Our congress has lost its collective mind and has passed in both chambers a bill that will increase your energy and grocery prices, fund and promote a police state, and further increase the ability of POTUS 47 to act as a tyrant rather than the leader of the free world. It screws the little people and richly rewards the wealthy. It will cost everyday Americans more for energy, for insurance, food, everyday essentials and gives FEMA $300 million dollars to protect the presidential residence, not yours. Your Medicare benefits will be impacted because the budget deficit hawks decided to okay an increase to the deficit of more than $3 trillion dollars. Why? To fund even more subsidies for billionaires and fossil fuel giants.

It is difficult to wrap one’s head around the cruelty of this legislation. The 897-page act, now law, rescinds or terminates large portions of the energy incentives which were helping the economy hum along in 2024 at a pace characterized as the envy of the world. Our recovery from the pandemic surpassed all. We were on our way to a cleaner future.

The scope of the bill falls under the now familiar theme of FIREHOSE. It is so massive it is hard to keep track of the huge number of moving parts. Because we want to know about the impact on energy and sustainability, that will be the primary focus of our writing today. If you care to compare the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Public Law 117-169 to ugly bill H.R. 1 that just became law, you will need to pull up both as PDF files and search for the section numbers to find the rescissions, terminations and billionaire giveaways. IRA: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376/text ; H.R. 1: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text.

The first 9 pages of H.R. 1 is a table of contents. For example, there you will find Sec. 30002. The IRA appropriated more than $837 million to improve the energy efficiency of affordable housing. H.R. 1 includes the rescission of unobligated balances made available for that housing in the IRA.

If you have not yet purchased an EV and have the desire and cash to do so, now is the time. Chapter 5, titled “Ending Green New Deal Spending, Promoting America-First Energy, and Other Reforms” terminates the Green New Deal subsidies. Sec. 70501 changes the termination date of the previously owned EV credit of $4,000 from December 31, 2032, to September 30, 2025. The $7,500 tax credit for new EVs will also end September 30, 2025. That gives you two months from now to procure that vehicle.

The Energy Efficient Home Improvement credit will expire December 31, 2025, rather than in 2032 (Sec. 70505).

If you are looking to invest in a solar array for your home, perhaps to totally power your EV like we do, sooner than later is the operational framework. As of today, we spoke to one of the Colorado solar installation companies we have worked with and the impact is frankly unclear, a few days after POTUS 47 signed the legislation into law. As best we can determine, Sec.70512 determines the change in solar and wind installation, with the facility needing to be installed and placed in service prior to December 31, 2027.

Both of our Colorado US Senators, and some Colorado US House Representatives, including Estes Valley representative Neguse, voted against the bill. (https://www.colorado.gov/governor/news/hickenlooper-polis-degette-neguse-crow-pettersen-denounce-republicans-reckless-budget-bill) “Hickenlooper took to the Senate floor in the middle of the night in support of his amendment to protect the IRA’s residential clean energy credit. He also worked with his colleagues to alter a few of the worst clean energy proposals, including eliminating a devastating renewable energy excise tax.”

The marathon votes were scheduled in the middle of the night and our Democratic Colorado representatives worked hard to make the process as visible to their constituents as possible. Many of the impactful cuts are scheduled to occur after the mid-term election. Every single representative in the US House must run and be re-elected in that mid-term. Don’t let the passage of time fool you into complacency. The GOP-controlled Congress voted to make your life harder and to subsidize the rich.

One of the most important things we can do moving forward is to convince some of the 90 million eligible voters who did not vote in the 2024 election to show up and vote in 2026. Their non-vote was a vote. Help them understand that in 2026 and beyond that vote cast will make a difference.

Thomas Beck, AIA, NCARB, is an architect based in Estes Park, Colorado, who has been deeply involved in sustainable building practices since he was a student at CU Boulder in the 1970’s. twbeckarchitects.com