“A wide array of resources is needed” to meet growing electricity demand, including hundreds of gigawatts of solar and wind capacity that can be deployed quickly but would be reduced by half without tax credits, says a report prepared for ConservAmerica.
A Brattle report projects that 550 GW of new solar will be deployed in the U.S. through 2035 under existing federal clean energy tax credits, but that amount would be reduced to 242 GW if the tax credits were eliminated.
Projected wind deployment through 2035 would decline from 254 GW with tax credits to 116 GW without tax credits, while storage deployment would decline by 6% to 100 GW.
Federal clean electricity production tax credits and investment tax credits are currently available under the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Brattle Group prepared the report “A wide array of resources is needed to meet growing U.S. energy demand” for the nonprofit organization ConservAmerica, which promotes “sound environmental and conservation policy.”
ConservAmerica President Jeff Kupfer said, “We commissioned this report because as Congress moves forward, we want to ensure that policymakers have the benefit of real economic data about the impacts of eliminating clean energy credits. We know that nobody wants to raise costs on American families, stifle economic growth, or contribute to a more unreliable grid.”
The report projects a 50% increase in electricity consumption by 2035, with peak consumption rising 30%, largely due to data centers for AI, manufacturing reshoring and electrification.
Without clean energy credits, electricity prices would be higher due to a smaller contribution from low-cost solar and wind power, Brattle’s modeling analysis found. Residential electric bills would increase “as much as $152 per year in seven states.” Those states, which all have a high potential for wind generation, are North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Missouri.
Gas deployment would remain unchanged through 2030, given the approximate “4–5 year development cycle,” but from 2030 to 2035, gas deployment would reach 180 GW without clean energy credits — an increase from 137 GW with the credits.
To meet increasing electricity demand, “solar and wind are ready now at lowest cost,” the report says, while battery storage is also ready now. Coal is “less economic and declining,” while “only three” nuclear reactor restarts are projected through 2030 and “advanced nuclear will take more than a decade to commercialize widely.”
The report models lost job-years in each state from the loss of clean energy tax credits and the impacts on the U.S. gross domestic product. However, it “does not account for economic benefits of alternative uses of tax dollars, deficit reduction, or taxpayer savings if clean energy credits were removed.”
The Brattle Group used its proprietary capacity expansion model to project the amounts of each type of generating resource that would be deployed through 2035, both with and without federal clean energy tax credits.
