At the Climate Jobs Institute, we’ve been hearing the same urgent question: What will the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R.1) mean for Illinois? The answer: fewer jobs, higher household energy costs, and stalled clean energy development — threatening hard-earned gains from years of public and private investment.
Illinois has made major progress in clean energy with the state’s Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), supported by the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These policies sparked momentum across clean electricity, vehicle electrification, and manufacturing in Illinois. But H.R.1 risks unraveling this progress by rolling back critical tax incentives, stifling development, and injecting uncertainty into investment planning.
These rollbacks will threaten confidence in an already volatile clean energy economy.
We have looked at a number of economic analyses from researchers across the United States, and the projections are stark. According to Energy Innovation, Illinois could lose 21,000 potential jobs by 2030. By 2030, households could face average energy bill increases of $110 annually, rising to $180 by 2035.
Nationwide, the Princeton Zero Lab projects that the bill will lead to $500 billion less capital investment in electricity and clean fuels and a decrease in “clean energy generation in 2035 by more than 820 terawatt-hours — more than the entire contribution of nuclear or coal to our electricity supply today.”
With the changing tax credits, the Rhodium Group estimates that $522 billion in planned clean-energy investments are now at risk. More than $263 billion of this is wind, solar and energy storage facilities, while $110 billion of announced clean energy manufacturing is at risk. This will have direct implications for Illinois.
These changes have come at a time when electricity demand is increasing from data centers, onshoring manufacturing, and building and transportation electrification. The bill will make it more difficult to meet growing demand with low-cost renewables, leading to a 10-18% increase in consumer electricity rates by 2035, according to Energy Innovation.
Solar Industry
Illinois’ growing solar market and workforce – roughly 7,000 workers, according to the U.S. Energy Employment Report 2024 – are directly threatened.
H.R.1 shortens the timeline for the Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit (45Y) and Investment Tax Credit (48E) — previously extended through at least 2032 — now only available to projects that begin construction within 12 months of H.R.1’s enactment or are completed by 2027. This abrupt deadline leaves developers scrambling and investors hesitant. It creates renewed urgency to address project delays from interconnection queues, permitting, and lengthy application processes.
The rollback of residential solar tax credits (25D), which are now set to expire in 2026 instead of 2034, threatens further market disruption and consumer pullback.
According to Energy Innovation, the state could see 1.3 fewer gigawatts of new solar capacity by 2035, with thousands of solar jobs on the line. The actual impact will depend on the industry’s ability to pivot and the state’s ability to mitigate these impacts.
Wind Industry
Wind energy is also facing serious setbacks. H.R.1 shortens the timeline to take advantage of production and investment tax credits and adds tariffs and sourcing restrictions from “foreign entities of concern,” further limiting access to affordable turbine components. This is likely to stifle wind development in Illinois – around 2.7 fewer gigawatts of wind capacity is likely to be lost in Illinois by 2035, according to Energy Innovation.
Today, the US Department of Energy estimates that there are around 9,300 wind jobs in Illinois. With wind developers facing the dual challenge of condensed construction windows and increased costs, delays and cancellations are already likely. The policy changes will slow down new capacity and threaten labor demand and local tax revenues.
Clean Energy and EV Manufacturing
H.R.1 will also impact electric vehicle and battery manufacturing — sectors where Illinois has made recent major gains.
A year ago, Illinois appeared to be on its way to thousands of new EV facility jobs, but projects from Stellantis in Belvidere and Lion Electric in Joliet have already been cancelled. The early sunset of EV tax credits — new and used EV credits (30D and 25E) now expire in September 2025 — will likely impact investment in new EV facilities, as well as demand for EVs like those manufactured at the Rivian plant in Normal.
While most 45X manufacturing credits remain, sourcing restrictions and “foreign entity of concern” requirements could further threaten momentum on battery and component production. Without stable, long-term incentives, Illinois could miss out on next-generation battery plants, stalling its progress as a national clean manufacturing hub and endangering jobs tied to new federal contracts and programs.
What Illinois Must Do Next
Illinois is better positioned than many states. With CEJA as our foundation, Illinois offers solar, wind, and EV incentives that will buffer the federal impact and ensure that many clean energy projects can continue. The Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois Act (REV Illinois Act) can help bolster Illinois manufacturing in the electric vehicle and renewables sectors. Indeed, our policies may attract clean energy businesses and investors from less favorable states to Illinois.
Still, it is urgent that Illinois take steps to stabilize the clean energy economy and workforce.
First, Illinois must help solar and wind projects meet construction and energization deadlines to take advantage of the sunsetting federal tax credits. Now is the time to streamline application and permitting processes and put pressure on Regional Transmission Operators to speed up the interconnection queue.
Second, it is more important than ever that the new CEJA workforce and contractor programs coordinate with industry leaders, unions, and employers to align workforce supply with demand. Through CEJA, Illinois has made significant investments in building a clean energy workforce — particularly for individuals in disadvantaged communities and those reentering society after incarceration. But with the anticipated project losses, these programs will need to make sure that jobs are still available. CEJA administrators and grantees will need to coordinate with labor and industry to understand how they are responding to these changes. Workforce programs may need to adapt their training or offer different options to ensure that jobs people are counting on are within reach.
Over the next few years, the state has many options to address the impact of these federal rollbacks, from increasing state-level incentives to offering more financing and loan programs to offset the increased costs of clean energy projects. Solar companies may want to pivot to solar leases or diversify their offerings, perhaps by entering the growing energy storage sector. State agencies and municipalities will need to consider how to close funding gaps for affected projects to protect against layoffs and dislocation.
To avoid backsliding, Illinois will require leadership, creativity, and coordinated response from state lawmakers, communities, agencies, industry, and labor.
We’ll continue to track developments, share analysis, and uplift voices of affected people — but one thing is clear: we must act now to protect our clean energy future.