Form Energy’s site in Hancock County is shown during a livestream of its Sept. 12, 2024 celebration of completing construction and beginning trial production.
Then-West Virginia Economic Development Secretary Mitch Carmichael addresses the West Virginia Joint Commission on Economic Development during an April 24, 2022 legislative meeting.
Form Energy’s site in Hancock County is shown during a livestream of its Sept. 12, 2024 celebration of completing construction and beginning trial production.
Then-West Virginia Economic Development Secretary Mitch Carmichael addresses the West Virginia Joint Commission on Economic Development during an April 24, 2022 legislative meeting.
Form Energy’s site in Hancock County is shown during a livestream of its Sept. 12, 2024 celebration of completing construction and beginning trial production.
Before One Big, Beautiful Bill, there was Beautiful China.
The Communist Party of China Central Committee and State Council's “Beautiful China” plan, issued last year, set a whole-of-the-economy approach to environmental objectives, including a target of electric vehicles making up 45% of new car sales by 2027 and a framework for recycling power batteries and solar and wind equipment waste.
“Beautiful China” was just another step up in the nation’s ascent to energy dominance this century. That rise has been propelled by China’s long-term policy support for electric vehicles and an embrace of renewable electricity that has cornered the green power supply chain market and jeopardized U.S. energy and national security.
China’s share of electricity-powered vehicles likely already crossed its “Beautiful” threshold just a few months after that plan was issued, supported by purchase subsidies for electric vehicle manufacturers, a sales tax exemption and a trade-in subsidy sufficient to replace 2 million qualifying vehicles, per an April 2025 analysis from Oxford Institute for Energy Studies researchers.
“NEVs [new energy vehicles] are not seen as merely a strategy for dominating car manufacturing, improving air quality or lowering oil consumption — the original motivations for China’s NEV policies,” the researchers wrote. “Rather, today the sophisticated onboard electronics, autonomous driving capabilities and digitized charging infrastructure of NEVs are all viewed as elements of China’s strategy for upgrading its economy and taking a leading spot at the technology frontier.”
Electric vehicles are just one component in China’s massive renewable energy buildout. China is by far the world’s largest single investor in energy, spending almost as much as the United States and European Union combined, according to the International Energy Agency.
But the rest of the collective globe is accelerating a shift toward electrification, too.
The IEA said this month that investment in “clean technologies” — electrification, efficiency, renewables, nuclear, grids, storage and low-emissions fuels — is on course to hit a record $2.2 trillion this year, doubling investment in oil, gas and coal.
A decade ago, investments in fossil fuel supply were 30% higher than those in electricity generation, grids and storage, according to the IEA. But this year, the IEA says electricity investments are set to be some 50% higher than the total amount being spent on bringing oil, gas and coal to market.
“Today’s investment trends clearly show a new Age of Electricity is drawing nearer,” the IEA said in a June 5 brief.
Electrification momentum threatened
Industrial electrification means green not just environmentally, but economically, creating jobs from in new electrified equipment setup, offering worker health benefits and providing more efficient energy.
Its benefits include increased productivity, reduced liability and insurance premiums, less exposure to fuel price volatility, lower waste disposal fees and reduced or no exhaust treatment, noted a report on electrification published this month by San Francisco-based climate policy firm Energy Innovation.
The U.S. moved to keep up with China’s electrification rush in 2022 through the Inflation Reduction Act, landmark legislation made law by a Democratic-controlled Congress with no Republican support creating and extending wide-ranging tax credits for renewable energy investments and production.
The IRA mimicked what China did over a decade before by using demand- and supply-side subsidies and government support to build a supply chain, researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy noted in a 2023 analysis.
The researchers noted the IRA’s impact so far had been on the U.S. battery cost curve and announced battery cell supply to 2030, already making headway in onshoring cell supply and creating competition among U.S. free trade partners to localize their supply chains.
