The "Big Beautiful Bill" did a lot of things, not all of them good. One positive step was to repeal many of the Inflation Reduction Act's green energy subsidies. It's a little disappointing that Congress didn't repeal all of them, as President Donald Trump promised during the campaign. Yet it's also somewhat amazing to witness a genuine rollback, something that was never a given for this bill and which typically loses out to special-interest politics.
To be clear, I want more green energy from more sources, including wind, solar, geothermal, and whatever other promising avenues innovation makes possible. But subsidies like those of the Inflation Reduction Act are the wrong way to get there. They distort the tax code, misallocate capital, and favor companies already in the game, to the detriment of new entrants that might bring something more transformative.
The result isn't more abundance; it's cronyism masquerading as climate policy.
