“It’s worth emphasizing why these cuts are being pursued,” Campbell added. “It’s about funding tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy by destroying our public programs.”
Still, there’s little indication so far that North Carolina’s congressional delegation is poised to stand up for clean energy incentives. Among the 18 Republicans who last year urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to preserve the credits, none are from the Tar Heel State, and only one, Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia, is from the Southeast.
Sen. Thom Tillis, generally regarded as the Republican who’s friendliest to clean energy in Congress, voted against the Inflation Reduction Act. So did Republican Rep. Richard Hudson, whose district includes the Toyota plant, saying in a statement that the law would “throw money at woke climate and social programs that won’t work.”
Newly minted congressional Rep. Tim Moore, also a Republican, supported a bipartisan state law forcing Duke Energy to zero out its carbon pollution by 2050 when he was speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives. His district has three new clean energy developments, including a lithium-processing plant in Kings Mountain. But Moore may end up as a foe of the Inflation Reduction Act in Congress: He criticized it in a 2022 social media post for not effectively driving down inflation and last year urged a U.S. senator from his state to address “problems” that he said the climate law created.
With Republicans retaining an extremely narrow majority in Washington, even a single vote could tip the scales, Cross said.
“Some of the votes are going to be fifty-fifty votes,” he said. “So, there are points at which an individual representative going one way or another could be meaningful.”
While Congress debates the future of clean energy incentives, North Carolina House Democratic Leader Robert Reives said on the Climate Power call that he hopes the Republican majority in the state’s General Assembly will help preserve the state’s clean energy investments — but he’s also concerned about “negative” energy legislation.
“I’m worried,” he said, “because over the last month, there’s been a troubling tendency to follow whatever the federal government states instead of looking at what the effects are going to be for North Carolina.”
