One Year Later: A Law that Puts the U.S. on a More Expensive, More Dangerous, and More Harmful Path

Last summer, I wrote that the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act would “put the U.S. on a more expensive, more dangerous, and more harmful path.” We have one year of evidence that it’s done exactly that. 

President Trump’s signature tax law, along with the administration’s decisions to curtail our energy independence, undercut a domestic manufacturing resurgence and undermined energy security right when demand is expected to skyrocket. It has limited choices for American families and imposed new costs. There has been nothing beautiful about it. 

Here’s how:

Making American life more expensive

• In 2025, electricity bills increased by 13%. Additional analysis shows that the law will lead to electricity rates increasing by 18% and household energy costs by $170 annually by 2035.
• At the same time, as a result of the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, American households are also now facing $1.4 trillion in new fuel costs.
• The repeal, if it stands, is estimated to impose between $170 billion and $500 billion in health harms and $1.5 and $4.2 trillion in climate harms as extreme weather intensifies in the next 30 years.

Blocking cheaper options that would bring relief 

• Despite these rising costs, the Trump administration continues blocking and undermining the cheapest and fastest-to-build options — wind and solar, in particular, which made up 95% and 90%, respectively, of the new energy added to our grid the last two years.
• But the law set expiration dates on the tax credits that made these additions possible. The credits will be expiring as demand is spiking as a result of growing needs from manufacturing and data centers. Where’s the new power going to come from to meet this demand?
• At the same time, the administration has spent at least $2.5 billion to pay developers to abandon plans to build more offshore wind energy.
• The law will cut new clean energy generating capacity by half through 2035, when we will need it most.

Slowing economic momentum

• Since the start of 2025, funding cuts and policy shifts have led to cancellations of $32 billion and more than 48,000 anticipated manufacturing jobs.
• In the first quarter of 2026, investment in clean technology manufacturing fell for a sixth consecutive quarter, to $8 billion, its lowest level in almost three years.
• Some states have been hit particularly hard:
  • North Carolina has lost nearly 8,200 clean manufacturing jobs, worst among all states since 2025;
  • Michigan has lost more than 7,400;
  • Illinois has lost more than 4,300;
  • And Ohio has lost nearly 4,200.

Imposing new environmental harms and health care costs

• NERC’s 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment shows that the addition of solar energy and battery resources is strengthening grid reliability.
• But the Trump administration has villainized clean energy and championed coal. The administration has illegally ordered six aging coal plants to operate past their retirement dates, ordered the Department of Defense to buy coal power, announced over $1 billion to prop up aging plants and build new ones, opened up 13 million acres of federal lands to coal mining, given out free passes to pollute to 71 coal plants, and more.
• According to EPA data, mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants rose by 9% last year compared with 2024.
• EPA data also show alarming spikes in health-harming pollution levels in 2025, reversing decades of improvement.

For America’s competitiveness and prosperity, and to reduce the climate pollution that’s driving up home insurance prices and threatening community stability, we need more clean energy because it’s an unlimited and local source of reliable power. All the law has done is create one more mess that will need to be cleaned up.