wind and solar projects will still get built, even in the short-term.

“It would be a misnomer to suggest that only projects that are eligible for tax credits are going to be built going forward,” he said. “There are still these mega forces in the economy around power needs and data centers that I think pull through projects, tax credit or not.”

(Continue reading Maeve Allsup’s piece, “What Treasury’s new safe harbor rules will mean for wind and solar”...)

That uncertainty  is coinciding with massive electricity demand growth, spurred in part by data centers, as well as the onshoring of manufacturing. But according to analyses published since the unveiling of OBBB, the legislation is expected to compromise the grid’s ability to meet that growing demand. 

From now to 2035, researchers anticipate that less new capacity will be added to the grid, by a whopping 340 gigawatts; the brunt of that cut will be borne by wind and solar. Both wholesale electricity prices and household energy bills will go up. And grid reliability will decline, with cumulative capital investment in the power sector expected to drop by half a trillion dollars in the next decade. 

(Continue reading Maeve Allsup’s piece, “How OBBB will impact the power grid”...)

The dubious assumptions of DOE's big reliability study

You would think the Trump administration would want to strengthen the power grid. Making the most of the existing infrastructure is arguably the simplest way to meet new load growth — and to power the artificial intelligence projects that are so integral to the president’s desire to lead on the technology. 

And the need to upgrade the grid has become urgent even for everyday consumers. In some regions of the U.S., heatwaves have caused widespread blackouts already this summer, as utilities grapple with high demand. In others, supply has been so high that prices have dipped into negative territory.

But the sweeping report the Department of Energy released this week on the reliability of the United States grids placed little focus on the potential to modernize, upgrade, and expand the aging system for funneling electrons around the country.

Instead, the Trump administration’s 73-page study modeled the effects of dramatic scenarios in which surging electricity demand eclipses the supply of steady generation. Despite noting that regional planners were unlikely to approve grid connections for data centers that “jeopardize the reliability of the system,” the analysis — conducted at the direction of an executive order from President Donald Trump — concludes that the planned closures of coal- and gas-fired power stations risk blackouts.

This, according to Christina Hayes, executive director of the advocacy group Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, was a squandered opportunity, especially given the siloed nature of today’s regional grids. “By focusing on generation, the report missed a terrific opportunity to assess the value that transmission provides related to supporting reliability and resilience within and between regions,” Hayes told Latitude Media.

The research, which effectively lays out the worst case scenario for the U.S. grid in the next decade, makes some questionable assumptions. Its estimates for how much load growth data centers would drive is in line with what experts anticipate, but the report projects even more demand from other sources — despite the Trump administration’s cuts to programs meant to promote electrification of heating, manufacturing, and transportation. 

(Continue reading Alexander C. Kaufman’s piece, “The dubious assumptions of the Trump administration’s big reliability study”...)

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LARRY W. SCHWARTZ | Opinion: America invents. Others deploy.

IN OTHER NEWS

*Washington Post | "An executive order directs the treasury secretary to strictly enforce the One Big Beautiful Bill’s elimination of tax credits for wind and solar power."

Politico | "The Trump administration is diverting federal funds away from the Energy Department’s wind, solar and electric vehicles programs, despite the spending levels set under the current congressionally passed budget." Separately, the Senate finance chair floated the idea of a second megabill this fall.

*Axios | "Climate First Bancorp has closed $46 million in equity from investors and is exploring an LPO in Q3 2026."

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