Four Republican insiders and a senior Washington energy policy analyst talked at our 33rd annual energy finance conference in June about what is likely to happen to the Inflation Reduction Act and on other key policy issues if Donald Trump is elected US president in November. The following is an edited transcript.

The five are Michael Catanzaro, president of the high-powered Republican lobbying shop CGCN Group and former White House special assistant for domestic energy and environmental policy during the Trump first term, Kellie Donnelly, executive vice president and general counsel of Republican lobbying shop Lot Sixteen and former long-time Republican chief counsel to the Senate Energy Committee, John Gimigliano, principal-in-charge of federal legislative and regulatory services for KPMG in Washington and a former Republican tax counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee, Mike McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, former deputy assistant to President Trump for legislative affairs and head of the transition team for the US Department of Energy during the Trump first term, and Whitney Stanco, a Washington-based senior energy analyst with Compass Point Research and Trading, LLC. The moderator is Elizabeth Sluder with Norton Rose Fulbright in Los Angeles.

IRA Outlook

MS. SLUDER: We have a lot to cover in a very short amount of time, so we will break the discussion into three basic parts.

We will talk first about how much of existing energy policy a Trump administration can expect to leave in place. We will talk next about what he might institute as new policy. Then we will leave a pretty substantial amount of time at the end to cover any audience questions.

Whitney Stanco, the Inflation Reduction Act is the current policy. Trump has said that he will repeal it as a day-one action. How much of it do you expect to remain in place?

MS. STANCO:  An IRA repeal is not what is likely to happen. No matter who wins in November, Congress will have to deal with the fact that the Trump tax cuts for individuals that were enacted in 2017 are set to expire at the end of 2025.

If there is a Republican sweep, Congress will look to terminate parts of the IRA to pay the 2017 tax cut extensions, but parts will survive. Tax credits for electric vehicles are probably at the greatest risk. The long-term extensions of tax credits for generating renewable energy from wind and solar in particular are probably also at risk. Historically, what tends to happen is Congress phases out provisions it doesn’t like or makes other modifications rather than does a full repeal.

Other tax credits like for producing hydrogen and to encourage domestic manufacturing enjoy bi-partisan support.

MS. SLUDER:  Kellie Donnelly, let’s move to you next. What is your expectation?

MS. DONNELLY:  The IRA is law, so to repeal it, you would have to pass another law. It was originally enacted via budget reconciliation without any Republican support. The IRA has led to more investment in Republican red states than in blue states. I think some members are starting to appreciate that.

I think Whitney is right that the EV tax credit in particular is on the chopping block should Trump win a presidency again. But some Republicans would like to see other provisions retained. We saw that just this week at an energy forum here in Washington where Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who is a very conservative member from North Dakota, said that he would not favor peeling back the entire IRA.

The main thing to keep in mind is that if Trump does win, next year should be a very big tax year with expiration of the 2017 tax cuts. I agree that you could see Congress clawing back some of the IRA to help pay for a new tax bill. Whitney mentioned hydrogen tax credits. I think if Trump does come in, that might be one of the ones that he will want to keep, but he will want to make the three pillars more workable for industry so that we will actually see some projects advance.

MS. SLUDER:  Michael Catanzaro, you are next.

MR. CATANZARO:  Let me address a canard that is often spoken here in in Washington, which is that a lot of the investment under the Inflation Reduction Act is being done in red states and red districts. If you go to the American Clean Power Association website, you see announced projects all over the country, which is great. They are announced projects. An announced project is not a built project. Part of the reason you only have announced projects in many places is the permitting process is such a disaster. The Biden administration has made the permitting delays worse with various rules and regulations and other guidance that it has put out.

Just because you have projects being announced in red states does not mean that Republicans will have a hard time repealing large parts of the IRA.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that extending the 2017 tax cuts will cost $4.3 trillion.

Republicans are going to be looking under the cushions to find offsets to pay for the extension as much as they possibly can. The IRA is a pretty big potential source of revenue.

I concede that there are tax credits that have pretty powerful constituencies in Congress. For example, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) is a big supporter of section 45Q tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration as is Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). Barrasso will be in the Republican leadership next year. Capito will be chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

But other parts of the IRA are absolutely going to be clawed back. They include large parts of the spending components — the grants and loan guarantees. A lot of that has been obligated, but not yet spent. You will see a lot of that as well as the bi-partisan infrastructure law and CHIPS Act clawed back. Only about 17% of the $1.2 trillion that were obligated in those bills has been spent to date.

