Solar Company Spread Across 9 States Shuts Down Shop, Blames Trump’s OBBBA

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Unsurprisingly, projects, jobs, and whole companies have been falling as a result of Donald Trump’s war on renewable energy and electric vehicles. Because he loves pollution so much, and is eager to help funnel more money to his billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry, Trump has been pulling cleantech incentives and doing everything he can to shut down clean energy projects, even ones already fully approved.

In the latest edition of a company biting the dust as a result of this, solar installer Purelight Power wrote a letter to Oregon officials just before Christmas explaining that it had to shut down operations nationally and close its business as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed by Republicans in Congress and signed into law by Donald Trump.

Purelight Power was operating in nine states — Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, and Washington — but pulling consumer tax credits for installing rooftop solar systems has dried up business and is forcing the company into bankruptcy. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 had promised solar consumer tax credits for a decade, but they lasted less than 3 years.

“This law forced Purelight Power to make rapid changes to the structure of its business. The company reduced its operating costs, attempted to size its business appropriately to the new sales volume, and shifted to selling via a third-party ownership model,” CEO JD Beck wrote in the letter. “Unfortunately, as incentives for solar energy vanished and investments dried up, the company faced reduced revenue and difficulty in financing projects. In addition to these issues, the company had already been facing challenges relating to a prior merger, a dramatic rise in interest rates, and an increase in advertising costs.

“The Company retained a financial advisory firm and an investment banker for assistance in facing its financial challenges and for the purpose of obtaining financing or extending its existing financing. With the assistance of its financial advisor and its investment banker, the Company made considerable efforts to refinance its operations or locate a potential buyer for its assets. The Company hoped a buyout could protect as many jobs as possible, given that it would have included the transfer of a significant number of employees to the buyer. The Company received expression of interest culminating in three offers to purchase the Company, all of which were unacceptable to the Company’s secured lender.”

So, more jobs will be lost, less solar will be installed, more pollution will be spewed, and somehow Republicans in the US Congress and the White House think that’s a good thing.

Purelight Power expects to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy next month, less than 9 years after its founding in 2017 and after merging with Washington’s Solgen Power. That means the end of 84 jobs in Oregon, 25 remote jobs outside the state, and who knows how many indirect jobs? The 109 people employed by the company were released from their jobs in the past week, from December 23 through December 26, 2025. Merry Christmas, fellas!