EPA Moves to Cancel $7B in Grants for Solar Energy

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/climate/epa-cancels-solar-energy-grants.html

by Jimmc414 • 12 months ago

112 151 12 months ago

Policy based on revenge, stupidity and probably bribes.

guywithahat6• 12 months ago

Why would canceling contracts require bribes? Bribes are something you do to get government contracts. I wouldn't bribe you to not give me money

pavel_lishin• 12 months ago

If there's fewer money to invest in solar, that means traditional (read: fossil) fuels get used more.

sofixa• 12 months ago

I wouldn't bribe you to not give me money

But you would definitely bribe so your competitors don't get money and your services are required for longer. Existing coal and various other fossil fuel power generating and supply chain companies would be very happy to have less competition from solar.

See Boeing managing to get the KC-45 tanker contract awarded to Airbus cancelled (for a plane that mostly existed and needed some US specific updates), to get a new one they won, that not only have they still not managed to deliver on, but they're also losing money.

pixelatedindex• 12 months ago

I can bribe you to cancel a contract so you can enter a contract with me

dyauspitr• 12 months ago

Oil companies desperately trying to burning fuels relevant

plandis• 12 months ago

I don’t know if I buy that this is a conspiracy with bribes but killing the grants reduces the rate of growth of energy generation which reduces its future supply.

Adding energy capacity reduces the prices at which firms can sell energy since there would be more supply. Removing the grants means that existing energy generation firms need to worry less about how increased supply would harm their prices.

fnordpiglet• 12 months ago

Bribes here are likely donation based to PACs and they would be by fossil fuel interests who want to see the share of energy production from renewables slow or decline to maintain their own business. This is frankly akin to subsidizing cigarette smoking, a habit that fouls the air and kills people, but on a global scale. Sigh.

ninininino• 12 months ago

This is a simplistic understanding. Competing industries: solar, oil & natural gas, wind, nuclear, hydro etc.

Cancel tax rebates, subsidies, grants, etc. for one of your competing industries and your own benefits because your costs and supply is relative to the others. Your own price is never evaluated in a vacuum where those other energy options are not relevant.

pahkah• 12 months ago

This particular bribe was reported on over a year ago, when Trump was raising money from oil execs for his campaign. It seems likely that the overall push against clean energy (pushing for dispatchable generation, canceling tax credits for green energy projects) is related. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-exec...

insane_dreamer3• 12 months ago

Bribes by those who would benefit from the contract being cancelled (oil, gas). Probably not actual bribes but “favors”, PAC support and the like.

exe342• 12 months ago

Do you seriously think "drill, baby, drill" is a policy based on careful study of the data on the impact on people's lives now and in the future?

normalaccess7• 12 months ago

Or the fact that Microsoft believes they have cracked *fusion* power. Sun in a bottle.

Microsoft is breaking ground in WA state building a new fusion reactor.

  https://kpq.com/helion-fusion-plant-chelan-pud/

EDIT: Adding description to video link

Video from Real Engineering showing Helion's Pulsed Compression Fusion reactor prototype (2022). The same kind of reactor Helion is building in WA state for Microsoft.

  https://youtu.be/_bDXXWQxK38

pavlov• 12 months ago

Always downvoting YouTube links unless they come with extremely clear context ("This is a talk I gave at conference X", etc.)

normalaccess7• 12 months ago

Boy, people don't seem to like the idea of fusion...

QuantumGood• 12 months ago

Lobbying vs bribes can be a distinction without a difference, but it usually needs to be included with bribes on any such list.

singingwolfboy• 12 months ago

https://archive.is/BYFSO

avgDev3• 12 months ago

The only good thing about this, is that I won't have these annoying solar companies knocking on my door.

Not that this news is great. We should promote green energy.

I will just get the panels and do it myself.

dawnerd• 12 months ago

Oh I they’re still going to be knocking. Their sales pitch here has already shifted.

glenstein2• 12 months ago

I do think solar companies have hired door to door marketing teams that use straight up manipulative tactics. I don't want to hold that against the whole industry, and even sales reps for many solar companies hold themselves to a much higher ethical standard.