MS. SLUDER:  Mike McKenna, you are next please.

MR. MCKENNA:  I agree with most of what has been said, but let me add two things.

President Trump has been pretty clear about what he wants to do. He wants to pull out the IRA root and branch and throw it in the river somewhere. He is going to try his level best.

The other thing to note is it’s not just a matter of the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts or the flawed IRA scoring. The original cost estimate for the IRA was something like $366 billion over 10 years. The latest estimate is around $1.6 trillion. We are also going to be dealing with the debt ceiling straight out of the gate in January next year.

Republicans will have at least two chances at passing  budget reconciliation bills by simple majority vote. A new administration would also have an opportunity to rewrite all of the guidance the Biden administration has issued to implement the IRA.

I want you to think  about what a Trump administration could write in the domestic content guidance, for example. Don’t think anything is safe.

2025 Tax Debate

MS. SLUDER:  You teed up my next question. We just spent a little time on what could be on the chopping block. What are things that might be preserved?  Let’s take this one in reverse chronological order, starting with John Gimigliano.

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  I can’t begin to express the joy and satisfaction it gives a tax person like me, who spends every day thinking about 2025 and how this is going to go, to hear my colleagues talk about tax code sections. I even heard references to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

I agree with everything that has been said. Michael Catanzaro, you absolutely nailed it. I think it is false hope to assume that the number of potential investments in Republican states will act as a firewall against repeal. There may be some reluctance, but remember that you are forcing Republicans to decide between raising taxes on millions of individuals, including middle-income folks, and repealing incentives for a handful of energy projects in their states or districts.

They are not necessarily vindictively looking to take away tax credits from those energy projects, but given the choice, I can tell you legislators will come down on the side of where they think the voters are. The choices here are so stark, and the numbers are so overwhelming, that I agree that they are going to be looking for every possible way to raise revenue.

However, having said that, a full-scale repeal of the IRA is not going to happen. Congress rarely does that. It is going to be more surgical in the end. It will be a revenue-driven exercise. There are opportunities to work within some of the provisions to scale them back to raise revenue.

As for things that I think are likely to survive, I agree with the list that was given earlier. Carbon sequestration, hydrogen, alternative fuels and manufacturing subsidies are things that in some form Republicans could rally around and try to preserve.

There is a meaningful risk to some of the other provisions.

This discussion assumes that there is a Republican trifecta in November: Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of both the House and Senate.

But even in a divided scenario, it is not out of the question that even Democrats would negotiate around partial scaling back of the provisions. You might say: “No, never, they would never do that.”  But remember, we have a recent precedent. The Democrats provided the IRS with $80 billion of new funding in the Inflation Reduction Act, and in the first negotiation that Republicans and Democrats got into after the IRA on the debt limit, Democrats agreed to chop off $20 billion of that $80 million in funding.

I am not here to frighten all of you. I am just saying that this is going to be a negotiation that will last all through 2025. Some scaling back is inevitable because even Democrats are not going to let all $4 trillion of tax cuts expire.

MS. SLUDER:  To the other panelists, do you have any other items that you would add to the list that are likely to be preserved by a Trump administration?

MS. STANCO:  One of the things that we highlight to clients is the bi-partisan anti-China sentiment that you could foresee being added to some of these tax credits to reduce the cost. If you think about the solar ITC, for example, that is quite expensive to the Treasury. If you added foreign entity of concern language, you could probably significantly reduce the cost of the ITC to the Treasury. Instead of elimination, what about modification to try to get some savings?

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  I just want to add that in the scenario where you do not have a Republican trifecta — President Trump wins the White House, but Republicans do not control both houses of Congress — you would be dealing with the Treasury Department that put out both proposed and final regulations. A Trump Treasury would want to review everything that the Biden Treasury did, but it would have to go through a notice and comment process to undo a regulation. That would take time.

Those regulations and even other guidance documents would qualify as rules under the Congressional Review Act. Recall that in the 115th Congress in 2017, the Republicans with President Trump used the Congressional Review Act 16 times to roll back Obama actions. Republicans will be eager to find ways to use it again. Some of the guidance documents and final regulations issued to implement the IRA could become the focus for a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval.

MS. SLUDER:  No one has raised direct pay yet. Is there life for direct pay in a Trump administration?

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  That is one of the provisions, including transferability, that they could scale back or eliminate as a revenue-raising provision in the scalpel scenario where Congress does not do a full repeal of the IRA.

