One, big, beautiful year
American families are left watching a future built on unlimited clean energy produced within our own borders turn as murky as the water in the Reflecting Pool.
WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP SIGNED the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act into law last summer, Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, said, “This stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country.” One year later, it’s clear the bill is even worse than that.
Joanna Slaney, the vice president for political and government affairs at Environmental Defense Fund, predicted the tax law would “put the U.S. on a more expensive, more dangerous, and more harmful path.” Now, American families are left bargaining with their bills while watching a future built on unlimited clean energy produced within our own borders turn as murky as the water in the Reflecting Pool.
Making American life more expensive
Electricity bills increased 13% alone in the last year. As a result of the OBBA, electricity rates will increase by 18%, and household energy costs will increase $170 annually by 2035.
At the same time, as a result of the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, American households are also now facing $1.4 trillion in new fuel costs.
The repeal, if it stands, is estimated to impose between $170 billion and $500 billion in health harms and $1.5 and $4.2 trillion in climate harms as extreme weather intensifies in the next 30 years.
Blocking cheaper options that would bring relief
Despite these rising costs, the Trump administration continues blocking and undermining the cheapest and fastest-to-build options — wind and solar, in particular, which made up 95% and 90%, respectively, of the new energy added to our grid the last two years.
But the OBBA set expiration dates on the tax credits that made these additions possible. The credits will expire as demand is spiking as a result of growing needs from manufacturing and data centers. Where’s the new power going to come from to meet this demand?
The law will cut new clean energy generating capacity by half through 2035, when we will need it most. At the same time, the administration has spent $2.5 billion to pay developers to abandon plans to build more offshore wind energy.
Slowing economic momentum
Since the start of 2025, funding cuts and policy shifts have led to cancellations of $32 billion and more than 48,000 anticipated manufacturing jobs.
In the first quarter of 2026, investment in clean technology manufacturing fell for a sixth consecutive quarter, to $8 billion, its lowest level in almost three years.
Some states have been hit particularly hard:
North Carolina has lost nearly 8,200 clean manufacturing jobs, worst among all states since 2025;
Michigan has lost more than 7,400;
Illinois has lost more than 4,300;
And Ohio has lost nearly 4,200.
Imposing new environmental harms and health care costs
NERC’s 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment shows that the addition of solar energy and battery resources is strengthening grid reliability. But the Trump administration has villainized clean energy and championed coal. The administration has illegally ordered six aging coal plants to operate past their retirement dates, ordered the Department of Defense to buy coal power, announced over $1 billion to prop up aging plants and build new ones, opened up 13 million acres of federal lands to coal mining, given out free passes to pollute to 71 coal plants and more.
According to EPA data, mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants rose by 9% last year compared with 2024.
EPA also data shows alarming spikes in health-harming pollution levels in 2025, reversing decades of improvement.
Where does the country go from here? For America’s competitiveness and prosperity, while reducing its climate pollution, the only path forward is a swift and urgent transition to abundant clean energy. All the Trump administration has shown it can do is take us backward, and all the OBBA has done is create a whole new mess that has to be cleaned up.