As Congress cuts clean energy tax credits, Georgia solar jobs could be at risk

The latest version of the budget bill that’s now headed back to the House after Senate passage on Tuesday will phase out the tax incentives for wind and solar projects by the end of 2027.

Nearly 400 clean energy projects have been announced since Congress passed the IRA three years ago, according to E2, a pro-environment business group that has tracked the investments. Sixteen thousand of those jobs have been promised in Georgia – more than any other state. The number of projects in Georgia is second only to Michigan, the traditional home of the American auto industry. 

Solarcycle received a $64 million tax credit to construct another factory nearby to manufacture glass for new solar panels. The two facilities together are expected to create 1,200 jobs in this mostly rural stretch of Northwest Georgia. 

But Solarcycle CEO Suvi Sharma says groundbreaking for the new facility is now on hold.

“One of the worst things for running a company is uncertainty,” Sharma says.

Solarcycle already received its tax credit to help fuel the roughly $500 million investment. But if Congress eliminates or curtails tax incentives for consumers to install solar and for other manufacturers that make the panels, that could affect demand for Solarcycle’s recycling business and future glassmaking operation.

“The more solar there is, the more solar there is to recycle,” Sharma says. “And the more solar panels there are to install that need the type of glass we plan on making.”

E2 has tallied $14 billion in announced investments cancelled so far this year.

“In fairness there’s not one single factor driving it,” says E2’s Southeast advocate Zach Amittay. “Some of this is high interest rates and the difficulty finding financing right now. But with practically every single announcement from a company sharing news of a downsizing or a closure, they all reference market uncertainty and the threat of the tax credits being rescinded.”

Sharma does not think curtailing the credits will kill solar, but he does worry that smaller installers will struggle to stay afloat without the consumer tax credits.

Montana Busch, the president of Athens-based solar company Alternative Energy Southeast, says most of his clients install rooftop solar because the tax credits help it make financial sense. Busch had been planning to open a second office in Savannah, hiring 10 workers. That plan is now paused.

“I feel like I did all the right things to build a business from scratch, offer good customer service and try to be a shining light in the construction industry,” Busch says. “And a lot of people have built their careers around this. It feels like my country is against me all of a sudden, to do a rug pull like this.” 

During a virtual meeting of the Georgia Solar Energy Association in June, some members expressed concerns and questions about why the credits were being pulled back so abruptly and what it might mean for their businesses and the energy stream. 

Sharma also worries that manufacturers will think twice about setting up shop in the U.S.

“They’ll have felt the burn already,” he says. “And say while it may look good today, it may not look good in four years. So that’s where I think the stakes really are highest.”

The stakes are also high for communities like Cedartown.

How curtailing clean energy tax credits could impact one community

Wearing a red Cedartown High School Bulldogs T-shirt, 72-year-old Phillip Gammage recalls the heyday of the community where he grew up.

“This place was packed up and down Main Street,” Gammage says. “You could get in the theater, get a bag of popcorn and a Coca-Cola for 25 cents. We’re trying to get back to that.”

The Gammage family has operated a funeral home in town since 1950, when Northwest Georgia’s textile industry was still booming. But as those jobs dried up, Main Street began to empty out. Gammage says he sees the promise of Solarcycle for his hometown, even if not all of his neighbors do yet. 

“Tangible around here is, ‘You’ve got a job for me, now we can talk.’ And 1,200 jobs is going to mean a lot to this community,” he says.

While Solarcycle has not hired extensively yet, Cedartown is preparing for an influx of people. There is talk of new housing, accommodating more students in the public school system and specialized training programs at the local technical college. 

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp praised the Solarcycle expansion at the time and has prioritized landing these kinds of investments. The state has offered generous incentives, but Kemp has been skeptical of the federal tax credits, especially for consumers, saying it encourages picking “winners and losers.”

Kemp supports the federal spending and tax bill, which includes an extension of tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017.

“Raising taxes on millions of hardworking Georgians – especially as they continue to deal with the disastrous economic effects of the previous administration – is not an option,” Kemp spokesperson Garrison Douglas wrote in a statement.

Chris Thomas, Polk County’s economic development director, worked hard to win the Solarcycle facility, along with state economic development officials. 

For Thomas, Solarcycle will be a “generational impact” for the county, but he also says he is not too concerned about what would happen if the IRA tax credits go away. “I think the state and community incentives are usually the most important,” he says.

Gammage, who says he does not want to talk about politics, wants to see the tax credits preserved. “That’s a no-brainer,” he says. “If that many people are going to find jobs, that’s good. I don’t see how anyone could have a negative view of that.”

Someone who does have a negative view: the Republican congresswoman who represents this stretch of Northwest Georgia, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The politics of clean energy tax credits

Onstage at the annual Georgia GOP Convention in June, held a few counties over from Cedartown in Dalton, where the South Korean solar panel manufacturer QCells is expanding a multi-billion dollar factory, Greene slammed the federal tax credits – and the new projects themselves.

“They always say, ‘It’s going to bring jobs. Marjorie, it’s going to bring jobs to your district.’ Baloney,” Greene told party activists and officials. “When they go and plop a big battery production plant from South Korea, they’re having to steal workers from Georgia companies. I think that is a bunch of BS.”

Advocates who championed the Inflation Reduction Act hoped the geographic locations of many of the new investments would help insulate the tax credits from future cuts. E2 found that 62% of clean energy projects announced since 2022 are in GOP districts.

But Greene says unemployment in her district is low.

Not every Republican agrees with curbing the incentives. Some Republican senators, like Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Curtis of Utah, pushed to soften the rollbacks, ultimately removing more stringent cuts from an earlier version of the legislation. But the savings, estimated at more than $500 billion over a decade, are key to offsetting other spending and tax cuts in the bill that have concerned fiscal hawks, especially in the House.

Georgia Democratic U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who voted against the final bill, sponsored an amendment to preserve the renewable energy tax credits, but the effort was not successful.

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, who represents a Coastal Georgia district home to a new multi-billion-dollar Hyundai electric vehicle plant, has signed three letters urging his colleagues to keep the tax credits. 

He also defended them during an event hosted by the clean energy news outlet Canary Media, though he noted Hyundai’s plans were in the works prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Both Greene and Carter declined a WABE interview request.

“We should not take a sledgehammer to the IRA,” Carter told the interviewer. “Instead, we should take a scalpel. If these policies result in stabilizing our supply chain or if they result in domestic manufacturing, why would we not look at them, why not keep them? Those are Republican priorities anyway.”

In the end, Carter, who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2026, voted in May for the House version of the budget bill and the clean energy tax credit rollbacks. 

The future of the incentives – and possibly the trajectory of places like Cedartown and renewable energy more broadly – could be decided by Congress this week. President Donald Trump says he would like the bill on his desk by July 4.