The ‘mad rush’ to install solar panels before tax credits run out

Ed Murray has been in the solar business long enough to remember the bloodbath of 1985. That’s when President Ronald Reagan ended Jimmy Carter-era solar tax credits meant to decrease US reliance on fossil fuels following the 1970s oil crisis.

“It was a sad time,” says Murray, who is president of the trade group California Solar & Storage Association. Membership to the organization (which hadn’t yet added “storage” to its name) fell from 670 companies to just 37 “almost overnight,” Murray says, as hundreds of businesses went under without the tax credit. “I hope that that doesn’t happen to us again.” (Then-California Gov. George Deukmejian a …

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