When President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law on July 4th, it altered existing tax and spending laws, but one change in particular could have an outsized impact on the solar industry. It will do away with a key tax credit that subsidized the installation of residential solar systems, leaving many solar companies with a very small window to adapt to the changes.
“We existed before, when there were very few subsidies, because there were Bush era energy tax credits that have now been phased out, but they were expanded with add-ons,” said Jonathon Dolan, the executive director of the Missouri Solar Energy Industries Association. “During the Inflation Reduction Act, the Clean Energy Credits got a huge boost in 2022. Now they've been seriously curtailed or phased out.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, which was introduced during the Biden-Harris administration, extended the 30% residential tax credit for homeowners who implemented clean energy alternatives in their homes, such as solar systems.
However with the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, the tax credit will go away at the end of the year. Ryan MacDonald, the chief operating officer at Solera Energy, feels that it is unfair for the solar industry to lose this key tax credit, while other energy producing industries, like oil and coal, are bolstered by the federal government.
“All solar has ever wanted is a level playing field once we could get to that point,” said MacDonald. “Well, what the current administration has done is they've basically gone into solar, attacked it because it was a Biden era addition to the tax credit — they said it was this green, new scam and basically cut the industry off at its knees.”
According to a 2022 report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Missouri had over 2,600 solar jobs in 2020 and was expected to have anywhere between 4,600 to nearly 6,900 solar jobs by 2030. However, with the tax credit ending, Dolan feels that many existing jobs may be lost, making it unlikely for solar employment to reach those levels, though the industry itself will survive.
“Armageddon, no. Catastrophic, yes, and you're going to lose solar jobs. We're talking about 250,000 jobs nationally, thousands of jobs in Missouri,” Dolan said. “Things could get tougher. The solar roller coaster was already going up and down.”
Ryan Roe is the owner of Green Leaf Solar in Columbia. Over the past months, he has been keeping an eye on the Trump administration's policies and tariffs, which inspired him to stock up on inventory.
“So there was talks of tariffs, and so I'm sitting here thinking, ‘Okay, what can I do to kind of protect myself from, you know, these price hikes?’” Roe said. “And so I decided, you know what, let's go ahead and buy like a year's worth of this and that, whether it's rails, which is ultimately just aluminum, and so I made a lot of these purchases.”.
But, with the impending end to the solar tax credit, Roe is concerned that he won’t be able to use up his stockpiled materials before the demand for solar dries up. Although he has an abundance of jobs scheduled in the coming months, he fears that business will sharply decline after the end of the year when the tax credits are no longer available.
“We're already very busy this summer," Roe said. "But basically once 2026 hits, I've already told the guys they're not going to have a job after that."
Although the forecast for the solar industry may seem cloudy now, MacDonald said there are still a lot of details surrounding the new law that are up in the air.
“So the problem is there have been people reaching out, but we're unclear on any of it, you know? So legislation is changing daily,” Macdonald said. “It seems like even though the bill was passed, even the language in it is questionable. So now it's going to go over to attorneys and CPAs to figure it all out. Unfortunately, we're in a holding pattern because we don't know, and that's what makes it really difficult in our area.”
