Ahead of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's July 4, 2026 deadline for wind and solar projects to lock in clean energy tax credits, developers have successfully safe-harbored a massive 170 GW pipeline of projects to capitalize on the Inflation Reduction Act's benefits before they expire, according to industry experts interviewed by Utility Dive. As projects miss this cutoff and lose access to IRA tax credits, power purchase agreement prices for new wind and solar projects are expected to rise sharply, potentially increasing costs for utilities and ratepayers across the country.
Crux, a marketplace for tax credit transfers, estimated the safe-harbored project pipeline at 170 GW back in February, and experts believe it has only grown in the seven months since. Camelot Energy Group analyzed the financial impact of losing tax advantages and found that a 200-MW solar facility with a 30% investment tax credit would need a PPA in the $40 to $45 per megawatt hour range, but without that credit, the price jumps to the mid-to-high $60s—representing a 50% increase in power prices. The OBBBA, which President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, required wind and solar projects to start construction within one year to qualify for IRA tax credits, or meet an end-of-2027 "placed in service" deadline.
Josh Price, Crux's director of intelligence and research, explained that "that missing money has to come from somewhere to make the project pencil, and that will likely be through PPA prices, so really it's kind of a shift from the taxpayer to the ratepayer to make up that delta." Raafe Khan, Camelot Energy Group's head of energy storage and emerging markets, noted that developers have limited ability to cut costs, saying "that does push forward-looking power pricing to the higher end." Chris Girouard, a renewable energy tax credit attorney at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, expects the energy industry to "focus on their safe harbored projects through the end of the decade and lobby for changes in law that reintroduce tax credits applicable to wind and solar projects."
Despite the expiring credits, experts say there won't be an immediate collapse in solar and wind development because developers saw this coming and acted accordingly. Khan said "a healthy amount of projects" that locked in tax advantages will complete construction between 2028 and 2030, and he remains optimistic about solar's future. Energy storage tax credits survived the OBBBA cuts unscathed, positioning batteries for a major boost—Q1 2026 was already a record quarter for storage deployment. Industry thinking may even shift from solar-plus-storage to storage-plus-solar to better match utility and data center power needs. Bryen Alperin, managing director at Foss & Co, anticipates solar and wind credits being "extended sometime in the next few years," with other energy technologies like batteries and nuclear filling the gap until 2029 or 2030.
The report also highlights ongoing confusion around the OBBBA's foreign entity of concern rules, which began enforcement in January 2026 but still lack clear guidance from the Treasury Department. Khan described the environment as "almost manufactured for confusion," with industry participants consulting law firms to understand compliance requirements. Girouard found February's interim guidance helpful for material cost ratios but said "the lack of guidance regarding the effective control rules continues to be challenging for the renewable energy industry." The bottom line: ratepayers should expect higher electricity costs from new wind and solar projects in the coming years, but the industry's massive pipeline of safe-harbored projects will cushion the transition while storage and other technologies pick up the slack.