But some states have had to push regulations because door to door marketing teams have misrepresented who they are, used pressure, and tried their best to imply without saying that a "switch" to renewable energy was non-optional or was like some technical correction with a billing problem.

potato37328422• 12 months ago

Around here the door to door sales are always a pair of college age floozies with pairs seemingly selected to cover fluency in multiple languages. Based on the quality of sales tactics I assume it's some sort of BS pyramid scheme because nobody who would make money by having them succeed would ever send them out so un-prepared. I kinda feel bad for them.

avgDev3• 12 months ago

I have researched several companies which knocked on my doors. All of them have accusations online of scammy behavior and not really passing the benefit of the grant.

I was told I would get "FREE SOLAR".

At least in the midwest, when I hear solar, I hear scam. I would much rather purchase equipment myself and do the install myself.

opwieurposiu• 12 months ago

If you are Serious about DIY solar I made a whole site about how I did mine with a calculator and graphs, etc.

https://www.pvh2o.com/

Workaccount2• 12 months ago

This is excellent! Thanks!

avgDev3• 12 months ago

I am serious! Nice resource.

philipallstar• 12 months ago

Michelle Moore, the chief executive of Groundswell, a nonprofit group that received a Solar for All grant, said revoking the award would undermine the Trump administration’s efforts to address soaring electricity demand fueled by artificial intelligence data centers.

Solar is so expensive and cost-inefficient per-household. Data centers need their own large, uninterrupted power supplies.

hristov4• 12 months ago

Wrong, solar is cheap and probably the cheapest energy source a household can get if they have a sunny roof. Source - I have solar, have done the math.

Spivak• 12 months ago

It's not ideal for everyone's situation but it's damn cheap. One of my neighbors has solar panels, no battery or storage of any kind, we don't have net metering here, and their electric bill is single digits.

bfeynman2• 12 months ago

Is this if you just do the entire setup yourself? I'm pretty sure the math on solar currently is quite bad for the vast majority of people in the USA.

at-fates-hands3• 12 months ago

I live in Minnesota, we get about 34% less sun than most of the southern states like Arizona or Florida.

Arizona - 3,800 hours of sunlight hours per year

Minnesota - 2,500 hours of sunlight hours per year

Ergo, I can't generate as much energy as someone who lives in a state that gets significantly more sunlight.

I would also add that setup and installation of even a small solar array has an ROI of around 10 years because I can't generate as much energy, therefore it takes longer for me to break even.

Right now in Minnesota:

The average cost of installing a 5 kW solar panel system in Minnesota is approximately $14,900 before applying the 30% federal tax credit, which can significantly reduce the overall expense. After incentives, the out-of-pocket cost can be around $13,860

Sorry, I'm not going to lay out 15K and then have to wait ten years before I break even. If you want to know why people aren't adopting solar, this is the reason. Its cost prohibitive for many, many people.

Does it make sense for people in those Southern states? 100%. For everybody else? Not so much.

tharmas2• 12 months ago

Not only that, the demand from AI Data Centers is going to push up the price of electricity tremendously. Add in demand from electric vehicles too and there could be shortages as well. Who knows, but one thing is certain: demand for electricity is going to skyrocket.

Having an alternative source for your house is a wise idea.

DocTomoe2• 12 months ago

Having solar myself, I completely agree with you that solar is - comparatively - cheap. But because it is cheap, the argument goes that you don't really need to subsidy it.

ben_w7• 12 months ago

Solar is so cheap that it's worth doing even just to reduce the fuel consumed running an existing plants.

gregbot12• 12 months ago

So your saying natural gas + solar is cheaper than natural gas alone? Could you provide a source for that? That would be a great thing to know. Thanks

chiffre01• 12 months ago

Do explain how how solar is less efficient than burning gas or coal for electricity.

gregbot12• 12 months ago

He said “cost inefficient” which i would interpret as meaning “expensive”. I think it’s pretty plausible that a single nat gas or coal plant would be a cheaper way of generating a fixed amount of electricity than solar + enough batteries to last several days of cloudy weather. All the sources ive seen only include a few hours of battery storage to go along with their solar which keeps the cost down but also means frequent outages which data centers really dont want

myrmidon2• 12 months ago

I'm very curious if there are any well-informed positive takes on Trumps climate policy.

