Policy and Regulation: the IRA and the 2025 Rollback

In energy, policy is not background. It is a line in the cash flow, with the government as the counterparty. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, signed 16 Aug 2022) turned the US tax code into the world's largest clean-energy subsidy programme. It offered open-ended, ten-year credits for clean electricity (45Y/48E), domestic manufacturing (45X), existing nuclear (45U), clean hydrogen (45V), carbon capture (45Q), clean fuels (45Z) and electric vehicles (30D), and let most of them be sold for cash. Three years later the 2025 budget law (the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act", Public Law 119-21, signed 4 Jul 2025) kept most of the structure but cut it back hard. Wind and solar must now begin construction by 4 Jul 2026 or be in service by 31 Dec 2027. Consumer EV and home-energy credits ended in late 2025 and mid-2026. Hydrogen projects must begin construction before 2028. Nuclear, storage, geothermal, carbon capture and manufacturing kept most of their credits, but under new "prohibited foreign entity" rules aimed at Chinese supply chains. Around the tax code sit the regulators: FERC on wholesale markets and transmission, the NRC on nuclear, the EPA on emissions, the Interior Department on federal lands and offshore wind, and the state commissions on utilities and retail rates. Permitting law (NEPA) decides how long anything takes. Europe pursued a different path, with carbon pricing and mandates (the Green Deal, REPowerEU after Russia's invasion, the ETS and the carbon border adjustment). China pursued a third, with planned industrial policy that built most of the world's clean-energy supply chain. This section explains each regime, what changed in 2025–26, how a project developer or investor models policy risk, and how an experienced policy lead reads the next move.