Tariffs

MS. SLUDER:  We have lot to cover, so I am going to move off the IRA to trade policy. The Biden administration has been all over the spectrum when it comes to trade policy. It put a two-year moratorium on collection of ant-circumvention duties for Chinese-branded solar panels imported via Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. It left other duties in place, like the section 201 tariffs on solar panels from all sources, but at a lower rate. There is a new anti-circumvention case in the works at the Commerce Department.

What do you expect from Trump on trade?  Kellie Donnelly?

MS. DONNELLY:  A lot. He was very active on trade issues, including putting on the solar tariffs that the Biden administration continued. The Biden administration has now taken away the bifacial exclusion. Trump tried to remove it when he was still in office. He has threatened to increase tariffs by as much as 100% on Chinese goods and 200% on Chinese electric vehicles. There will be a lot from a Trump 2.0 administration on trade.

MS. SLUDER:  Mike McKenna, any thoughts?

MR. MCKENNA:  I agree with that. Trump will be pretty aggressive. The US Trade Representative will be somebody who looks a lot like Bob Lighthizer, even if it is not necessarily Bob.

The US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement is up for renegotiation almost right away. It pops in 2026. There is the issue of trans-shipments of Chinese vehicle production in Mexico that will be addressed in those negotiations, if not before.

A more general observation is what the Supreme Court decides in the Loper Bright case on Chevron deference could affect the president’s power to act on trade. Presidential discretion with respect to tariffs might get ratcheted back a bit.

Government by Pendulum

MS. SLUDER:  Let’s talk about what to anticipate on day one and what would come later. I am interested in timing.

MS. STANCO:  For day-one actions, I expect something similar to what we saw in the first Trump term. You could see the end of the LNG export review and the issuance of permits for outstanding LNG export terminals. You could see instructions to the Treasury Department to begin looking at things like domestic content and changing the guidance.

One of the things maybe we should worry about on the Congressional Review Act front is the final section 45Y and 48E regulations that are expected before the election.

Hydrogen has been mentioned. You could definitely see an effort to get rid of the three pillars in order to make that tax credit function more to industry’s liking.

Those are all potential day-one actions. On day one in the first Trump term, we got Keystone XL. We can’t bring that back. I think that is dead at this point.

MS. SLUDER:  John Gimigliano, do you have a different opinion?

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  Let me just say as a legislative branch person, with all due respect to the executive branch folks here, a legislative action is always superior to executive branch action because it will be credited with raising revenue. Congress will be looking everywhere for money to deal with a $4+ trillion problem that we have in 2025, so any modification of the law could raise revenue, whereas an executive action on the regulatory front would not help with that.

Having said that, the Treasury is sure to look at some of the tax guidance around the IRA. It could revisit some of that guidance. I expect a review on day one because we know that is what happened in 2017 during the start of the Trump first term.

MS. SLUDER:  Do other panelists have other views?

MR. MCKENNA:  Day one, you are going to have some sort of stop-spending-the-money order.

MS. DONNELLY:  I agree. He will do what President Biden did when he came in by issuing an executive order on the first day telling federal agencies to hold off on all their rulemaking. Any rulemakings still awaiting publication in the Federal Register will be clawed back. They will take a look at everything else to determine what they want to rewrite or redo. The Trump administration can be expected to drop any defense of the Biden administration’s regulations in litigation.

MR. CATANZARO:  If you want a framework, go back to March 2017, Executive Order 13783 promoting energy independence and economic growth. Section 1, clauses A through E, lay out clearly what President Trump’s policies are with respect to energy. Just plug into that all the new stuff that has happened under Biden. There will be an across-the-board review of all the actions that have occurred over the last four years in an attempt to rescind basically all of them.

We have government by pendulum where one administration does something and next administration tries to undo it all.

MR. MCKENNA:  Let me build on what Mike just said about the pendulum. I am skeptical about day one, but in the first 30 days, do not be amazed if there is talk about withdrawing again from the Paris climate change treaty.

MS. SLUDER:  If Trump is reelected, we have his game plan from 2016. Will he just pick up from where he left off with more of the same, or do you expect new policies?

MR. CATANZARO:  It is basically going to be more of the same. If you want a good sense of where President Trump 2.0 will be on energy policy, go back to May and September 2016, where the president gave two very significant energy policy speeches, one in North Dakota and the other in Pennsylvania.

He laid out a clear vision for promoting energy independence. We have vast natural resources: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, renewables. He is for all of it and for getting rid of any unnecessary regulations that are getting in the way of development. That is pretty basic.

