Forget headlines about child tax credits or Medicaid work requirements. The House’s passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — a sprawling, 1,000+ page package — marks a pivotal inflection point for America’s energy landscape. Tied up in its tax code rewrites, agency reforms, and spending priorities are seismic shifts for the power sector: incentives pulled, regulators restructured, and generation types reweighted. Today’s GridBrief unpacks the implications across three fronts: renewables, nuclear, and fossil-linked infrastructure.

1. Renewables: Incentives Vanish, Financing Tightens

The House-passed bill moves to terminate most of the Inflation Reduction Act’s technology-neutral tax credits — 45Y and 48E — for any project not placed in service by 2028 or under construction within 60 days of enactment. There’s no taper, no phaseout. Just a hard stop. That deadline compresses project timelines in a way few developers will be able to meet, particularly given ongoing interconnection delays and permitting lags.

Transferability provisions — which made smaller developers competitive by allowing them to sell tax credits — are gutted for non-nuclear clean energy. Analysts say this could hit residential solar especially hard. In early trading, Sunrun’s shares dropped 40% as the bill targeted both leased and customer-owned residential solar with equal force.

An SEIA estimate projects up to 300,000 job losses across solar and storage and $220 billion in lost investment by 2030. The bill also kills the advanced manufacturing production credit by 2031. That’s particularly notable because roughly 73% of IRA-driven manufacturing has occurred in Republican states — where many of those factories may now freeze expansion or close altogether.

While the House version is likely to change in the Senate, the signal is clear: the era of easy capital and blanket incentives for wind, solar, and storage is over, at least in the House GOP’s vision of the grid.

2. Nuclear: Regulatory Reform Arrives — or Collides

The budget bill technically protects many of the IRA’s nuclear-specific credits — including production and investment incentives for existing and advanced reactors. But even here, eligibility timelines are accelerated. New reactors must begin construction by 2028, not 2032, and new domestic sourcing rules could complicate procurement for advanced designs.

More consequential than the budget language, however, is the executive order signed May 23 reforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Citing stagnation in reactor approvals — only two new commercial reactors have come online since 1978 — the administration is directing the NRC to:

• Impose hard deadlines: 18 months for new construction licenses, 12 months for renewals.

• Cap hourly billing for applicants.

• Revise radiation exposure models and drop reliance on the linear no-threshold model.

• Streamline approval for DOD/DOE-tested designs.

• Create a bulk licensing process for microreactors and modular reactors.

The reforms are sweeping and, if fully implemented, would represent the most significant change to civilian nuclear oversight since the NRC’s founding in 1975. The aim is clear: quadruple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, from 100 GW to 400 GW.

Whether the NRC — historically cautious and legally insulated — can be turned into a commercial enabler remains to be seen. Industry voices are optimistic but cautious. NEI’s CEO Maria Korsnick this week said the sector faces “serious headwinds,” especially if Congress claws back DOE loan authority or stalls Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program funding.

Still, the strategy is coherent: loosen the regulatory bottleneck, backstop with long-term off-take demand from AI, hydrogen, and defense, and reestablish U.S. leadership in global reactor exports. Whether the market follows depends on capital, timelines, and grid integration.

3. Fossil Fuels and Infrastructure: Open Season on Public Lands

Tucked deep in the legislation are measures that, collectively, reshape the federal stance on extraction and infrastructure:

• Public lands opened to expanded drilling, logging, and mining.

• Royalty rates for fossil extraction cut.

• NEPA revisions speed up approvals for energy and industrial projects.

• Loan Programs Office funding clawed back, jeopardizing existing conditional awards.

These are direct reversals of Biden-era constraints — restoring fossil profitability on public lands and, in theory, cutting permitting delays that have slowed pipeline and gas plant expansions. The budget also directs more leasing and prioritizes export infrastructure.

If you’re a utility or private equity fund manager looking to build gas plants or LNG terminals, this is green light territory. Notably, it comes amid record-high M&A activity in gas-fired generation — with Constellation, Vistra, and NRG all buying existing assets at prices below new-build cost per GW.

Longer-term, these policies may set up jurisdictional battles with blue-state attorneys general and further strain federal-state coordination under FERC. But in the short run, the incentives and barriers are clear: invest in dispatchable assets, especially those with revenue pathways to industrial load and AI infrastructure.

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Conversation Starters

• CNBC: Europe’s pivot to nuclear accelerates. Spain, Germany, and Denmark are rethinking anti-nuclear stances amid blackout concerns and rising costs of renewables.

• Science.org: Studies of exotic materials called “strange metals” point to a whole new way to understand electricity. Take a close look at how metals and electrons create something unique and mysterious together.

• NYT: Are EVs repeating history? The electric car boom of the early 1900s collapsed under fuel access and policy shifts. The Biden-to-Trump pendulum may produce déjà vu.Good Bet, Bad Bet

Good Bet, Bad Bet

Good Bet: VST (Vistra Corp)
The budget bill’s revival of public lands drilling, coupled with the regulatory rollback on environmental review, gives gas-fired generation a second wind. Combine that with rising AI and manufacturing load, and existing gas plants—especially those near load pockets—just got more valuable. Vistra’s recent $1.9B buy of 2.6 GW in assets shows the playbook: scoop up dispatchable capacity before demand spikes further. Investors looking to ride this wave may want to eye operators with flexibility and regional diversity. Gas isn’t dead—it’s getting bought up before the market fully catches on.

Bad Bet: Waiting Out the Interconnection Queue
Example: Utility-scale solar developer hoping to time the 45Y/48E clock
The House budget slams the window shut on tax credit eligibility for most new clean energy projects. With 60 days post-enactment to start construction—and interconnection delays already measured in years—developers sitting on shovel-ready solar or storage projects are now in a race against the calendar, not the market. Financing is tightening, credits are vanishing, and asset buyers are growing more selective. Betting that the Senate will fully reverse course might be wishful thinking. The better bet? Move now or pivot fast.

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