Personally, I believe even Biden-era efforts were insufficient; but all the common arguments to do less against climate change that I encounter regularly fall into the following 3 categories:

1) Selfishness/Freedom at someone elses cost ("why should I suffer from restrictions just to mitigate negative externalities")

2) Poorly informed skepticism toward solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, frequently involving extremely implausible assumptions about production costs.

3) (Misinformed) dismissal of climate-change consequences ("a few degrees warmer won't hurt too much")

Currently I can't help but think that people will look back on this in a few decades and regard the whole position as obvious idiocy (similarly to the US waging war in Vietnam).

cogman10• 12 months ago

The best positive take I could make for the Trump policy is that the negative consequences of it are somewhat too late.

Solar, wind, and battery, even without the grants, is already quite cheap. You'd have to fine the industries to really slow down deployment at this point.

That means the 7B is mostly saved money with not too much negative impacts.

(I still think it's a bad idea, don't get me wrong, but it's probably not the worst thing in the world).

actionfromafar• 12 months ago

I think they will find a way to fine or otherwise penalize wind and solar. Just give it some time, it hasn't been even a year yet.

jauntywundrkind2• 12 months ago

Solar, wind, and battery, even without the grants, is already quite cheap. You'd have to fine the industries to really slow down deployment at this point.

Hence the other part of this Evil Sinister Traitor plan, denying & rescinding permits for green energy blanketly:

The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.

https://heatmap.news/sparks/interior-department-wind-solar-l...

Renewables aren't dense power! But America has land, and if we switch to renewables, maybe maybe the oceans won't rise & we won't lose a ton of land.

God these people are literally the worst Captain Planet supervillain shitheels. Literally the worst hive of scum and villainy.

llm_nerd2• 12 months ago

In a few decades? Anyone remotely rational or educated is looking at what is happening in the US right now as unbelievable idiocy. Idiocracy was overly rosey, as at least there Camacho understood self-limitations and could defer to others. In the US, a pedophile traitorous imbecile is busy laying out the same policy goals you would find in an online forum full of angry old assholes who never accomplished anything and are a joke, so the best they have is tearing down.

A lot of very smart, capable people gave the US such a comfortable position on this planet that it allows absolute garbage like Trump to float (not going to sugarcoat it for the many Trumpists on here -- the guy is a garbage human being, and encapsulates the absolute worst traits of humanity. His takes on almost everything are impossibly stupid and ill-informed nonsense, but he has captured his party so thoroughly that the clucking chickens all start repeating buffoonery verbatim), and so many in US politics, to ply unbelievably clownery and get away with it for a while. But the collapse is coming much faster than many people realize.

igor475• 12 months ago

You had me until collapse. What are you picturing exactly? I think humans are really good at muddling through, and life will go on. I think enshittification is a better paradigm to think about the future than apocalypse

guywithahat6• 12 months ago

I mean the positive take is sustainable change needs to be profitable; unprofitable change always turns into corruption. It's why Texas surpassed CA in terms of utility solar, while still having much cheaper electricity costs. When you create these government subsidized programs, you hurt low income individuals and risk creating bad government incentives.

Even when programs are helpful initially, long-term they're unlikely to be repealed and are likely to overstay their use, eventually harming the climate.

ave_b_2011• 12 months ago

It’s worth remembering that one of the reasons the electricity in Texas may be cheaper is due to not winterizing the grid and the lack of planning for deep freezes. Anyone else remember the black outs?

dragonwriter• 12 months ago

It's why Texas surpassed CA in terms of utility solar

Texas surpassed California in terms of utility-scale solar because California both uses less electricity and has been so successful with distributed (customer premises) solar between the old incentives (now phased out) and its newer construction mandates that there is basically no energy demand for new utility solar to fill, because solar generation already peaks at above 100% of demand much of time, the utility demand is for storage and/or generation that is not on the same cycle as solar.

