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The House is debating Republicans' big budget bill that would slash tax incentives for clean energy. In Georgia, clean energy investments are expected to create 16,000 new jobs. That is more than any other state, and most of those jobs are in Republican districts. WABE's Sam Gringlas reports on what the cuts could mean for one community counting on those new jobs.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: On the edge of tiny Cedartown, near the Alabama border, pallets of retired solar panels arrive from across the southeast. This cavernous former yarn factory doesn't look like much, but after its new owner, Solarcycle, gets up and running, millions of solar panels will be recycled here every year.
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TYLER GRIMES: An aluminum frame, pigtails where the actual solar circuits are connected. And then you've got glass. And then you've got the actual solar photovoltaic cells.
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GRINGLAS: In an orange vest, facilities manager Tyler Grimes leads me around stacks of shiny panels.
GRIMES: Most folks associate recycling with paper cups, glass bottles. We are actually taking a high-tech product, recycling it and putting it back into a high-tech supply chain.
GRINGLAS: Solarcycle received a $64 million tax credit from the Inflation Reduction Act. Solarcycle plans to use the incentive to build another factory nearby to make glass for new solar panels.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Here.
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GRIMES: We want to be a major player. Diversifying the supply chain so it's not all coming from Asia and doing it in Polk County is very close to home for me.
GRINGLAS: But Solarcycle's CEO, Suvi Sharma, says ground breaking is on hold as Congress moves to gut the tax credits.
SUVI SHARMA: One of the worst things for running a company or organization is uncertainty.
GRINGLAS: Solarcycle already got its tax credit. But eliminating incentives for consumers and other manufacturers going forward could affect demand for what Solarcycle's doing.
SHARMA: The more solar there is, the more solar there is to recycle and the more solar panels there are to install that need the type of glass that we plan on making.
GRINGLAS: And the stakes are high for communities like Cedartown.
PHILIP GAMMAGE: On Saturday mornings, this place was packed up and down Main Street. We're trying to get back to that.
GRINGLAS: Philip Gammage is wearing a Cedartown high school T-shirt. His family's operated a funeral home in town since 1950, when northwest Georgia's textile industry was still booming.
GAMMAGE: Tangible around here is, you got a job for me? Now we can talk. And 1,200 jobs is going to mean a lot to this community.
GRINGLAS: Cedartown is preparing for more people. There's talk of new housing and training programs at the technical college. Gammage wants the credits preserved.
GAMMAGE: That's a no-brainer. I don't see how anybody could have a negative view of that.
GRINGLAS: Someone who does have a negative view? The Republican Congresswoman here, Marjorie Taylor Greene. She slammed the incentivized projects at the Georgia GOP convention in June.
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MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: They always say, Marjorie, this is going to bring jobs to your district. Baloney.
GRINGLAS: The majority of clean energy projects announced since 2022 are in Republican districts, which advocates hoped would insulate them from cuts. But Greene says local unemployment is low.
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GREENE: And so when they plop a big, fat battery production plant from South Korea, they're having to steal workers from Georgia companies. And I think that is a bunch of BS, I do.
GRINGLAS: Not every Republican agrees. Congressman Buddy Carter, who represents a coastal Georgia district with a new multibillion-dollar Hyundai electric vehicle plant, defended the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act at a recent event.
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BUDDY CARTER: We should not take a sledgehammer to the IRA. Instead, we should take a scalpel. If these policies result in stabilizing our supply chain or if they result in domestic manufacturing, why wouldn't we look at them? Why wouldn't we keep them?
GRINGLAS: In the end, Carter, who's running for U.S. Senate, is supporting the budget bill.
For NPR News, I'm Sam Gringlas in Cedartown, Georgia.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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