By September 2023, 13 months after the IRA was signed into law, $110 billion in clean energy investments had been announced, with over $70 billion set aside for the U.S. battery supply chain.
2023 brought energy storage technology and manufacturing company Form Energy to West Virginia, with state officials approving a $290 million financial package to help secure the company’s setup in Weirton.
Form Energy plans to commercialize a battery that can economically store electricity for 100 hours at its first commercial-scale battery-making facility, where the company told the Gazette-Mail last month over 400 people are working on advancing energy storage technology.
If successful, Form Energy’s battery technology could be an energy game-changer. The company’s iron-air design would be ideal for stationary energy storage since iron-air batteries are more durable and significantly less expensive than lithium-ion batteries.
China has dominated battery mineral production, domestically producing approximately 18% of the world’s mined lithium in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But U.S. battery technology was “well positioned to leap ahead” last year, per a September 2024 analysis by Milo McBride, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a globally focused policy group in Washington.
McBride cited an estimate that Chinese industry was expected to control only a third of next-generation battery technologies by 2030, an opening to grow U.S. market share of new battery chemistries.
“I think the most likely path for the United States to leapfrog China is with new technologies, such as Form Energy’s iron-air battery,” economics-focused New York Times Opinion section writer Peter Coy wrote in a September 2024 piece.
Sweeping tax credit cuts in Senate reconciliation bill
But the Trump administration and the current Republican-majority Congress have made it clear they’re not in the electrification business.
Last month, the House of Representatives passed its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a Trump-backed budget reconciliation bill that would curtail a broad array of tax credits that have spurred U.S. electrification growth. In a mostly party-line 215-214 vote, the bill drew key support from Reps. Carol Miller and Riley Moore, both R-W.Va., the latter hailing the bill as a blow to the “Green New Scam.”
The budget reconciliation framework now is under consideration in the Senate. Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, on Monday released text of the bill covering the committee’s jurisdiction largely in line with the House-approved version.
The Senate Finance Committee bill text, if approved, would:
End clean electricity production and investment tax credits by 2028 for solar and wind technologies, moving up the date for beginning their phaseouts from 2032 to 2026
Phase out a manufacturing production tax credit for critical minerals that had been permanent, starting in 2031
Restricting production tax credit access for battery and other advanced manufacturing components that get “material assistance” from prohibited foreign entities
China would be a prohibited foreign entity, a designation effectively blocking the tax credit for most energy storage projects since China is the chief importer of energy storage materials and components to the U.S.
Partners in the Houston-headquartered law firm Vinson & Elkins predicted in an analysis published Wednesday the bill’s provisions on “prohibited foreign entities” would “create lots of work for energy industry tax lawyers, administrative headaches for everyone involved, and inadvertent denial of credits to U.S. taxpayers.”
The Senate Finance Committee text also would terminate tax credits for previously owned and new clean vehicles, as well as household energy efficiency improvements and residential expenses for battery storage, solar electric, solar water heating, fuel cell, small wind and geothermal heat pump properties.
The House and Senate budget proposals build on Environmental Protection Agency plans under President Donald Trump to eliminate greenhouse gas standards that help incentivize sales of electric vehicles and other electrified products.
The proposals also follow Congress’ move — supported by all four members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation — to block California from setting vehicle emission standards stronger than federal standards, including a rule to require new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
The IEA has predicted the U.S. ending clean vehicle tax credits would dampen electric vehicle sales.
The BlueGreen Alliance, a national coalition of labor unions and environmental groups, has estimated nearly 300,000 direct manufacturing jobs in facilities supported by clean manufacturing tax credits would be threatened if the budget reconciliation bill as passed by the House becomes law, as well as over 1 million indirect jobs down the supply chain.
“[I]f this bill becomes law, workers are the ones who will pay the price,” BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director Jason Walsh said in a statement.
There’s evidence the lockstep march between Congress and the Trump administration toward repealing energy tax credits already is having a chilling effect.
