Which Part of the Manufacturing Boom Is $14 Billion in Canceled Clean Energy Investment?

But since the Trump administration took office and started figuratively and literally pulling wires out of walls, the tracking has started flowing in the opposite direction: After a dire April, companies have canceled $14 billion of that investment, worried about the House-passed spending bill that guts the IRA’s credits and more or less tries to kneecap the entire renewable energy and electric vehicle industry. Is this the domestic manufacturing boom the president keeps promising is just over the horizon?

“The House’s plan coupled with the administration’s focus on stomping out clean energy and returning us to a country powered by coal and gas guzzlers is causing businesses to cancel plans, delay their plans and take their money and jobs to other countries instead,” E2’s executive director Bob Keefe said.

The cancelations likely have or will cost 10,000 jobs, eating into the 122,000 that all the announced projects would create. “The plan passed by House leadership will make it harder to produce the energy America needs, while simultaneously putting hundreds of projects, thousands of jobs and billions in investments at risk – mostly in Republican states that elected them,” Keefe said upon the House bill’s passage last week. “It’s now up to the Senate to fix this big, ugly mess of a bill. With more than 400 major clean energy projects and our energy future hanging in the balance, we hope they’ll put their constituents ahead of politics and make America great through action, not words.”

Some Republican Senators have signaled that they may want to temper the House’s chainsaw approach to the IRA’s money, perhaps at least mildly more tied to the reality of the money flowing in than their lost-the-plot colleagues. April alone saw $4.5 billion added to the canceled pile, including a $3.3-billion battery plant in Illinois. Even a slightly watered-down version of the House bill is unlikely to turn that particular battleship around entirely; in the face of a teetering economy and a supposed energy “emergency,” the Senate would need to rethink the entire approach in order to undo this particular self-inflicted wound.