I agree with Mike. I think there will be another attempt to withdraw from the Paris treaty. You could see an attempt to get out of the framework convention entirely, which would be an even more dramatic step.

Energy Independence

MS. SLUDER:  Mike McKenna, what would a policy around energy independence look like?

MR. MCKENNA:  The first thing is you go back through everything the Biden administration has done to complicate investment in oil and gas because that is the real problem. You look at the lease sales because that is one of the few things the federal government can do to expand production. Look for an effort to expand lease sales, including in the Gulf of Mexico. I would not be surprised if we revisit the Willow decision. Try to expand mining.

I know I am going to get a question about the social cost of carbon, so let me answer it. The social cost of carbon will be set at something like $3 to $8. That is a far cry from where the Biden team has it at $147. Picking up on Mike’s pendulum point, Team Trump will set it at $6 and Team Gavin Newsom will set it at back to $400 five years from now.

MS. SLUDER:  Kellie Donnelly, do you see energy independence as the top priority or are there other priorities that you think a Trump administration would pursue?

MS. DONNELLY:  Energy independence is going to be the most important thing. Mike is right. Trump will be looking at increased domestic production of both oil and gas. One thing in the Inflation Reduction Act that people forget is that Senator Manchin insisted ahead of the final vote on tying further leasing of both onshore and offshore wind sites to allowing more leasing for domestic oil and gas production. That is current law.

One of the things that it will be interesting to watch in Trump 2.0 is what happens with offshore wind. He has been very vocal in his opposition to offshore wind. There is a lot that he can do through the Department of the Interior on permitting, siting and leasing to slow down offshore wind on the US outer continental shelf.

MS. SLUDER:  Whitney, what do you think is coming next?

MS. STANCO:  We don’t know what the fundamental picture will look like next year when any policy decisions will be made. Will power prices be increasing in certain parts of the country because of AI demand?  Rising power prices affect voters and will affect the policy choices of a new administration, even if it takes office on a platform of getting rid of subsidies for renewable energy production.

A similar thing could happen if oil prices fall materially in a way that we are not expecting and suddenly the oil industry is looking for support instead of asking the government merely to get out of the way.  That could lead to the federal government buying oil for the strategic petroleum reserve to help stabilize oil prices.

MS. SLUDER:  John, any thoughts?

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  I agree that the fundamental picture is important, but the federal budget is so tight that I don’t see a Republican Congress moving to replace renewable energy subsidies with new subsidies for oil and gas activity.

I think it will be more of a regulatory rollback to let the private sector act as it would without any new constraints that the Biden administration placed on the sector.

MS. SLUDER:  Trump did not mention renewables in his America First energy policy heading into his first term. Do you expect him to have a stated policy on renewables or will he just try to level the playing field by removing the tax credits?

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  I do not expect all the tax credits to be removed. We already talked about which ones are likely to remain and, depending on conditions in the electricity sector, we could even see some of the more classic wind and solar tax credits survive in some context.

I don’t see a new Trump administration coming out with a specific renewables policy. I also don’t see it aggressively looking to kill the renewables sector either. If there is a rolling back of tax credits, it will be to help achieve other policy goals like paying for extending the expiring 2017 tax cuts. I am curious to hear what others think.

MR. CATANZARO:  I agree. President Trump does have a particular distaste for wind that he has expressed many times. I think he called it an environmental and aesthetic disaster on multiple occasions.

The overall approach will be to remove regulatory barriers across the board and let the market decide what sort of energy should be produced. However, the president’s distaste for wind could filter down into decision making in key places like the Department of the Interior and other federal agencies.

Transition Relief?

MS. SLUDER:  Audience, I have one more series of questions and then will open the floor to questions.

Project developers have been making decisions and committing to projects based on current policy. Kellie Donnelly, if the policy changes, do you expect any sort of transition relief?

MS. DONNELLY:  Congress will have to address what is an appropriate transition period in the event there is a rollback of any existing incentives. It depends on what is being rolled back and how it is done.

We already talked about how use of the budget reconciliation process to change current law and the Congressional Review Act to roll back recent agency guidance only work when the same party is in control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  I don’t want people to sleep on the thought that unless Republicans end up in control of all three, nothing happens. We could have some scaling back of tax credits even with control split between the parties. Both parties will be under pressure next year to deal with the expiring tax cuts.

MS. SLUDER:  Any other thoughts on how developers can protect themselves against a significant policy shift?

