Solar CEOs bet that red state investments will protect them from threat of Trump repealing IRA

Published Fri, Mar 15 202410:10 AM EDTUpdated Tue, Mar 19 20249:43 PM EDT

Key Points

Clean energy tax credits under President Joe Biden's landmark Inflation Reduction Act could face the chopping block if the GOP sweeps the November elections.
The GOP unanimously opposed the legislation and has repeatedly threatened repeal, arguing it is too costly.
Solar industry CEOs believe the tax credits will prove durable because they support manufacturing in Republican districts.
But some analysts say the risk of repeal is underestimated by investors.

Solar industry CEOs are confident a Republican victory in the 2024 election wouldn't spell the end of government support for clean energy investments, particularly for manufacturing, despite GOP threats to gut President Joe Biden 's landmark Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA has been touted by the Biden administration as providing funds for the largest investmen t in clean energy in U.S. history, intended to accelerate the transition away from fossil and toward renewable fuels, all while creating manufacturing jobs. Republicans unanimously opposed passage of the legislation in August 2022 and sought to repeal the clean energy tax credits during a battle over the debt ceiling last spring. Former President Donald Trump 's campaign officials told the Financial Times in November that he would look to cut some of those tax breaks if returned to the White House. Just last week, Republicans again signaled that they intend to ax the credits, with the House Budget Committee voting to advance a budget resolution that would "dismantle" the IRA and repeal what lawmakers called "green corporate welfare," according to a GOP summary of the proposal. IRA tax credits that support clean electricity generation and storage, such as wind and solar, are projected to cost about $200 billion through 2031, according to estimates from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The solar industry has been a major beneficiary of the credits. First Solar , the largest panel manufacturer in the U.S., expects to receive about $1 billion in tax credits this year for making its products domestically. First Solar CEO Mark Widmar told CNBC "there's no doubt" Republicans will consider repealing provisions of the IRA to fund tax cuts and rein in the deficit if they secure a "clean sweep" of Congress and the White House this November. Widmar is confident, however, that the GOP does not want to undermine domestic manufacturing. "Where we put our factories are in Republican states. They don't want to undermine that," Widmar said in an interview. First Solar is headquartered in Arizona, a key swing state, and operates three factories in Ohio with plans underway to open two additional plants in Louisiana and Alabama over the next two years. The company released an economic impact study last month that estimated its 2023 operations directly and indirectly support more than 16,000 jobs, a number that's projected to grow to 30,000 in 2026. "We're trying to stay actively engaged with Republicans in that regard and help them understand what we've been able to create here and the benefits of having a constructive policy, which may be different than what [the] IRA is, but still a constructive policy to support renewable energy," said Widmar, who's served at First Solar since 2011. 'They would be stupid' Investments in clean energy have surged since the IRA became law in 2022. The deployment of large, utility-scale solar and energy storage projects grew by 50% to $53 billion in 2023 compared with the prior year, according to data from the Rhodium Group . Congressional districts represented by Republicans have disproportionately benefited from the investments, according to a December report from the liberal think tank Center for American Progress that analyzed Rhodium's data. Some 57% of the 211,000 jobs created across 45 states and Puerto Rico since the IRA's passage are in GOP districts, according to the report. Eight of the top 10 congressional districts in terms of solar investments are represented by Republicans, according to the think tank. Enphase CEO Badri Kothandaraman is blunt that repealing the IRA tax provisions would hurt domestic manufacturing. Enphase makes inverters, a crucial component that converts solar energy harvested by panels into electricity that's usable in homes and in the power grid. The company's manufacturing facilities are in Columbia, South Carolina and Arlington, Texas . "We are making millions of microinverters in two plants in the U.S. They would be stupid to basically harm that," Kothandaraman told CNBC in an interview in February, referring to Republicans. "U.S. manufacturing is at its best right now — that's the best thing Biden did." "I doubt Trump will do anything to reverse that. That's our position," Kothandaraman said. Enphase booked a net benefit from the IRA production tax credit of $41.8 million in 2023, according to its fourth-quarter financial results . Underappreciated repeal risk The likelihood of Congress repealing IRA tax credits is low because it would require unified Republican control government, said Tobin Marcus, a policy and politics analyst at Wolfe Research. Still, the risk is real, and underappreciated by investors, Marcus said. Wolfe Research sees a 40% chance of the Republican Party winning unified control of government in November, with the Senate falling to the GOP if Trump wins the presidency. In that scenario, the firm sees a 50% chance that the Republicans will roll back some of the tax credits in an attempt to find budgetary offsets to cut taxes. "From a corporate, financial decision making perspective, the overwhelming likelihood is this stuff will stay in place," Marcus told CNBC. Investors, however, need to be mindful of the risk because "six months from right now we could find ourselves in a world where people are staring down the barrel of a Republican trifecta," he said. Marcus said the electric vehicle tax credits face the greatest risk, with Trump having repeatedly attacked those provisions on the campaign trail in an effort to win over Detroit autoworkers. Republicans appear less opposed to the wind and solar tax credits, Marcus said. They could, however, seek to phase out these credits earlier than the current timeline, rather than fully repeal them, in an effort to free up money for their agenda, he said. But the debt ceiling battle last spring could prove instructive, Marcus said. While Republicans in Midwestern states were able to prevent the party from voting against biofuel and ethanol tax credits, a provision to repeal credits that benefit solar remained in the debt limit legislation . But no one believed that the GOP debit limit bill would actually pass either, Marcus said. It could be tougher for some Republicans to vote to repeal IRA tax provisions that support jobs in their districts through a reconciliation bill that actually has a chance of passing a Republican-controlled Congress, he said. 'Political tail winds' Under current law, investment and production tax credits phase out for projects that start construction in 2032, or when the Treasury secretary determines carbon emissions from electricity generation have been reduced by 75% from 2022 levels, according to the Department of Energy . Nextracker CEO Dan Shugar told CNBC the fact that these provisions are in the tax code should make them more durable. Nextracker builds devices that allow solar panels to track the position of the sun. The IRA has helped the company more than double its manufacturing footprint across the U.S., he said. "The IRA provisions that are really most impactful to the market are tax code," Shugar said. "Those tend to have a lot of persistence. The day after the election, those don't evaporate," he said. "Most of the factories that we're building are across the political spectrum, so there's a lot of jobs in a lot of places," the CEO said. "We think there's a lot of political tail winds for what we're doing," he said. Nextracker is forecasting an IRA tax benefit of $50 million to $80 million in the fourth quarter of its 2024 fiscal year in the form of lower sales costs via rebates, according to its most recent financial results . Sunnova CEO John Berger views divided government as the most likely outcome in November, which would preserve the status quo on the IRA. Based in Houston, Sunnova is one of the leading residential solar installers in the U.S. Berger said the traditional oil and gas industry also has a stake in the IRA due to credits that support hydrogen production and carbon capture technology. "We don't need any more subsidies or anything else of that nature," Berger told CNBC. "We can certainly make do with this. I think we're in a good political position for the first time." Correction: Nextracker is forecasting an IRA benefit of $50 million to $80 million in the fourth quarter of its 2024 fiscal year. A previous version of this story misstated the nature of the benefit.