Category: United States of America

Source: United States Senator for New York Charles E Schumer

Last Week, The House GOP Rushed To Pass Trump’s Tax Giveaway To Billionaires, That Guts Food Assistance And Medicaid, AND Also Kills The Fed Clean Energy Investments NY Companies Are Using To Lower Energy Costs, Create Good-Paying Union Jobs & Bring Manufacturing Back From China

Since The Inflation Reduction Act Passed Three Years Ago, NY Companies Have Announced Over $5 BILLION In Clean Manufacturing Investments Creating Thousands Of Good-Paying Jobs From Long Island To Buffalo; Senator Warns What Will Happen If GOP Doesn’t Back Off Plan To Kill Clean Energy And Manufacturing

Schumer: Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is An Ugly Mess That Means Bigger Electric Bills & Big Job Losses For New York

Just a week after House Republicans passed Trump’s devastating bill to kill clean energy incentives so they could give tax breaks to billionaires, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer revealed how tax hikes on clean energy tucked in the bill would be a gut punch to New York’s economy.

Schumer said new data studies from NERA Economic Consulting shows that repealing the clean energy tax credits could cause New York to lose up to 20,300 jobs as clean energy projects are cancelled or scaled back due to lack of incentive, with a whopping nearly $3.5 billion hit to the state’s GDP and New Yorkers paying up to $650 in higher energy costs each year by 2032 if these devastating cuts become law.

“Higher energy bills and many thousands fewer jobs, that’s what New York gets under Trump’s reckless tax bill, which is a giveaway to billionaires and corporations. Already, thousands of New Yorkers were making improvements to their homes to lower their electric bills and make their homes warmer in the harsh winters, now they lose all that support. Thousands of new jobs building clean energy projects in every corner of the state and bringing manufacturing back from China will all be vaporized by the GOP’s ugly budget bill. It is a gut punch to New York and a gift to China, which wants to dominate clean energy manufacturing,” said Senator Schumer. “Losing these clean energy projects means losing cheaper electricity for families and businesses. We need more energy production from many sources including wind and solar and water; we need America to be energy independent and to manufacture clean energy technology here, not overseas, and eliminating these tax credits radically and irresponsibly rolls back all the progress we have made in recent years. It turns America’s clean energy boom into a bust.”

Schumer explained that the bill which passed the Republican House last week would kill clean energy incentives created in the Inflation Reduction Act, these tax credits are already benefiting hundreds of New York businesses with ongoing projects and families who are using them to help improve their homes and lower their electric bills. These cuts are broad and deep to New York’s clean energy sector, Schumer specifically highlighted how the bill would:

• Eliminates the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Tax Credit, which provides families in New York up to $3,200 to help weatherize their homes for better protection in the harsh winters and make improvements to make their homes more energy efficient to lower their electric bills with qualifying items like doors, windows, better insulation and heat pumps.
• Eliminates the Residential Clean Energy Credit, which gives New York families a 30% discount on home energy improvements, like solar panels, heat pumps, or energy storage, that help lower energy bills and keep the lights on during power outages.
• Eliminates the Clean Electricity Investment & Production Credits that support more cheap, clean electricity. With natural gas turbines on a five-year delay, the IRA’s clean electricity tax credits have ensured a robust buildout of wind and solar power while helping keep electricity prices from increasing and spurring demand for American-made energy products.
• Sabotages the Advanced Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit that has generated a more than five-fold increase in investment in manufacturing in the solar and EV supply chains, creating thousands of jobs and shifting these industries out of China to the U.S.
• Eliminates the IRA’s Electric Vehicle Tax Credits that make it cheaper to buy new and used electric and plug-in hybrid cars, and has led to a massive onshoring of EV and battery supply chain manufacturing, undercutting China and bolstering American companies.
• Eliminates the New Energy-Efficient Home Credit that makes it cheaper to build new, highly efficient and affordable homes, expanding the housing supply while reducing energy costs.
• Eliminates the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit that supports American-made clean hydrogen, led by New York companies like Plug Power and Air Products, to be used for clean manufacturing and agriculture.

