President Trump's budget bill is making energy expensive again

By Jason Ludwigson

As a clean energy business leader, I’m concerned about the escalating energy costs hitting Americans nationwide.

I’ve led numerous projects that have helped balance demand from the energy grid and put cheap, clean energy up in southeast Minnesota communities.

We are now facing an energy crisis created by President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress. Despite repeated promises to lower prices, President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has repealed clean, affordable energy tax credits, a move that will raise energy prices and stifle innovation.

It didn’t have to be this way. A solution to meet increasing energy demand and lower energy rates was working—but now, we are experiencing what I call the Republican Rate Hike.

Since 2022, clean energy tax credits have created hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs and helped us meet the rising energy demands driven by extreme heat, AI, and data centers. This investment was the solution to rising prices.

The Republican bill that passed last year, however, is stalling clean energy production and canceling projects, costing America more than 80,000 clean energy jobs that have already been lost or delayed since Trump’s election. The majority of the 400,000 new clean energy jobs announced since August 2022 are in Republican congressional districts, yet these Republicans refused to stand up to their constituents in the process.

We are already seeing the consequences. Americans are getting hit with higher gas and electric bills: Nearly 60 electric and gas utilities are raising or trying to raise utility bills for 56.7 million electric customers and 26 million gas customers. In fact, rising electricity prices have outpaced inflation, increasing 10 percent since Trump took office.

One in every six U.S. households is behind on their electric or gas bills, and as of last March, customers owed gas and electric utilities more than $24 billion in late payments. A study from Energy Innovation projected that this tax bill alone could increase cumulative household energy costs by $170 billion from 2025 to 2034.

The problem is compounded by policies that are creating uncertainty and raising costs across all sectors. The fact is, oil and gas alone cannot meet the current demand. Solar, wind and battery storage accounted for over 90 percent of all new American energy supply in 2024. Despite the president’s plan to increase production, oil companies have stated they will not boost activities unless they can raise prices even higher.

The United States is now in an energy crisis that was completely avoidable. Imagine a climber nearing the top of a deep well, only for someone to cut the rope just as they are about to reach safety. Trump and congressional Republicans are the ones who cut the rope that was our only way out of this hole.

Clean energy companies will continue to do our part to power American innovation, but we need government leaders who recognize the growing energy crisis and take action to address it, rather than making it worse.

Clean energy is now the cheapest energy in the world. Leaning into clean energy means lowering energy bills faster.

Jason Ludwigson is a clean energy small business leader who has worked with large energy utilities, local governments and the private sector on clean energy and conservation projects across southeast Minnesota.
This column was originally published in the Minnesota Reformer www.minnesotareformer.com

Q1 2026