Texas has less total solar generation capacity than California, and gets much less of its total electricity from solar.

jobs_throwaway2• 12 months ago

When you create these government subsidized programs, you hurt low income individuals

how?

potato37328422• 12 months ago

Best case is that all these companies doing solar stuff are "almost there" in terms of profitability and killing credits will kill some of them but the ones that don't die will find ways to be profitable on their own, which would be a very good thing.

prasadjoglekar• 12 months ago

Having looked at Solar for my house in NY, I can only summarize as this:

Solar tax credits are subsides for the well off. The poorest folks can't afford the cash cost of panels and don't have enough taxable income to use the offsets.

The workaround to the high cost has been to lock less diligent people into 30 year power purchase agreements in return for no upfront costs. The lessor takes the subsidies and credits and it just creates another lien on the house.

jobs_throwaway2• 12 months ago

Solar tax credits are subsides for the well off.

Sounds like a good thing to me! Subsidizing things that benefit the whole of society are 100% a good thing, even when rich people take advantage of them

myrmidon2• 12 months ago

A valid point, but to me this sounds like you would want such a program to be a wealth redistribution program at the same time, and I believe trying to do that would just diminish the effectiveness (=> less panels built per spent tax dollar), and is better tackled separately.

insane_dreamer3• 12 months ago

Greater adoption pushes prices down so that the less well off can afford. But it’s not so much that the poor need to switch, but rather than there are more households regardless of income who do switch to reduce fossil fuel reliance.

igor475• 12 months ago

I *strongly* disagree with Trump climate policy but I can give it a shot.

Basically, fossil fuels have been a machine for lifting people out of poverty and creating economic growth. If you overlay charts of growth on top of charts of energy use, they're almost one and the same. Now, a bunch of head-in -the-sky liberals come along and decide we can't use these fuels anymore, and instead should use... Windmills? And their reasons are obviously fake. The climate has always changed, and isn't changing so much now, maybe even cooling recently. Their dire predictions keep failing to come true, and all their evidence comes from more liberal SJW University snowflakes.

Worse-- all the stuff they want to deploy comes from communist China, while we have tons of oil and gas right here at home.

exceptione2• 12 months ago

These are belly sounds, they don't form an argument.

tootie3• 12 months ago

Once again cutting off their nose to spite their face. And showing their complete ignorance of economics. Or possibly just their personal indebtedness to the oil and gas industries for supporting their election. The long term costs of climate change are going to dwarf any outlays for renewable energy adoption.

normalaccess7• 12 months ago

OR, fusion. Microsoft is putting their bets on a sun in a bottle. If it works Solar and wind is dead. Maybe the administration doesn't want to back a losing horse.

https://kpq.com/helion-fusion-plant-chelan-pud/

loudmax• 12 months ago

You're giving the administration far too much credit. The policies are decided on alignment with culture war tribalism, or in some cases outright personal grift. Science and technology, or even sensible economics don't enter into it.

boringg3• 12 months ago

A fusion plant is not going be around until about 50 years from now at the earliest outset and thats optimistic.

ViewTrick10022• 12 months ago

OR, fusion. Microsoft is putting their bets on a sun in a bottle. If it works Solar and wind is dead.

I find this laughable. It is truly mental somersaults attempting to justify an insane policy.

On one hand we have an extremely complicated machine that does not exist yet with an unknown pathway to create electricity. With steam being too expensive.

On the other hand we outsource the complicated machine to the sun and passively collect the results with solar and wind power.

Good enough tends to beat imaginary perfect solutions.

EcommerceFlow• 12 months ago

I'm disappointed with both parties in regards to Solar, especially considering the sheer importance for the future.

