Indy Week by Chase Pellegrini de Paur

When Boviet Solar opened a new factory in Greenville this year, Will Etheridge, owner and CEO of Raleigh’s Southern Energy Management, was excited for his company to buy solar panels built in North Carolina and install them on North Carolina homes and businesses. Etheridge, who is from eastern North Carolina, called it an “American success story” in one of the most business-friendly states in the country.

Then President Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” changed everything.

“We switched from planning for [expansion] to planning for job protection and layoffs,” Etheridge told a roundtable hosted by Representative Deborah Ross in Garner last week. “Now I’m going to be laying off North Carolinians.”

That’s because Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill guts the tax credit programs that Democrats muscled through in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act paid 30 percent of renewable energy-related homeowner expenditures (including installation of solar panels, solar water heaters, and related battery storage technology), provided a tax credit for builders of energy efficient homes, and provided tax incentives for investments in clean energy.