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Below are answers to questions we received during our tax equity webinar of October 23.  These questions were submitted online during the webinar.  The presentation from the webinar is available here.

Question: Commercial and industrial (C&I) has higher returns but how many projects raise tax equity versus other segments of the solar market? What…

Today, the House voted 227 to 303 in favor of the tax reform bill agreed to by the conference committee.  No Democrats voted for the House bill, and 12 Republicans from high tax states voted against it.  The Senate is expected to vote later this evening to approve it; it is possible that the president could sign the bill as early as tomorrow.

The enacted legislation is expected to be identical to the bill approved by the conference committee.  Our analysis of the conference committee’s bill’s impact on the renewable energy market is below, which is followed by a chart that summarizes the relevant provisions in each of the three bills.
Continue Reading House Passes Tax Reform & the Impact of Tax Reform on the Renewable Energy Market

The US tax reform bill that the Senate passed on December 2, 2017—along partisan lines in a 51 to 49 vote—is a mixed bag for the tax equity market. The bill is now headed to the conference committee, consisting of House of Representative and Senate leaders, to be reconciled with the tax reform bill passed by the House on November 16.

Below we describe the five differences from the House bill that are of greatest significance to the renewable energy tax equity market. (See also our prior analysis of the ramifications for the tax equity market of the House bill.)

Amounts of and Eligibility for Tax Credits

First, the amount of renewable energy tax credits available and the rules for qualifying for those credits are unchanged from current law under the Senate bill. Specifically, the inflation adjustment that applies to production tax credits is left in place and the “start of construction” rules are unchanged. The fact that the Senate bill left these provision alone is positive for wind and solar, which are in the midst of a phase-out, for wind, and a phase-down, for solar.

However, the Senate bill also left alone the lapsed tax credits for the “orphaned” renewable energy technologies that were inadvertently omitted from the 2015 extension that benefited wind and solar. The orphaned renewable energy technologies are fuel cells, geothermal, biomass, combined heat and power, landfill gas, small wind, solar illumination, tidal power and incremental hydroelectric.

Proponents of those technologies may have more negative views of the Senate bill. There is still discussion of the tax credits for the orphaned technologies being included in an “extenders bill” to possibly be taken up after the tax reform process is over.
Continue Reading Senate’s Tax Bill’s Impact on the Tax Equity Market: Five Differences from the House Bill