In our Spotlight on Business report tonight, time is running out for homeowners who want to take advantage of a federal solar tax credit and it's triggering a rush in New Jersey.

Now the 30% tax break is set to stop by the end of the year after Congress voted to let the incentive sunset, causing demand for solar quotes in New Jersey to more than double this summer.

The credit offsets about $9,000 of the cost for a rooftop system.

I spoke with our Washington, D.C.

correspondent Ben Hulak about what it means for the broader industry and energy policies in the U.S.

So Ben, this tax credit was supposed to last until 2032.

Why then did Congress decide to cut it nearly a decade short?

The short answer, the technical answer is Republicans were looking for ways to pay for their broader tax breaks for corporations.

This was part, if we remember back to the summer, there was a lot of debate here on the Hill about how to pass and how to pay for this massive multi-trillion dollar bill, now law.

And this was an item that Republicans wanted.

So they essentially went through lots of Biden-era tax breaks for renewables, for wind, for solar, and phased them out early in order to pay for their broader package.

- So I know you write, you report, that demand has just gone through the roof.

This really lit a fire under people.

What does that look like on the ground?

I mean, how many people are actually calling and requesting quotes?

And we should note, this is really for residential homes.

- Right, so I talked with two people I'll mention.

Lyle Rollins, who's a business owner, owns his own solar company, and he said salespeople are just swamped.

And then I talked with a woman named Emily Walker, who works for a company called EnergySage, and EnergySage crunches data and numbers about solar demand.

Their numbers show that just within New Jersey, from June to July, people requesting quotes for what it would cost to put solar on their homes skyrocketed 109%.

So that's a huge jump and that coincides with Congress debating this fraud or law.

So the interest in New Jersey is not an outlier in this.

There is a race nationwide.

If you are interested in putting solar on your home, you are a pedal to the metal now.

Yeah, 109 percent.

That's significant.

I mean, OK, if I'm a homeowner and I want to get this installed, connected before the deadline, is that even possible?

A. And what do I need to know then?

Right.

It is possible.

You should probably do it now.

And I actually talked with a solar advocate in Philadelphia, a woman named Elowen Corby, with a solar advocacy group called Vote Solar.

And this is what she said.

- If you're interested in going solar, you should start soon.

The process of getting solar is much more than the, you know, two or three days it can take to put the actual solar on your roof.

It includes permitting.

It includes a number of logistical steps that I would recommend not rushing.

You also want to make sure that you're taking the time to make sure you're working with a reputable installer, someone who you trust, someone who's done a lot of work in the community.

So start now because there can be more steps than you know.

Starting five days before the deadline isn't going to work out the way you hope it will.

Yeah.

And so Ben, then what happens if someone is not connected in time for the deadline?

If someone is not connected, then they are likely out this tax credit, which on average could defray about $9,000 worth of the cost.

So it costs tens of thousands of dollars to install panels on your home.

That's a ballpark figure.

Maybe about $30,000 is a good sort of rule of thumb.

This $9,000 chunk of that money could be massive and could be the difference between someone saying, "Yes, I'd like to take this plunge and go solar and try to maybe in theory go off the grid and be my own little electrical island or going back and cancelling those plans.

So it's a big deal.

How does all of this play into the broader energy policy that we're seeing from the White House and also some retroactive tariffs that could really impact the industry as you know how does this all play together.

The tenor on science and on renewables out of this administration has been extremely aggressive and negative.

The Energy Secretary actually recently assembled an anti climate science report that purported to debunk well established climate science.

That is of course not true.

Humans are warming the planet by burning fossil fuels oil coal and gas.

But this is this is sort of one tendril.

The solar this anti solar push is one tendril out of Congress out of the Republican led administration to slow efforts to to clean up the power grid to decarbonize the broader US energy system.

And it's really I would say it just it fits a pattern in a lot of ways.

And a lot of the money.

Remember Congress is in charge of writing tax law and administrations carry out tax law.

But this cut that we've been talking about Brie is just one of of many that this Congress has doled out so far.

Yeah.

And I wonder just about the long term impact here.

What did some of the advocates say who you spoke with about how this affects the industry in the long term and maybe even some of these policies in the long term.

You know the appetite for it all.

Right.

It's really put a damper on the appetite.

There is a lot of frenetic energy in this moment to get people hooked up to the grid to get people on solar before the year is out.

But also I should mention a commercial scale solar tax credit was phased out will be phased out next summer.

And that was also a Biden era tax credit that was going to go for about a decade.

Now they're nine years roughly short of that original target.

And so people are scrambling on the commercial solar side as well.

And then of course we haven't really delved into this but tariffs are another massive sort of axe hanging over this industry.

The administration has floated retroactive tariffs which would be extremely destabilizing for the industry and could go back two years and charge importers on what is already on U.S.

shores.

So there are a lot of serious landmines here for solar in the U.S.

Yeah, no doubt.

You can read all of Ben's reporting, including on this on our website, NJ spotlight news dot org.

Ben, thanks, as always.

Of course.

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