While running for Senate, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy criticized “goofy, subsidized green energy crap” and said after taking office last year that military “readiness doesn’t include green solar power generation projects.”
The Montana Republican installed rooftop solar and battery storage systems at his Bozeman home several years ago, according to property records, satellite imagery and two local renewable energy industry officials who were granted anonymity to preserve commercial relationships.
Sheehy confirmed to POLITICO’s E&E News that he has solar panels on his home and then declined to answer further questions.
“It’s my personal home, so it’s not really any of your business,” he said in a brief interview in December.
Sheehy’s use of renewable energy led local industry officials to ask him for help opposing legislation championed by President Donald Trump aimed at weakening subsidies for clean energy systems, including the kind on the senator’s roof. The tax overhaul threatened local jobs, Sheehy was told by workers from companies affiliated with the Montana Renewable Energy Association.
The industry’s hopes faded quickly.
“Instead of pursuing failing solar and wind energy projects, the U.S. should focus on nuclear and geothermal energy production,” Sheehy said in a letter that his office sent to renewables industry workers who had contacted him for help. “Nuclear and geothermal energy projects are reliable and don’t depend on variable weather conditions.”
Sheehy, along with all but five Republican members of Congress, voted to pass the $3.4 trillion tax overhaul, which Trump had dubbed his “one big, beautiful bill.” No Democrats supported the legislation.
The law killed a decades-old clean energy tax credit that was first created by President George W. Bush, and was later expanded and extended under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Sheehy spokesperson Tate Mitchell said in a statement the senator “doesn’t think American taxpayers should be forced to subsidize solar panels with their tax dollars.”
Mitchell did not respond to questions about Sheehy’s battery storage system, when the panels and batteries were installed, or whether the senator had used tax credits to help finance them. He also did not answer questions about Sheehy’s views on the local lobbying campaign to protect the subsidies.
At least nine congressional Republicans have had solar panels on their homes, including Sheehy and New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, marking a contrast with their party’s growing disdain for clean energy. Several lawmakers, including Van Drew, said they installed the panels to lower their energy costs. Adding a battery system allows homeowners to tap solar energy when the sun or grid goes down.
E&E News previously reported on seven of them by reviewing home images of every Republican senator and 59 House Republicans who are in leadership or facing tough reelection races. Sheehy’s panels were discovered later because they’re on a building adjacent to his listed address. Van Drew was not included in the original search because he represents a solidly red district.
Among the nine members, just one voted against the tax overhaul that eliminated the solar subsidy — Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Massie, Sen. John Curtis of Utah and Rep. Ken Calvert of California all acknowledged using the now-expired tax credit to help purchase their panels.
Trump signed the tax bill in July, leading to the expiration of the residential clean energy tax credit at the end of 2025. The law also accelerated the sunset of an investment tax credit by six years that solar installers use to lower the cost of leasing panels in some states. It will now end after 2027.
Energy Innovation, a climate policy think tank, estimated that the tax overhaul would cause wholesale electricity prices to increase 25 percent by 2030 and lead to the loss of 760,000 clean energy jobs over the same time period.
The megalaw’s anti-solar provisions are part of Trump’s broader crusade against renewables. That has included clawing back $20 billion in climate-related grants, imposing new regulatory barriers for renewable energy developments and stop-work orders for nearly completed offshore wind projects. Trump has called solar energy a “scam.”
Images available on Google Earth show that Sheehy’s rooftop panels were installed sometime between March 2020 and June 2021, a period during which federal tax law allowed homeowners to recoup 26 percent of the cost of solar and battery storage systems. Two Montana renewable energy industry officials said the panels and battery system were installed by Bozeman-based OnSite Energy.
Orion Thornton, a partner at OnSite Energy, declined to discuss its work for Sheehy without the senator’s permission. “Customer confidentiality is important to us,” he said in a text.
Sheehy, who has a net worth of at least $100 million, owes much of his fortune to his ownership of Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company he co-founded in 2014 after leaving the Navy.
Bridger once claimed to be “fighting on the front lines of climate change.” Sheehy also used to boast about the company’s work to limit the impacts of a warming planet. In 2023, he called Bridger “a company that is actually out there fighting climate change-related issues,” and the year before, he highlighted its ability “to effectively combat today’s changing climate.”
Sheehy also owns a stake in the carbon trading startup Cloverly that’s valued at more than $50,000, according to the senator’s most recent financial disclosure filing.
After Sheehy entered the Senate race in 2023, he changed his tune on climate change and Bridger scrubbed mentions of global warming from its website. Sheehy campaigned against what he said was a “climate cult” that tries to use environmental concerns to shut down fossil fuels.
Since coming to Washington last year, he’s sought to boost the fossil fuel industry, including by sponsoring the “Safe and Secure Transportation of American Energy Act,” S. 1017. The legislation would prescribe up to 20 years in prison for any action that disrupts the construction or operation of pipelines, including peaceful protests. He floated the proposal in October as an amendment to pipeline safety legislation, but it was not included.
The Montana Renewable Energy Association — the group composed of local businesses that tried unsuccessfully to persuade Sheehy to protect the solar tax credit — recruited industry workers, such as panel installers and electricians, to meet with aides of Montana’s congressional delegation. The idea was to make those workers, whose jobs were on the line, the face of a threatened industry, according to Makenna Sellers, the association’s executive director.
“We were all pointing in the same direction, as far as trying to understand what was happening and what was the best way to help our members of Congress understand the direct impact to energy jobs in the state,” she said.
Sheehy declined to meet directly with the workers, Sellers said, though his staff met with company representatives about the legislation.
The impacts of Trump’s tax law are already being felt in the state, Sellers said. The bill, which the president signed into law last July, accelerated the phase-out of the residential clean energy tax credit from 2034 to the end of 2025.
“A number of companies are scaling back their workforce, sometimes scaling back their workforce in Montana and moving into different regions,” said Sellers, who declined to name specific companies.
REC Silicon, which makes solar energy supplies, said in November that it would lay off about 10 percent of the workforce at a facility in Montana, and the owner of SBS Solar, said last year that he would likely have to downsize his team.
Yes to solar, not ‘god-awful’ wind
Trump’s megalaw also curtailed a 30 percent investment tax credit that’s used by solar installers to lower the cost of leasing panels for their customers. That solar credit will now largely disappear at the end of 2027, at least five years earlier than it would have.
The investment tax credit helped Rep. Jeff Van Drew offset the cost of installing 9 kilowatts of solar panels on his house about a decade ago, he said.
The New Jersey Republican said he would have liked the renewables rollbacks to target only wind energy. Van Drew is an outspoken opponent of wind power because he believes offshore turbines along the New Jersey coast would ruin oceanfront views, harm whales and increase electricity costs.
“I’ve always been supportive of solar,” Van Drew said, adding that he enjoys producing his own electricity and paying a lower rate than if he bought all of his power from the grid. He does not own the solar system on his roof; a solar company took the investment tax credit, maintains control of the panels and now sells him the power at a lower price than the utility would charge, he said.
Van Drew pushed his GOP colleagues to extend solar incentives for a longer time period when debating the tax bill, he said, adding that he hopes to revive the credits. In the end, his disdain for wind outweighed his support for solar.
“Like any other bill, you’ve got to take the good with the bad. If you agree with the majority of it, and you think it’s good, you go with that,” Van Drew said. “And wind is god awful. So I was willing to do that.”
Reach the reporters on Signal at TimothyCama.29 or CorbinHiar.80.
