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Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.
The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.
Republicans who now control Congress have to decide if they will eliminate the IRA’s grants and, more crucially, the tax credits that have spurred a boom in clean energy activity in their own districts. A total of 78% of this spending has gone to Republican-held suburban and rural districts across the US, according to data from Atlas Public Policy.
Of the 20 congressional districts that have attracted the most clean energy manufacturing investment since the IRA passed in 2022, 18 are represented by Republicans, according to Atlas. The top three districts, in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada, represented by Richard Hudson, Earl Carter and Mark Amodei, respectively, have collectively seen nearly $30bn in new investments since the legislation.
Despite this, none of the 18 Republican representatives contacted by the Guardian would comment on whether they agree with Trump that clean energy incentives should be scrapped.
“Members aren’t necessarily looking for opportunities to disagree with the White House at the moment,” said Heather Reams, president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a center-right group that advocates in favor of clean energy.
The Atlas data set is the newest in a series of reports showing the IRA benefitted Republican-led districts the most. And the largest individual pools of money from the bill also went to projects in red communities, according to a separate data set shared with the Guardian by an anonymous source at the Department of Energy (DoE).
The top grant from the IRA, worth $500m, went to a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan – represented by Republican Tom Barrett – the DoE data shows. And though the biggest loan of $15bn went to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company utility to expand clean power and modernize infrastructure, the second and third largest went to battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky and Kokomo, Indiana, represented by conservatives Brett Guthrie and Victoria Spartz, respectively. Hageman, Guthrie and Spartz did not respond to requests for comment.
Some Republicans have publicly lauded the tax credits’ impacts on their districts even as they have attacked the IRA. The ultraconservative Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, praised the IRA-funded expansion of solar manufacturing in her district but called the bill itself “dangerous”, winning her scrutiny from Joe Biden in 2023. Her district saw more investment than all but 14 others, the Atlas data shows.
In a sign of private nervousness among conservatives about a repeal of the tax credits, though, a group of 21 Republican lawmakers, including Carter and Amodei, signed a letter to colleagues warning that axing the IRA risks planned projects and would escalate energy bills. Some conservatives made similar calls during a January hearing in the House ways and means committee.
But these voices have gotten quieter in recent weeks, with some Republicans who privately supported the letter refusing to sign it for strategic reasons, and some letter signatories saying the IRA tax credits should not necessarily be a major priority.
Ongoing budget concerns have made it especially difficult for conservatives to defend the credits. Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal authorized $4.5tn in tax cuts through 2034 and called on committees to partially offset the cost with $2tn in spending reductions. A full repeal of the IRA’s green energy tax credits would slash about $850bn in spending the Tax Foundation thinktank recently found.
“They’re trying to kind of balance finding the money so that they’re not adding to the federal debt, while also trying to protect these beneficial and popular tax credits and provisions,” said Dana Nuccetelli, research coordinator at the non-partisan advocacy group Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “It’s not easy.”
Reams, of the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions thinktank, said that as the realities of lost jobs and increasing energy costs become clear, Trump may change his mind about the need to repeal the credits. “There’s what Donald Trump says – remember, he hated EVs, but he just bought a Tesla – and what he does,” she said. “You’ve got to not take it all so literally and bide some time to get a sense of what really is going on.”
Still, there are already signs that Trump’s hostile stance towards renewables – he has halted approvals of wind and solar projects on federal land and waters – - is starting to dampen clean energy activity in the US.
Approximately $8bn in clean energy manufacturing activity has been canceled so far this year, Atlas has calculated, with a separate analysis by Climate Power finding that 50,000 jobs have been lost or are threatened.
A full repeal of the IRA would hike energy bills for households and imperil a further 1.5m jobs in the US, according to yet another recent report, by Energy Innovation. “Many of those jobs will be at risk if the IRA is repealed,” Jim Farley, chief executive of Ford, warned recently about the company’s plans to expand its electric vehicle factories.
“The Trump administration aims to restore US manufacturing jobs, but cutting existing federal energy incentives could really undermine that goal,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas.
It’s a message some climate advocates have been bringing to Republican lawmakers in recent weeks in an attempt to save the tax credits. Citizens’ Climate Lobby, for instance, this month lobbied 47 Republicans on Capitol Hill calling on them to protect the tax credits, and is now asking its members to call their Republican representatives, focusing not on their climate benefits but on their potential to spur economic growth.
“Everybody loves manufacturing jobs,” Nuccetelli said.
In their lobbying, Citizens Climate Lobby is also highlighting the low price of building clean power, the need for abundant energy amid forecasted spikes in energy from the artificial intelligence boom, and the fact that repealing the incentives could cause household electricity bills to increase by about 10% over the next decade.
Despite the lack of public support for the tax credits from GOP lawmakers, the organization said they enjoy significant support on Capitol Hill, with some GOP lawmakers calling to protect them in private meetings and personal phone calls with other congressional colleagues.
Only two Democratic-led districts were on the list provided by the Atlas Public Policy. One was Arizona’s Raul Grijalva, who was a strong advocate for the IRA’s green incentives before he died this month.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is a vital investment in the future stability of the planet,” his office wrote in a statement to the Guardian before his passing. “As a self-proclaimed business genius, Trump should easily be able to understand the high financial and humanitarian costs of increasing climate catastrophes.”