MR. MCKENNA:  I don’t want to hurt John’s feelings, but tax writers hate taking away people’s candy.

MR GIMIGLIANO:  Good point. Even Republicans who are actively looking to repeal some of these provisions are reluctant to be accused of a retroactive tax increase. That is something that is anathema to almost all tax writers. The lobbying on transition rules will be unbelievably intense.

Audience Questions

MS. SLUDER:  Let’s open it up to audience questions.

MR. SMITH:  Kevin Smith, CEO at Arevon Energy. There are tens of billions of dollars in projects that have either been completed or are in construction in dozens of red states. There are new factories under development or construction in places like Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona. There are lots of new power projects under development or under construction in places like Louisiana, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana. The list of states is long.

It is not just the dollars that have already been spent on development or construction that are at stake in anticipation of qualifying for the incentives, but also thousands of jobs are at stake to manufacture the equipment, build the projects and work in the new factories. Is that message being missed?

MR. CATANZARO:  I think it is. You threw out some interesting statistics, but the legislators we talk to on Capitol Hill are not feeling it. Lots of projects have been announced. In some cases, construction is underway.

Who are the legislators going to side with at the end of the day?  Will they talk about a green energy project or about the much bigger pool of voters who are going to benefit from extending the 2017 tax cuts?  If you are a member of Congress, President Trump is barnstorming the country and going through your district and talking about extending his legacy —  the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — and getting rid of President Biden’s legacy.

That brings a political overlay into play for that individual member. It will make it very difficult for Republican members of Congress to side with green energy projects at the end of the day.

MR. WILLIAMS:  Mark Williams, managing director of the tax equity desk at PNC Bank. My question for the panelists is whether they agree or disagree that the United States is producing more oil and gas than ever before and we are exporting more fossil fuel than we import, which was not the case in 2016. Are we not more energy independent today than we were four years ago?

MR. MCKENNA:  What you said is correct, but the current administration has a fairly durable and successful campaign to reduce investment in oil and gas exploration and production, especially outside of Texas. The climate risk disclosure rule that the US Securities and Exchange Commission has been playing around with for more than two years is just part of that effort.

Let me build on something that Mike Catanzaro said. The simplest metric for whether members of Congress will vote for or against tax credits is not the number of investments in their districts, but whether they show up to the ribbon cuttings. As best that I have been able to track it, there are not a lot of Republican congressmen showing for these ribbon cuttings.

MS. DONNELLY:  I think the statistic about oil and gas production comes from activity on private lands as opposed to federal lands. This administration has made it very, very difficult to explore for oil and gas on federal lands. The Treasury is not getting the benefit of any money that could come in from such leases.

Don’t forget that this administration also put a pause on LNG exports. It did this while Ukraine is in the middle of a war with Russia. Our European allies need our gas. For whatever reason, we are putting our allies in a bind by holding off on exporting the gas they need to displace Russian gas.

MR. CATANZARO:  The oil export ban was removed in 2015, so that is not really an issue, but Kellie is right about the LNG export moratorium. To the extent we are exporting LNG today, those decisions were made during the Trump administration. To the extent that we are producing on federal lands, a lot of those leases were issued during the Trump administration. I hear your point, but there are countervailing facts to consider to see the full picture.

MS. MANDANAS:  Mary Beth Mandanas, CEO of Onyx Renewables. Any effort to promote economic development and growth in the United States requires an understanding of complicated electric utility regulation and tariffs. That structure was set almost 100 years ago. If Trump gets elected, why doesn’t his focus turn to how to accelerate growth by promoting all energy resources versus how can he confuse the market by making a 180-degree policy shift, which delays all growth investment?  Companies need consistency to invest.

MR. CATANZARO:  Consistency is great to an extent. If you have rules that are workable, that would be great, too. Each administration puts its imprint on policy. That has been true in Washington for decades. Surely by now the private sector factors the potential for such policy shifts into its decision making.

As John and Whitney said, legislation is far preferable for the reasons I think you are getting at, which is it is much more stable over time.

MR. CARSON:  John Carson, CEO of Cordelio Power. I’ll ask the wishful question of the day. Is there any chance that President Trump 2.0 decides that he wants to leave a little bit more unified country as his legacy?  Is there any chance that we’re going to move beyond entrenched divisions?  You all have worked closely with him or with people around him. Might we see some more unification than we did before?

