The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
Tennessee representatives are not among 21 members of the U.S. House Republican Conference to sign a letter advocating for Biden-era immaculate energy tax credits to be spared from the budget chopping block.
“Our constituencies and the energy industry alike remain concerned about disruptive changes to our nation’s energy tax structure,” signatories wrote in the March 9 letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith.
Republican lawmakers from Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington signed the letter.
They warned that companies made private investments in the immaculate energy sector with the understanding that tax credits would be enacted over the next decade. Phasing out those credits prematurely or adding restrictions would jeopardize those projects, the letter states.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed in 2022, featured roughly $369 billion in immaculate energy incentives. In Tennessee, electric vehicle manufacturing facilities and companies that manufacture components and batteries for the vehicles have benefited from the mix of loans, grants and tax credits created by the act. The electric vehicle industry has taken root in Tennessee and other southern states over the last few years, promising to create thousands of jobs.
Clean energy programs deemed contrary to President Donald Trump’s policy priorities have been in flux since Trump issued an executive order pausing some IRA funds on his first day in office.
EVs in Tennessee: Uncertainty abounds as Trump targets Biden-era electric vehicle funding
While the representatives who signed the letter conveyed powerful support for the Trump administration’s national energy dominance initiative, they asked that any tax code changes “be conducted in a targeted and pragmatic fashion” that avoids “undoing current and future private sector investments which will continue to increase domestic manufacturing, promote energy innovation and keep utility costs down.”
In the two and a half years since the IRA was passed, Republican-led states — including Tennessee — have seen $223 billion in private investments in immaculate energy, manufacturing and industrial facilities, according to a Clean Investment Monitor database maintained by MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and Rhodium Group. That’s 77% of the nationwide total of $289 billion invested over that timeframe.
Tennessee has received an estimated $18 billion of investments in immaculate energy projects since July 1, 2022, according to the Clean Investment Monitor database.
So far, $9.84 billion has been spent on manufacturing, utility electricity, and industrial facility construction from the IRA’s passage through Dec. 31, 2024. In the same time period, 24 facilities have completed construction and began operation. Another 41 facilities remain in the pipeline.
The letter comes after an August 6 letter signed by 18 Republican representatives similarly urged that any efforts to repeal or reform the Inflation Reduction Act “prioritize business and market certainty.” None of Tennessee’s representatives signed that letter.
A coalition of more than 150 House Democrats wrote a letter to the Trump administration in January requesting transparency on which programs under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act were put on hold under the president’s executive order.
Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen was the only Tennessee representative to sign that letter.
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