Schumer said that clean energy investments from the Inflation Reduction Act have created the biggest clean energy boom in American history, but now with many of these core provisions being clawed back or eliminated it risks all the progress that has been made in New York and across the country. The senator said if NY energy projects are forced to stop or scale back, energy costs would increase for families and businesses across the country. With electricity demand surging in New York and across the country, clean energy sources like wind and many other sources of clean power are often the most efficient sources of new electricity, much cheaper than traditional alternatives like natural gas and oil. NERA Economic Consulting estimates costs for New York families could increase by $650 a year, as the Republican plan to gut the clean electricity production and investment tax credits makes it more expensive to provide more electricity, while simultaneously killing the Residential Clean Energy and Energy Efficient Home Improvement tax credits makes it more costly for families to make their homes more efficient and reduce their energy bills.

Schumer added, “Democrats are united in opposing this cruel and counterproductive bill, and these ill-conceived elimination of energy tax credits so they can put more money in the pockets of billionaires. We need the GOP to block these cuts, otherwise it will be American families and our manufacturing future paying the price.”

The Clean Economy Tracker estimates the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives have spurred over $5 billion worth of investments in clean manufacturing in New York, creating over 7,200 jobs. Schumer said if this House Republican plan goes through, many of the clean energy projects spurred by the IRA could be forced to scale back or even stop and the workers building the future of American energy would be laid off, and projects that otherwise would have come online will never come to fruition. That would impact both major NY employers and manufacturers in the clean energy, manufacturing, electric vehicle, battery, research sector and our small businesses. One example is Geothermal Works in the Hudson Valley, a small Westchester based family business with that helps homes get updated with heat pumps and geothermal systems to lower their electric costs, who said that if the current clean energy cuts go through in the GOP bill it would shutter their business and force them into early retirement.

Below are just some examples of projects spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act in New York State that show why eliminating these provisions could be so harmful:

• Off Long Island, Equinor invested $5 billion in building a massive offshore wind farm project, Empire Wind, that will provide power for hundreds of thousands of homes in New York State, and is supported by tax credits for offshore wind projects created by the Inflation Reduction Act .
• In the Capital Region, Plug Power invested $125 million in a new green hydrogen fuel cell factory in 2023, creating new good paying jobs to boost production of clean hydrogen fuel cells with support from the Fuel Cell Production Tax Credit. Additionally, the company is poised to harness the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act, to spur further growth both in the Capital Region and at Plug’s Henrietta, NY Gigafactory in the Finger Lakes that manufactures Electrolyzers. GE Vernova invested $50 million in a new manufacturing line for its onshore wind business in 2023, hiring 200 new workers with support from a production tax credit for U.S. wind turbine manufacturing created by the Inflation Reduction Act.
• In Western New York, Viridi Parente a fast growing company on Buffalo’s East Side has added hundreds of good-paying jobs growing the domestic battery manufacturing industry with support from clean energy tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, such as the Advanced Manufacturing Production tax credit. Solar Liberty Energy Systems and PanelClaw are installing thousands of solar panels at homes and businesses. Solar Liberty Energy Systems is helping customers navigate available federal clean energy tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce the burden of installation costs while PanelClaw is producing racking systems with help from the American Domestic Manufacturing Bonus tax credit created by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Since Trump was elected, approximately $14 billion worth of manufacturing projects have been outright cancelled, representing more than 13,000 jobs lost. If the GOP plan to raise taxes on energy goes through, those cancellations could balloon to threaten more than $800 billion in private investment in domestic clean energy made in the past three years across the country, according to the Clean Investment Monitor. NERA Economic Consulting estimates that New York could lose an estimated 20,300 jobs if these tax breaks are killed. Schumer said the House Republican bill would repeal the very parts of the Inflation Reduction Act that have helped companies grow in New York and spurred millions of investments, many of which are in Republican districts.

Repealing the clean energy tax incentives would also be a disaster for America and Schumer said that would cede energy manufacturing leadership to China, which already produces a significant amount of the world’s clean technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. If companies can no longer support clean energy manufacturing in the United States, they will bring these projects to America’s competitors, and jobs that would’ve otherwise been created in America will be created in countries like China. This will destabilize American supply chains and make American families and businesses reliant on China for cheap energy.

“No matter which way you slice it, the House Republican bill is bad news for New Yorkers. Shutting down projects, killing jobs, and increasing electricity bills would be devastating for our state, which is why we need Republicans to stand up to this bill to save investments in homegrown American energy,” concluded Schumer.