MR. MCKENNA:  That question maybe should have been asked 10 days ago. [Editor’s note: the panel discussion took place 10 days after the guilty verdict in the New York hush money trial.]  In every war, both sides are partially responsible, but Team Biden is going to make it very difficult. They identify themselves as defending democracy and label everyone who plans to vote against them as attackers of democracy. The ground has been laid for division.

MR. TONDU:  Joe Tondu, CEO of Tondu Corporation. Do you think there is any chance that a new administration could address all of the roadblocks in permitting?  I am involved in carbon capture right now, and it is taking between four and five years to get a class VI well permitted. If you are going for any kind of government funding, you are stuck having to get a full environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. That’s almost an infinite time frame. Is there any chance that the government could address those issues?

MS. STANCO:  I have a view on that. I actually think the best scenario for permitting reform is Biden wins. Democrats retake the House. Republicans have the Senate. The House sends over a permitting reform bill, and the Senate makes it more conservative and gets it to the president’s desk. I think that is the best scenario for broad permitting reform.

If you are focused solely on carbon capture and sequestration permits, a Trump administration is probably more favorable in that scenario to try to get the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward on class VI injection well permits or expedite the process to have a state like Texas take primacy. Louisiana has already been given primacy. North Dakota has it at least on that particular item.

MR. CATANZARO:  I agree with that. I think industry will go to the Trump administration to get individual permits and, once they have their individual permits, their desire for broader permitting reform will diminish.

You cannot have real permitting reform without also tackling judicial reform. The courts are the source of so much inconsistency. The goal should be to keep project developers out of court. To the extent that activists can continue to tie up projects in court over and over again under various statutes, that has to be addressed. I do not see the appetite to address it currently on Capitol Hill.

MS. DONNELLY:  My old committee, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, continues to work on bipartisan permitting reform. This Congress is not over. It is a heavy lift, but I still think there is a shot in any lame duck session after the November election.

I know the committee wants to do something on judicial reform. It will not address NEPA because NEPA is not within the committee’s jurisdiction, but they could probably do some judicial reform for certain categories of projects.

If Trump is elected, look for a redo of the NEPA regulations the Biden administration issues. Congressional Republicans had issues with how the Biden administration implemented that legislation.

MR. RIKLIN:  Seth Riklin, CEO of Hill Country Wind Power in Texas. We are a very red state with a very red governor who has been doing everything he can to build more natural gas generation as quickly as possible.

My concern is that banks hate uncertainty, and shifts every four years in the direction of US energy policy make it very challenging to build the new power plants that the country needs to supply electricity.  We are already seeing a dramatic problem in Texas in that we are short of generation. We are in danger of having rolling blackouts this summer. Power prices have doubled in Texas, residential prices are going up rapidly, and that is a tax on each voter.

Is there any concern about adding to business uncertainty and potentially wiping out projects on which people have been working for years before the projects can get across the finish line?

MS. DONNELLY:  I hear that message really strongly from the institutional investor community, and I think we are starting to see it communicated more on Capitol Hill. There have been two hearings now, one in the Senate and one in the House, on AI and power demand. The issues with electricity demand are starting to get the attention of Congress.

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  . . . as is the increased burden on utility ratepayers. I think there is a reasonable question whether it is a terrible thing if pulling back federal subsidies forces the ratepayers in a state to pay more for energy.

Shouldn’t it be a Texas question how much Texans should pay for power without having the federal government inject subsidies? I am not saying that is my view. I am just saying that is a reasonable question that people on Capitol Hill will ask about the long-term effect on power prices if the federal tax credits for renewable energy generation get pulled back.

MR. VITALE:  Salvo Vitale, US Wind. Trump has been pretty vocal against offshore wind. Do you think a Trump administration would take action to cancel projects that have already received their permits or will any action be focused on projects that have not yet received permits?

MS. DONNELLY:  The easiest approach would be to act prospectively to halt any leasing of new areas for offshore wind development. Projects that are still in the permitting process are going to have a very difficult time getting cross the finish line.

MR. GIMIGLIANO:  Don’t lose sight of transition rules. Keith Martin knows this subject better than anybody, but how we define what a good project is versus one that is not for purposes of grandfathering will be an important question. A vast number of tax rules exist around this. The lobbying around transition rules will be incredibly intense.

Would a permit or an announcement be enough to grandfather a project?  Normally a binding construction contract is required. Nobody knows the answer to that because they have not thought about it yet, but that will be a very hot topic next year if we get to the point where Congress is starting to consider rolling back incentives.