Energy stocks spike after Senate removes regressive tax from 'Big Beautiful Bill' — here's what you need to know as it passes the House

Clean-energy stocks spiked after the Senate-passed version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act dropped a controversial tax on wind and solar, CNBC reported.

The nation's largest developer of renewable-energy facilities, NextEra Energy, saw its shares surge 5% following the news, while fellow renewable-energy company AES bumped up 2%, per CNBC. 

Prior to the final Senate vote on the Big Beautiful Bill, which passed the House on Thursday after nearly failing to advance the night before, top Republicans had spoken out in opposition to the tax. 

"My view of it is — it's just entirely punitive to the wind and solar industry," said Lisa Murkowski, a Republican Senator representing Alaska, per NBC News.  

Mysteriously, multiple GOP Senators expressed confusion at the time as to how the provision made it into the Senate bill in the first place. 

"It's a secret, I guess," Lindsey Graham, a Republican Senator from South Carolina, told NBC News regarding the tax provision's origins. 

Murkowski said the tax on wind and solar "just came about" like it was "airdropped" into the legislation, NBC News reported.

​​The mystery surrounding the last-minute "punitive" tax on wind and solar provided insight into the chaotic nature of the 900-page bill's drafting as well as the tenuous position in which this chaos put the renewable-energy industry. 

The proposed tax on wind and solar also represented one of the numerous ways in which President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have been striving to make good on the president's campaign promises to oil executives.

In the spring of 2024, Trump met with top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he asked them to collectively donate $1 billion to his reelection campaign. In exchange, Trump promised to reverse Biden-era renewable-energy and EV incentive programs, The Washington Post reported at the time.

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While the Senate-passed version of the controversial bill dropped the tax on solar and wind, it still retained plenty of rollbacks on renewable-energy incentive programs. 

For example, under the Senate bill, electric-vehicle tax credits originally slated to run through 2032 would end after September of this year, CNBC reported. Likewise, credits for energy-efficient heat pumps and residential solar panels appear slated to end after December, according to Heatmap.

Similarly, large-scale cleaner-energy projects would have to be brought online by the end of 2027 rather than 2032 in order to qualify for government incentives, per Politico.

These projects include renewable-energy power plants, carbon sequestration facilities, and factories making renewable-energy equipment.

The changes would threaten thousands of such projects currently in the pipeline. These projects have been backed by over $500 billion in private investment and have been expected to deliver more than 50,000 new, well-paying jobs, according to Clean Investment Monitor.

Many of these projects, investment dollars, and jobs could be lost if the "Big Beautiful Bill" becomes law. 

Despite the anticipated rollbacks, however, renewable-energy stocks still spiked on the news that the Senate had dropped the "punitive" tax on wind and solar. As Heatmap noted, solar leasing was spared well by the changes, benefiting companies like Sunrun and Palmetto. Sunrun's stock has risen nearly 35% over the past five days; Palmetto, which sponsors some TCD content, is privately owned.

This surge showed investors still had faith in a cleaner-energy future, despite the potential loss of billions of dollars in government incentives.

While it is now too late to influence your local senator or representative about this bill, educating yourself on these issues, making your voice heard, and taking local action remain some of the best ways to make a bigger difference on reducing pollution. 

If you've been thinking about taking advantage of individual tax incentives for electric vehicles or solar, now is the time, as those programs could be ending soon. The TCD Marketplace has several great examples of companies working to make a difference in this area. 

Perhaps the biggest is solar, with credits up to $10,000 now expiring at the end of 2025, and EnergySage makes it easy to navigate those incentives and compare vetted contractors in your area in a way that resembles comparison shopping for hotels and airfare.

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