In April alone, companies canceled $4.5 billion in investments in new battery, electric vehicle and wind projects, according to E2, a national, nonpartisan economic and environmental advocacy group of business leaders, investors and other professionals.
Businesses canceled or delayed more than $14 billion in investments and 10,000 new jobs in clean energy and clean vehicle factories since January, E2 found late last month.
“Businesses are now counting on Congress to come to its senses and stop this costly attack on an industry that is essential to meeting America’s growing energy demand,” E2 Communications Director Michael Timberlake said in a statement.
Form Energy CEO calls tax credits 'essential'
Then-West Virginia Economic Development Secretary Mitch Carmichael addresses the West Virginia Joint Commission on Economic Development during an April 24, 2022 legislative meeting.
Mitch Carmichael — former West Virginia Department of Economic Development secretary under then-Gov. Jim Justice — has been pushing for the preservation of energy tax credits as executive director of Built for America, a recently launched advocacy group whose website says the credits “give us the edge in batteries, semiconductors, nuclear, and geothermal — critical industries we can’t afford to lose.”
“If we repeal, China wins,” the website’s homepage says. “If we keep, America wins,” before calling on Trump to “[p]rotect the credits that are building a stronger America.”
Carmichael led the Department of Economic Development when it struck the economic package deal that helped secure Form Energy’s Weirton operation and required the creation of 750 jobs within five years.
Mateo Jaramillo, cofounder and CEO of Form Energy, said in an emailed statement to the Gazette-Mail last month the company opposed rollbacks proposed in the budget reconciliation package. Jaramillo called energy tax credits “essential to rebuilding American manufacturing, enhancing our energy reliability and security, and ensuring the United States remains competitive in the global economy."
Jaramillo indicated more than 400 people were working on advancing energy storage technology at Form Energy’s facility on a 55-acre site where Weirton Steel once employed some 12,000 workers — and that rolling back energy tax credits would undermine the company’s progress.
China electrification cutting U.S. energy demand
The U.S. became the world’s largest producer of natural gas in 2011 and of oil in 2018, and the Trump administration has looked to boost the nation’s oil and gas production by targeting potential supply restrictions.
But global demand may not live up to the Trump administration’s ambitions.
The IEA and other forecasters have projected oil demand will peak by 2030, with the IEA predicting demand for oil from combustible fossil fuels — excluding petrochemical feedstocks and biofuels — may peak as early as 2027.
A key factor in setting up a looming oil demand plateau, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace researchers said in a February 2025 analysis, is China’s transition to electric vehicles.
Chinese electric vehicles also are being sold in “staggering amounts” in emerging and developing markets, from Brazil to Ethiopia, the researchers noted.
Developing countries also have been importing record numbers of Chinese solar panels.
Meanwhile, a gas turbine shortage has slowed new gas plant production, dampening the outlook for meeting rising demand from data centers.
“It’s a stark reminder that while natural gas may offer a faster path to power on paper, the real-world logistics tell a different story,” Nina Dale, head of operations at CRE Daily, a Miami-based commercial real estate news website, said in a March 2025 analysis.
'Take a sensible path'
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., speaks on a May 22, 2025, call with reporters.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., spoke in favor of a “better transition” for some energy tax credits, including for hydrogen production, in a call with reporters last week, also signaling support for ensuring Form Energy could benefit from an advanced manufacturing production tax credit the Senate Finance bill text would significantly weaken.
But the tax credits appear more squarely on the chopping block than some previously thought after the House rolled them back more thoroughly than expected.
Capito was among the most vocal supporters of Congress blocking California from setting vehicle emission standards stronger than federal standards.
It was California’s zero-emission vehicle policy after which China partially modeled a new vehicle credit program it adopted in 2018.
“We urge Congress to take a sensible path on energy tax credits,” Jaramillo said, “and stand behind the communities, workers and businesses driving America’s advanced manufacturing future.”
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