The problem I had with the Biden subsidies (as far as I'm aware) was that it didn't really foster hyper competition in the solar manufacturing industry.

Furthermore, the best solution here is to create giant solar farms in the American SouthWest, then funnel energy across the country, is it not? Energy loss is minor, even along thousands of KM in distance.

My dream here is Trump comes out with some new subsidies, focusing on manufacturing, which would drive the price down substantially and hopefully negate the need for consumer subsidies.

We need the new tech-right guys in his admin to speak up on this!

normalaccess7• 12 months ago

Don't worry about Solar or wind... Fusion might be right around the corner.

Microsoft backed Fusion (Yes FUSION) power plant.

https://kpq.com/helion-fusion-plant-chelan-pud/

Loudergood2• 12 months ago

Just 5 more years!

warkdarrior• 12 months ago

My dream here is Trump comes out with some new subsidies, focusing on manufacturing, which would drive the price down substantially and hopefully negate the need for consumer subsidies.

Locally manufactured panels will never be substantially cheaper than imported panels + tariffs. It does not make sense economically to be substantially cheaper.

idiotsecant• 12 months ago

Solar is fine, but what we need grants for is storage and transmission. There are already areas of the country that we have way too much solar, i.e. southern California. If you have too much generation and not enough storage and transmission you get strange artifacts like the price of power rapidly going from negative to extremely high values. That's not a mark of a healthy, balanced system.

The problem is that getting political support for storage and transmission is much more difficult because everyone knows what a solar panel is. They don't always understand the intricacies of a net-zero electrical system.

toomuchtodo2• 12 months ago

US battery storage tax incentives remain intact. Standalone energy storage projects are excluded from the provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill and will continue to qualify for the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC). We'll return to ramp on the low carbon generation after regime change.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64705

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586

hooverd• 12 months ago

It's time to build!

southernplaces7• 12 months ago

This is just blatantly stupid in the crudest sense. You want to showcase yourself as a friend of big industrial interests, oil and whatever else, fine. Want to spit in the face of "progressive" energy rhetoric? okay, sure, whatever. But why try to ruin a genuinely useful, powerfully developing technology for such crude motivations? Of course, because you're Trump (or a Trump appointee) and need to showcase your reactionary ass to the world of your perceived enemies even when it's completely counterproductive to do so.

gregbot12• 12 months ago

I dont think there is a conspiracy by oil and gas companies to sabotage solar and wind. I think solar and wind are just not as easy and cheap to build a reliable grid because of transmission and storage costs which advocates always underestimate.

insane_dreamer3• 12 months ago

That’s incorrect

triceratops3• 12 months ago

I dont think there is a conspiracy by oil and gas companies to sabotage solar and wind.

That's exactly what someone participating in the conspiracy would say.

At this point it's an open secret that oil and gas have used their money to lobby against all alternative sources of energy, including HN's golden boy: nuclear. Exhibit A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club#Budget_and_funding

Environmentalists didn't kill nuclear energy. They are a patsy for Big Oil.

toastercat• 12 months ago

Can someone in this thread please give me a good steelman that humans don't have a significant affect on climate change? This seems to be a growing sentiment among friends who I regard as intelligent, but goes against what I've believed to be the scientific consensus for years. I'm willing to admit I've been misled or wrong.

czzr2• 12 months ago

Of course humans have a significant effect on climate change - the steelman versions of why that doesn’t matter are: 1) It doesn’t matter because we will figure out some technological solution in the future. Or 2) it doesn’t matter since I personally will be ok (because I am rich and/or live in a rich country that can afford to pay the costs)

morkalork• 12 months ago

(1) feels like a red herring when powers that be are fighting tooth and nail against solutions we have today

tim3333• 12 months ago

I'm of the view climate change is real but not as big a deal as some people make out. A couple of reasons:

- Solar power has been growing exponentially for years and will continue for a while allowing carbon usage to be phased out and maybe carbon capture done.

