Credits Shrink, Reactors Sprint: Model 2025 Like It’s 2030

Hi there,

Welcome to week 2 of the 9Zero Weekly Energy Briefing.

Capitol Hill advances the House’s One Big, Beautiful Bill with aggressive claw-backs on IRA credits, pushing every project onto a compressed clock while the Senate fills its red pens. Pair that with an Executive Order forcing the NRC to rule on new-reactor licenses within 18 months and you get a whiplash policy mix—fewer federal carrots for most renewables, but a green light for advanced nuclear. Meanwhile, DOE is tightening the screws on grant compliance, reallocating $365 M from Puerto Rico’s rooftop-solar pot to grid hardening, and Department of Interior quietly revived Equinor’s 2.1 GW Empire Wind.

Across the board, keep one eye on fast-evolving federal guidance, the other on execution risk: compliance, domestic-content, and anti-China provisions are no longer footnotes—they’re gating items.

🔦 Signals Worth Monitoring

📝 Founder Briefings

The One Big, Beautiful Bill Moves from House to Senate

The House-passed budget package confirms what we were seeing in last week’s assessment of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Founders should monitor this closely as the Senate marks up this bill - clean energy incentives still have a chance to survive given the number of senators from states benefiting from the IRA incentives.

What actually changes?

• Transferability & Foreign Entity: Several credits lose the “sell-your-credit” option, and the anti-China foreign-entity bar is reiterated across the board. You must meet the modified domestic content requirements.

• Clean electricity credits (45Y / 48E): Ramp down covered in last week’s newsletter holds — 80 % (2029), 60 % (2030), 40 % (2031), 0 % (2032)

• Hydrogen (45V): New facilities begun after 2025 get nothing.

• Manufacturing (45X): Similar to 45Y & 45E. Transferability dies after 2027 and China-linked inputs become disqualifying in 2027, not 2028.

• EV related credits: Repealed

• Rescinded GGRF Funds: Repealed. Though funds provided directly to the DOE through the IIJA and IRA will remain untouched.  

Where does the Senate stand?

The Senate is widely expected to modify the House's more aggressive cuts to clean energy credits, with industry representatives warning that the current provisions could jeopardize billions in investments and tens of thousands of jobs nationwide.

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Finance Committee overseeing the credits, indicated substantial changes are coming, stating: "We have a lot of work that we need to do on the timeline and scope of production and investment tax credits. Undoubtedly, there's going to be changes". Tillis expects "most, if not all, of the energy and manufacturing tax credit provisions to change".

Four key Republican senators - Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tillis (North Carolina), John Curtis (Utah), and Jerry Moran (Kansas) - sent a letter to party leadership in April warning against broadly dismantling the credits. They argued that removal of these credits could create "uncertainty" and harm "job creation in the energy sector and across our broader economy".

NRC Reform Executive Order – 18 Months to ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

On May 23, 2025 the White House signed executive orders intending to grow U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. Centre-piece: the NRC must decide on any new-reactor license within 18 months (12 months for renewals). Add fast-track for designs proven at DOE or DOD sites, high-volume modular approvals, and revised radiation limits. In theory — America’s slowest energy gatekeeper just got a Formula-1 engine—on paper.

But it may not all be good.

Five minefields set by the new Executive Order

1. Capacity bottlenecks: NRC staff cuts could counter-act the 18-month clock; reducing staff and asking for a major culture and efficiency shift tend not to go hand in hand.

2. Legal whiplash: Groups may to sue over White-House interference with the NRC. The fear is undermining the NRC's reputation as "an independent agency free of industry and political influence”.

3. Export credibility discount: Speculative — If allies doubt a politicized NRC, U.S. designs need duplicate reviews abroad.

4. Economics still the big issue: NuScale’s CFPP cancellation shows FOAK sticker shock is alive and well. Nuclear tax credits are more favorable in comparison to the other modifications to the IRA under the house passed bill, so that may help.

5. Reductions in radiation minimums: “…adopting science-based radiation limits, instead of relying on flawed radiation exposure models”. There is concern this may lead to companies reducing their safety investments in these reactors. One misstep by a company under-investing in safety can set the industry back once more.

What we see coming: Big utilities (Constellation, Southern) will accelerate uprates and SMR follow-ons. Networked start-ups (Oklo, Valar) are front-runners for pilot money; new entrants most likely will need to differentiate on niche use-cases (industrial heat, desalination, remote mining). The quadruple growth (400 GW Target by 2050) sought by this executive order may spark the development of nuclear reactors in America…something we haven’t seen in decades.

Founders who treat the executive order as a green light to chase opportunities and over-invest in risk management will likely see success.

📒 Founder Playbook and Takeaways

1. (Bill) Accelerate or Re-price: Act as if 2025-26 is the new 2030 for IRA-linked economics.

2. (Bill) Engage Senators Now

3. (NRC) Application-ready culture: Under a shot-clock the penalty for sloppy paperwork is rejection, not revision.

4. (NRC) Design past the minimum: Meet conservative radiation limits anyway; hedge against court reversals and aid exports.

5. (NRC) Two-step licensing: Build a DOE/DOD prototype first, then ride the “tested-design express lane”.

👀 What we’re continuing to watch

• Senate rewrite of the House budget bill. Finance Committee staff begin closed-door drafting this week.

• Early lawsuits against the NRC fast-track executive order. And any insights from those in the industry.

• Puerto Rico grid-resilience RFP. DOE’s $365 M shift from rooftop solar to T&D hardening—tracking any RFPs that popup as opportunities for startups.

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