The solar industry in the U.S. and in Pennsylvania was shining bright, with rapid growth and new domestic manufacturing to meet the industry’s needs. That abruptly changed in early July, when the Republican-controlled Congress passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ending tax credits for residential and commercial solar projects years before schedule, and putting billions of dollars in manufacturing investments in doubt.
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Solar installers rush to complete projects before the loss of tax credits
John Rogers, 25, handed a solar panel to his co-worker, who hoisted the 45-pound, six-foot-long rectangle onto his shoulder and lugged it up a ladder to the roof of a house in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
The company where they work, EIS Solar of Pittsburgh, has had a busy month.
“I mean, Squirrel Hill’s been getting a lot more panels, but a lot of places have been getting a lot of panels,” Rogers said. “Whether it’s flat, steep, tall, pretty short — if we can put panels on it, we most definitely will,” he laughed.
Even with the day’s rain, the crew completed the residential installation within a day.
Since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed by President Trump on July 4, the phones at EIA have been ringing off the hook, according to owner Joe Morinville. They’re hearing from old customers wanting to upgrade or add battery systems. “And there’s all kinds of new customers coming in,” he said. “It’s about four [times] the amount of inquiry prior to the House bill, and now that it’s passed, it’s accelerating even further.”
There’s a rush because a 30% tax credit for residential solar projects is abruptly expiring at the end of this year. The credits were scheduled to run until 2032, under President Biden’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The Trump law also scraps tax breaks for larger-scale solar projects early at the end of 2027.
Morinville said he ramped because of those tax breaks.
“We bought trucks, we hired people, we doubled our staff. We grew in order to meet that demand,” he said.
EIS works mostly on commercial projects, such as the Pittsburgh International Airport microgrid, but Morinville expects some small, local solar installers that have, until now, been growing to go bankrupt.
“The Congress came in and cut our legs out from under us. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. He feels that the message now is clear: “We don’t need you guys anymore. You’re done. You know, you’re all canceled, right?” he said.
Federal roadblocks for solar amid growing power demand
President Trump isn’t just rolling back clean energy tax breaks; he’s targeted the solar and wind industries with more roadblocks for renewable projects in favor of natural gas, oil, and coal.
“It’s quite ironic that the President basically has called a 9-1-1 on an energy emergency, as he’s called it, and essentially at the same time is destroying the fire department,” said Sharon Pillar, founder of the non-profit PA Solar Center.
It comes at a time when energy bills are on the rise, as electric grids in parts of the country voice concerns about demand outpacing supply.
PJM, the regional grid operator that includes Pennsylvania, paid record-high prices for electricity in its recent auction. For consumers, this means bills could rise by up to 5%. PJM sees increasing demand driven by the growth of power-hungry data centers, artificial intelligence, and electrification.
At the same time, the solar industry is booming. Along with energy storage batteries, it is expected to account for 81% of new energy generation capacity nationwide in 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In Pennsylvania, the Public Utilities Commission announced this week that the state doubled its solar generation capacity in just 17 months, with more pending PJM’s approval.
“We’re seeing literally hundreds of schools, farms, businesses, nonprofits, municipalities going solar because it’s saving so much money for them over a long period of time,” Piller said. “So the investment is upfront in the technology, but those savings will accumulate over the lifetime of the solar system, which is 30 years or more.”
Piller credits Biden-era tax incentives for the industry’s leap and the job growth. There are now more than 4200 solar jobs in Pennsylvania. She points to Pittsburgh-area companies like EOS Energy Enterprises, a battery maker, and Vitro Glass, which has started manufacturing products for the solar industry.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act puts those jobs in jeopardy, Piller said, because investors and developers plan large-scale projects based on the expected tax breaks, which may not happen in the shortened timeframe.
“The new bill that just passed, basically, I think the aim was to destroy the growth of renewable energy,” she said.
Renewable factories have been onshoring to the U.S.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that published Project 2025, supports the phasing out of the clean energy credits in the new law. She said one reason is that the manufacturing of renewable energy components still relies on fossil fuels.
“Because wind and solar, the components of those are made in China with coal-fired power plants, said Furchtgott-Roth, pointing out that China dominates the global supply chain for solar components and storage batteries.
At the same time, the U.S. solar manufacturing has been growing, according to Sean Gallagher of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. According to SEIA, over 100 solar manufacturing facilities have opened due to manufacturing tax incentives in the IRA. Gallaher said plants are now at risk in states like Texas, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
“The irony of the [new law]: It’s going to lead to factory closures and people losing their jobs in the very districts of the members of Congress who voted for the bill,” he said.
This week, Reuters reported that plans to increase production at a solar panel manufacturing plant in Indianapolis have been suspended, and plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are now under review, among other projects.
President Trump visited Pittsburgh in July for an energy summit, touting $90 billion in energy investments, largely focused on building natural gas and nuclear capacity to power data centers and AI.
But according to Gallagher, nuclear projects can take decades to build, and natural gas plants also take time.
“In the meantime, you could build tens of thousands of megawatts of solar,” he said. “We’re going to do less of that simply because this administration has put its thumb on the scale for older, dirtier forms of energy instead of taking advantage of everything that America has to offer.”
Meanwhile, Joe Morinville of EIS Solar says homeowners who want the tax credits for panels and batteries need to get in line soon, because there’s a limit to how many projects they can complete by the end of the year.