- The climate has changed naturally more than most people realise and life goes on. The sea is forecast to rise 60cm or so over this century but has risen ~120m over the last 20k years which was hardly noticed. (graph from wikipedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Gla...)

glial• 12 months ago

I'd be curious about your friends' Youtube viewing habits.

jfengel• 12 months ago

I can point you to two legitimate climate scientists who in some sense deny climate change. They work on the satellite temperature record, which very clearly shows the increasing temperature:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(meteorologist)

Spencer's view is that there is a natural climate change going on that just happens to coincide exactly with increasing greenhouse gases. Christy believes that climate change is real and partly anthropogenic but that it's just not going to be all that bad.

If your friends think that it's not happening, you can point them at the data that these two gather:

https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

They'd disagree with your friends that humans are not involved at all. But your friends could switch to the position that climate change just doesn't matter and it'll all be fine.

regularization• 12 months ago

I encourage people to read both of those Wikipedia biographies, not just the one who also doesn't believe in evolution.

tim3333• 12 months ago

I had a look at those two and they are both strongly religious and I guess of the view that god put the resources there for mankind to make use of. Which I guess is a view, although I'm not religious personally.

nisegami• 12 months ago

You need to consider if your friends are high decouplers or low decouplers. If they're the latter, then their support for a position like "humans don't have a significant affect on climate change" can't be construed to mean that they actually believe that "humans don't have a significant affect on climate change". Instead, it should be taken to mean that they agree with the implications of a world where "humans don't have a significant affect on climate change".

yifanl• 12 months ago

Aside, but I've come to believe that the insistence of looking for steelmen explanations instead of engaging with reality as it's happening is not a positive trait.

ck2• 12 months ago

This isn't conservatism, it's regressionism

Will take DECADES to rebuild this country back

Medicine, Science, Weather, Academia, etc. etc.

Certainly not my lifetime, maybe not even anyone on HN right now

dehrmann• 12 months ago

If it weren't for tariffs on foreign panels, I wonder how cheap solar would be. Solar's gotten cheap very quickly; we might be at the point that it's viable on its own.

blacksmith_tb• 12 months ago

There are good US producers, I have 9kW of Silfab[1] panels on my roof, made in Washington state.

1: https://silfabsolar.com/

DudeOpotomus• 12 months ago

Trump is a gift to our adversaries. They could not have created a better path to overtaking the USA in science, tech, healthcare and defense.

Sure makes one wonder if he is legitimately this stupid or if he has been legitimately compromised.

vipa123• 12 months ago

Why not both?

sundaeofshock• 12 months ago

I don’t wonder about either. He is one of the stupidest — if not the stupidest — individual to occupy the White House.

ujkhsjkdhf234• 12 months ago

How else is Trump going to pay for those tax cuts for his billionaire buddies?

jauntywundrkind2• 12 months ago

The Interior Department is almost making it impossible to build renewables.

The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.

https://heatmap.news/sparks/interior-department-wind-solar-l...

Yeah, like, there's zero chance a solar plant is going to be as power dense as a natural gas plant.

America has been taken over by traitors trying to destroy this nation.

exe342• 12 months ago

unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant

That's amazing! America is famously known for lacking land.

malfist• 12 months ago

This is the same sort of nonsense they pulled on abortion providers. Just bury people in pointless regulation to keep them from operating, like requiring abortion clinics to have hallways at least 12ft wide

toomuchtodo2• 12 months ago

Not to worry, there is a whole lot of farm land that is going to free up soon for renewables as farmers go bankrupt from suboptimal agriculture trade policy.

https://www.uaex.uada.edu/media-resources/news/2025/july/07-...

https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/07/farm-bankruptcie...

(soybean exports to China from the US are already down 96% this year; also, while most federal lands are west of the midwest great plains, there should be sufficient non federal land to meet the energy needs of West Coast load centers: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/pad-us-14-map-federal-land...)

EPA Moves to Cancel $7B in Grants for Solar Energy

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