(SEIA) WASHINGTON D.C. — Hundreds of solar workers and advocates joined the Save Main Street Solar rally on Capitol Hill on June 17th to urge Congress to protect energy tax credits that support hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
The bill text released June 16th by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee would upend the U.S. solar and storage industry, particularly thousands of small businesses in the rooftop solar sector.
Many of those businesses and industry leaders joined the rally to tell Congress that their businesses, their jobs, and energy freedom for American families is all at risk in this bill.
Speakers at the rally included solar workers, business owners, and clean energy advocates from across the country. They all shared a common message: stripping away clean energy tax credits will cost jobs, immediately raise energy bills, and threaten American energy independence.
“The bill will strip the ability of millions of American families to choose the energy savings, energy resilience, and energy freedom that solar and storage provide,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “You are the men and women building American energy independence — in states that primarily voted for President Trump and have long been the backbone of our country’s energy economy. The Senate must fix the bill that came out of Senate Finance in a way that recognizes the critical role solar and storage play in meeting the energy challenges of our time. If this bill passes as is, we cannot ensure an affordable, reliable, and secure energy system.”
“West Virginia has always been known for our coal, but over the last 12 years, something incredible has been happening. Solar has been popping up in unexpected places — on churches, on schools, on steel mills,” said Dan Conant, CEO and founder of West Virginia-based Solar Holler. “We’ve been doing it in neighborhoods and hollers on both sides of the tracks. We’re building them with solar panels from Georgia, with inverters from South Carolina, with racking from our neighbors across the river in Ohio. Kicking out the knees of this industry that’s delivering cheap, abundant power is not in our interest. It’s not in West Virginia’s interest. And it’s definitely not in America’s interest.”
“I’m a retired Navy commander, serving 22 years in the military where I was first exposed to the benefits of solar. When I left the military, I started my company Tampa Bay Solar, and I’m proud to say that 30% of my workforce are veterans… If this bill passes, thousands of veterans will lose their jobs,” said Steve Rutherford, owner of Tampa Bay Solar and former Navy Seal. “Florida ranks number three in the country for solar. It’s a red state with over 400 solar businesses and thousands of workers that could lose their jobs if this bill passes.”
“The people in these buildings, they’re not hearing us, and it’s evident in what came out last night in the bill,” said Marco Krapels, vice president of business development at Enphase Energy. “We did all the right things. We moved our manufacturing to the United States. We opened up several factories here and put 5,000 people to work. We did everything our government wanted us to do. If you want to build businesses, you cannot have a policy that pushes everyone down a cliff. What we need is a glide path, not a cliff.”
The rally was organized to spotlight the serious consequences of the proposed rollback of energy tax credits, which have driven over $100 billion in private-sector solar investment in the last two years—much of it flowing to conservative districts.
Learn more about the threat this bill poses at SaveMainStreetSolar.org.
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