Nuclear Lobby Fights Back as GOP Slashes Clean Energy Incentives
Irina Slav

Last week, Republican legislators caused an uproar in wind and solar circles by proposing what amounts to a decimation of subsidies for these industries—and EVs as well. But the lawmakers did not stop with wind and solar. They are cutting incentives for nuclear as well. The nuclear industry is up in arms. It has AI movers and shakers on its side.

Last Monday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce proposed phasing out tax credits linked to climate policies stipulated in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. This, per the Committee, will raise some $6.5 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee also proposed phasing out various tax incentives, aiming to fuel the expansion of wind and solar energy, electric vehicles, and other transition technologies.

Naturally, wind and solar companies were less than happy to hear this, especially since they’d been lobbying legislators hard in the months since President Trump took office. The lobbying effort has focused on legislators representing districts that have been on the receiving end of IRA subsidies and on scare tactics about job losses and a worsened outlook for “American families”.

Nuclear has also joined the push against subsidy phaseout with its own lobbying effort. According to a Financial Times report from Sunday, the industry has been lobbying Congress to stop short of removing subsidies for new nuclear facilities, and it has been lobbying it hard. One nuclear tech firm, Oklo, linked financially to OpenAI’s Sam Altman, for instance, upped its spending on lobbying by 500% on the year to 424,000. Constellation Energy, Microsoft’s partner in Three Mile Island, spent more than $1.7 million on lobbying in the first quarter, a 17% annual increase, per the FT.

That Three Mile Island reopening deal that Microsoft struck with Constellation Energy last year was one of the signs that nuclear is making a comeback—and a major one. Google’s partnership with modular reactor developer Kairos for 500 MW of capacity was another sign. Amazon was not far behind, buying a stake in another modular reactor company, X-energy. Meta is also in the nuclear game, seeking up to 4 GW in nuclear capacity for its data centers.

Data centers and artificial intelligence—this is what is driving the nuclear rush that has benefited from the IRA incentives that GOP legislators now want to remove, along with wind, solar, and EV subsidies. Artificial intelligence is pushing electricity demand higher, and the outlook for this demand is so unanimously bullish that the need for more generating capacity is taken for granted. The thing about nuclear is that it costs a pretty penny upfront, and it’s nice to have a part of that financial burden shouldered by a cooperative federal government.

“It’s hard to overstate the value of the tax credits on helping to de-risk early-stage capital and project developments . . . if the idea is to lead and dominate in this space, we need to use all the tools in the tool belt,” the chief executive of that Sam Altman-supported nuclear company, Oklo, told the FT.

The tools in this case are the investment tax credit and the production tax credit, among half a dozen others. They are essential, the industry argues, for advancing new nuclear technology, such as small modular reactors, which have enjoyed a lot of hype but have struggled to really take off. Yet the tax credits are also essential for large-scale new nuclear because of the price tag it tends to come with—and Republicans in the Senate know it.

This is the good news for the nuclear industry: Senate legislators who don’t mind slashing subsidies for wind and solar do mind slashing them for nuclear and some have already indicated the authors of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” would have to make some changes if they want it to pass the upper house of Congress.

North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer, for instance, has an idea of removing only the subsidies for wind and solar but not for nuclear. “I don’t think it’s fair to treat an emerging technology the same as a 30-year-old technology,” Cramer said, per Politico, referring to wind and solar, on the one hand, and small modular reactors, on the other.

But here’s a twist: some nuclear companies actually welcome the threat of subsidy removal. “Industries that rely on federal subsidies tend to get stuck in ruts and less favourable towards innovation,” Isaiah Taylor, CEO of Valar Atomics, told the FT. “I like the direction that the administration is taking on this, in allowing it to be private and faster.”

Indeed, businesses relying on federal subsidies tend to get stuck in ruts. Look no further than wind and solar for evidence of this. These industries are a lot more active in the lobbying push right now because they know they will not survive for long without subsidies—and they have long forgotten how to compete on the free market. The nuclear industry, hopefully, has a better memory about that.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

 

 

 

Irina is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

 

 

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