Senate Should Say “No” to Higher Electricity Bills, Lost Jobs, and Attacks on Public Lands
This legislation is among the most unpopular bills in history, and there's still time for the Senate to take a different path.
Media Contact
Following the lead of the House majority, the Senate is about to consider the worst legislative assault in history on clean energy and public lands, a potentially ruinous array of proposals that puts Big Oil billionaires first—and the rest of us at risk.
There’s still time for the Senate to take a different path. This legislation is among the most unpopular bills in history, and senators should reject an effort that will mean higher electricity prices, lost manufacturing jobs, shuttered factories, loss of access to cherished lands, and a worsening climate crisis.
NRDC shared an in-depth analysis of the bill’s contents when it was before the House last month. The Senate Finance Committee released its part of the legislation earlier this week, and, while it included a few small tweaks, it mirrors the suite of attacks on solar and wind energy, electric vehicles, and hydrogen. Meanwhile, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—which released its proposed bill last week—expanded attacks on public lands and waters that are truly unprecedented.
Learn More
In this memo, we dig in on two major areas for concern:
- The bill would slam the brakes on one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, raising costs for consumers and making the country less energy secure. With electricity prices on the rise, this bill would stifle our fastest-growing source of new energy on the grid, meaning customers would face even higher bills for years to come. That includes increasing energy bills for families nationwide by up to $400 a year within the next decade.
- At the same time, it would sell off more than three million acres of the nation’s public lands—our forests, parks, and wildlands—to real estate developers, wealthy speculators, and logging interests.
That’s all while adding trillions to the national debt in order to pay for tax cuts that mostly benefit corporations and wealthy individuals. Yet, by a single vote, the House passed a massive budget reconciliation bill in May, adopting President Trump’s description of the measure and tagging it as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill was passed solely with Republican votes.
The Senate must chart a better course. That means rejecting this self-inflicted wound and standing up for American jobs, investment, competitiveness, and security. It means preserving America’s national parks, public lands, and national forests for all of us to enjoy for generations to come—not selling them for parts to the highest bidder.
Successful countries invest in the future. They don’t compromise the promise of tomorrow to enrich billionaires today—and leave working families to pay the price.
Raising costs and killing jobs
To help pay for the tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the bill would eviscerate the most successful investment incentives in a generation—tax credits that have driven a heartland manufacturing renaissance with clean energy at its core.
These federal incentives have helped drive more than $630 billion in clean energy investment by businesses and consumers over just the past three years. This is investment in new factories to make solar panels, electric vehicles, advanced batteries, and the like, or to cut home utility costs by installing heat pumps and other energy-saving appliances.
The country needs the power. After being essentially flat for two decades, electricity demand is growing at about 1.7 percent a year, nationally, due largely to a proliferation of new factories and data centers. And nearly all new electricity capacity nationwide is coming from solar and wind power and advanced battery storage that provides steady power when those renewable sources aren’t generating much. Last year, 92 percent of the nation’s new electricity capacity came from solar and wind power and advanced battery storage. This year, that figure is on track to hit 93 percent.
The incentives that the House budget bill seeks to kill are helping to drive these clean energy investments, using equipment that was built in this country by U.S. workers. The incentives are helping to make sure U.S. workers and businesses are winners in the global clean energy market—set to hit a record $2.2 trillion this year, which is double this year’s investment in fossil fuels.
Repealing these incentives would kill jobs and hamper domestic clean energy production. And it would raise consumer energy bills for years to come: The New York Times reports that if Congress and the Trump administration repeal clean energy tax credits, energy bills for American families could rise by up to $400 a year within the next decade. By next year alone, it could raise household electricity prices by 7 percent on average.
Just since January, businesses have canceled $14 billion in clean energy investments—and the 10,000 jobs they had supported—amid uncertainty over the future of clean energy incentives. With electricity prices already spiking, this is exactly the opposite of what we need at this time.
Every lawmaker who supports this self-inflicted economic wound is voting for higher energy bills, fewer jobs, and tax increases on drivers, homeowners, energy companies, and manufacturers. Like the administration’s attacks on science and the rule of law, undermining the nation’s clean energy future will weaken—not strengthen—the country.
Selling off public lands and national forests for real estate, drilling, and logging
The package calls for selling off public lands for private profit, boosting destructive fossil fuel production, and mandating expansive new logging across our national forests. The country's public lands are part of our national inheritance, protected over the decades by leaders from both parties so that future generations might know the natural splendor of this country. Public lands are a public trust. They should not be for sale.
These lands and forests are a critical part of the global climate solution, sucking in and storing massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, not to mention cleaning the air we breathe and the water we drink. This legislative package seeks to destroy much of that.
Across the Lower 48, it would expose millions of acres of public lands to new oil and gas drilling by mandating quarterly lease sales controlled by industry. And it would reverse a decade of policies by opening millions of acres across the country for new coal mines.
The bill mandates a 25 percent increase in timber production and requires 20-year logging contracts that lock in production. The result is estimated at more than 11 billion board feet of timber harvested over the next decade because of the reconciliation language.
In Alaska, it would vastly expand oil and gas drilling, commercial logging, industrial roadways, and speculative mining across irreplaceable wilderness. That would threaten resources critical to the life and culture of Indigenous Peoples, as well as habitat for hundreds of species, ranging from the majestic caribou to the spawning Chinook salmon.
The attacks do not stop there.
The package calls for the direct sale of more than three million acres of public lands in 11 states across the West. Once these lands are sold, and the “no trespassing” signs go up, there will be no going back. It would also expose tens of millions of acres of ocean waters off the coasts of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico to the risks of offshore oil and gas drilling, putting marine life and coastal communities at risk.
The oil and gas industry already holds 12 million acres in Gulf of Mexico leases. That’s enough to cover half the state of Indiana. It is time to reduce, not increase, the waters exposed to the risk of the next BP Deepwater Horizon–style disaster at sea.