Treasury issues tech-neutral tax credit rules
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios
The Biden administration's final rules for technology-neutral energy tax credits won praise from renewable energy groups but criticism from fuel cell companies.
Why it matters: The Clean Electricity Investment and Production Tax Credits — known as 45Y and 48E — apply to projects beginning construction this year. The rules were issued Tuesday.
- The tech-neutral credits, established by the IRA, cover wind, solar, hydropower, marine and hydrokinetic, geothermal, nuclear, and certain waste energy recovery property, the Treasury Department said in a news release.
What they're saying: Renewable energy and environmental groups urged Congress and the incoming Trump administration to maintain the credits.
- The credit "provides the long-term policy certainty companies need to invest in U.S. energy innovation," said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, in a statement.
- "Attempts to revoke these rules will only make it easier for China to win the race for global solar market dominance while killing American jobs and much-needed economic opportunity," Hopper said.
Yes, but: The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, a hydrogen industry trade association, is "extremely concerned" with Treasury's treatment of fuel cell technologies.
- The rules block most, if not all, fuel cells from eligibility because they consider the technology combustion and gasification equipment, which is an "absurd classification," CEO Frank Wolak said.
- Wolak wants "a more thorough discussion of how this technology can drive economic growth and energy security with the new Congress."
