Conor Walsh

@conorwalsh.bsky.social

Columbia Business School Assistant Professor. Growth, firms, cities.

What does the GOP Megabill passed by the House this morning mean for the US energy transition, energy prices, emissions and the economy? REPEAT Project's new analysis has you covered. Read the new report or listen to our recent SHIFT KEY episode diving into the details. 🔗 ⤵️ 🔌💡

Cover of new REPEAT Project report, "A Fork In The Road: Impacts of Federal Policy Repeal On The U.S. Energy Transition."Summary
Full repeal of current federal energy and climate policies would:
• Increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 0.5 billion metric tons per year in 2030 and more than 1 billion
metric tons per year in 2035.
• Raise U.S. household and business energy expenditures by $25 billion annually in 2030 and over $50 billion
in 2035.
• Increase average U.S. household energy costs by roughly $100 to $160 per household per year in 2030 and roughly
$270 to $415 per household per year in 2035.
• Reduces cumulative capital investment in U.S. electricity and clean fuels production by $1 trillion from 2025-2035.
• Imperil a total of $522 billion in announced but pending investments in U.S. clean energy supply and manufacturing.
• Reduce annual sales of electric vehicles by roughly 40% in 2030 and end America’s battery manufacturing boom.
• Substantially slow electricity capacity additions, raising national average retail electricity rates and monthly
household electricity bills by about 9% in 2030 — and as much as 17% in some states (including TX, OK and PA).
• Kill off the nascent clean hydrogen, CO2 management, and nuclear power sectors.Graphic showing historical and modeled US greenhouse gas emissions, with substantial increase if current federal policies are repealed.Graphic showing modeled average household US energy costs, with substantial increase if current federal policies are repealed.

A typical photovoltaic module sold in 2024 was mono TOPCon with 22.7% efficiency, at a price below $0.10/W. A typical solar module sold in 2012 was multi AlBSF with efficiency of 15.4% and a price of about $0.87/W.

A chart from BloombergNEF showing average efficiency of commercial solar modules at end of year from 2012 to 2024. From 2012 two series are shown, for multicrystalline silicon and monocrystalline silicon. Both increase each year; the multi time series stops in 2022 (due to the product being essentially replaced by mono). The multi efficiency is 15.4% in 2012, and 17.6% in 2022; the mono efficiency is 15.8% in 2012 and 22.7% in 2024.

Here’s a crazy fact for you: Spain and Germany have now seen basically the exact same amount of economic growth post-2008. Would have been unthinkable to people during most of the 2010s. Spain has seen ~10 percentage points more cumulative growth since 2017.

A graph comparing Spanish and German gdp, which diverge in 2008 but reconverge between 2017-2024