Airloom Energy, a wind energy startup, broke ground at its pilot site in Laramie, Wyoming, last month. The next week, President Trump signed his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law, thereby sunsetting the clean energy production and investment tax credits for solar and wind. Although it’s going to be a big change, CEO Neal Rickner told Tech Brew the company will adapt: Airloom was created to deliver “the lowest-cost energy, subsidy-free,” but the loss of credits could hinder Airloom’s ability to commercialize.
Airloom’s ability to generate competitively priced energy is due to the design of its turbines. Instead of tall wind turbines that adhere to a traditional, windmill-like design, Airloom’s turbines consist of a group of poles in the shape of an oval connected by a track on which wing-like panels circulate, their movement powered by the wind. They’re shorter than traditional wind turbine blades, and, according to Rickner, faster to build.
“It is a hyper-flexible system. So the difference between our small system and the big one is just making it longer, adding sections in the middle. It can be deployed with straightforward infrastructure,” Rickner said. “You don’t need big, long, extendable bed trailers. You don’t need crews who are trained to work at 300 feet in the air with the largest cranes in the world.”
That said, clean energy investment and production tax credits would help Airloom cross “the chasm of commercialization,” which is a notoriously difficult process, Rickner said, particularly in the energy industry.
“We were definitely going to be relying on the tax credits to help us through that,” Rickner said, “because the first few systems we’re going to build are going to be more expensive.”
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Rickner said he and the Airloom team are also figuring out how to respond to two other sizable uncertainties that will crop up during their commercialization process as a result of Trump’s policies: future tariffs or excise taxes on equipment from “foreign entities of concern,” and “what qualifies as construction,” which determines how long Airloom will be able to access the tax credits.
The new law states that wind projects have to begin construction within a year of its signing by Trump (or be in service by the end of 2027) to be eligible for the clean energy investment and production tax credits. In a follow up executive order, Trump stated that the Treasury secretary will issue “new and revised guidance…to ensure that policies concerning the ‘beginning of construction’ are not circumvented” by “artificial acceleration or manipulation” of construction timelines.
“We are starting construction on our 2027 project this year, but I don’t know how they’re going to define ‘construction’ yet,” Rickner said. “I’m not going to plan for the government to do or not do anything. It’s too unpredictable.”
Despite some big unknowns, Rickner is optimistic because Airloom already has strong market demand—so strong that the company will be selling the power generated by its pilot to a data center customer. And as more data centers come online and need additional forms of energy, Airloom hopes to provide them wind power as the company commercializes.
“Chaos equals opportunity,” Rickner said. “When things are moving around, there’s potential to find opportunity in that chaos.”