A Message from Acadia Center President, Daniel Sosland on the Passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill”

The so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is a direct attack on our clean energy future, public health, and the citizen input that is essential to a functioning democracy. By slashing clean energy investments and tax credits, it will raise consumer costs—hiking energy bills by $110 next year and $400 annually within five years—while killing jobs in renewable energy and forcing reliance on expensive, volatile fossil fuels. The bill will severely increase risks to the reliability of our power grid by kneecapping the very clean energy resources that are quickest to deploy, most cost effective, and just recently came to the rescue during a historic summer heat wave event. At the same time, it weakens air pollution controls, increasing asthma, heart disease, and premature deaths, all while cutting Medicaid funding, disproportionately harming low-wealth and communities of color. What’s more, it silences the public and limits scrutiny, allowing developers to short-cut environmental reviews and bypass community input while handing millions of acres of public lands to oil and gas companies. This bill isn’t just bad policy—it’s a giveaway to the most powerful at the expense of working families, public health, and the climate. It is a sad day in America when laws are enacted – by a single vote – to override the right to clean air, affordable energy, and a say in our future. Acadia Center is determined to make the case for a clean energy future, support state and community action, rebut false claims and document the damage done to clean air and energy affordability by this regressive legislation.