The Unsung Hero of the Clean Energy Economy Is Now on the Chopping Block

One of the most powerful innovations in the Inflation Reduction Act was a new vehicle to finance clean energy projects. In addition to expanding the nation’s tax credits for climate-friendly projects, Congress gave developers freedom to sell these credits for cash. If a battery factory couldn’t take full advantage of the tax credits itself, it could transfer them to someone else who could.

Now, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee have proposed getting rid of this “transferability” provision as part of a larger overhaul of the tax credits. A draft bill published on Monday would end the practice starting in 2028.

Nixing transferability isn’t the bill’s most damaging blow to clean energy — new sourcing requirements for the tax credits and deadlines that block early-stage projects pose a bigger threat. But the ripple effects from the change would permeate all aspects of the clean energy economy. At a minimum, it would make energy more expensive by making the tax credits harder to monetize. It would also all but shut nuclear plants out of the subsidies altogether.

Prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, if renewable energy developers with low tax liability wanted to monetize existing tax credits, they had to seek partnerships with tax equity investors. The investor, usually a major bank, would provide upfront capital for a project in exchange for partial ownership and a claim to its tax benefits. These were complicated deals that involved extensive legal review and the formation of new limited liability corporations, and therefore weren’t a viable option for smaller projects like community solar farms.

When the 2022 climate law introduced transferability across all the clean energy tax credits, it simplified project finance and channeled new capital into the clean energy economy. Suddenly, developers for all kinds of clean energy projects could simply sell their tax credits for cash on the open market to anyone that wanted to buy them, without ceding any ownership. The tax credit marketplace Crux estimated that a total of $30 billion in transfers took place last year, only about 30% of which were traditional tax equity deals. In the past, tax equity transfers have topped out at around $20 billion per year.

Schneider Electric, which has long helped corporate clients make power purchase agreements, now facilitates tax credit transfers, as well. The company recently announced that it had closed 18 deals worth $1.7 billion in tax credit transfers since late 2023. The buyers were all new to the market — none had directly financed clean energy before the IRA, Erin Decker, the senior director of renewable energy and carbon advisory services, told me.

It turns out, buying clean energy tax credits is a win-win for brands with sustainability commitments, which can reduce their tax liability while also helping to reduce emissions. Some companies have even used the savings they got through the tax credits to fund decarbonization efforts within their own operations, Decker said.

By simplifying project finance, and creating more competition for tax credit sales, transferability also made developing renewable energy projects cheaper. Developers of wind and solar farms have been able to secure upwards of 95 cents on the dollar for transferred tax credits, compared to just 85 to 90 cents for tax equity transactions. The savings go directly to utility customers.

“State regulators require electric companies to pass the benefits of tax credits through to customers in the form of lower rates,” the Edison Electric Institute wrote in a policy brief on the provision. “If transferability were repealed, electric companies once again would rely on big banks to invest in tax equity transactions, ultimately reducing the value of the credit that flows directly through to customers.”

Many of the companies that can’t count on tax equity deals will still have other options under the GOP proposal. Tax-exempt entities, like rural electric cooperatives and community solar nonprofits, can use “elective pay,” another IRA innovation that allows them to claim the credits as a direct cash payment from the IRS. For-profit companies developing carbon capture and advanced manufacturing projects also have the option to use elective pay for the first five years they operate. All of this raises questions about whether axing transferability would furnish the government with meaningful savings to offset Trump’s tax cuts.

But the bigger danger for Trump would be his nuclear agenda. Prior to the IRA, low power prices meant that many nuclear operators couldn’t afford to extend the licenses on their existing plants, even ones that had many years of useful life left in them. The IRA created a new tax credit for existing nuclear plants that made it economical for operators to invest in keeping these online, and even helped bring some, like the Palisades plant in Michigan, back from the dead.

This wouldn’t have worked without transferability, Benton Arnett, the senior director of markets and policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, told me. Going forward, finding a tax equity partner would be nearly impossible because of the unique rules governing nuclear plants. Federal regulations require that the owners of a nuclear power plant be listed on its license, so bringing on a new owner means doing a license amendment — a headache-inducing process that banks simply don’t want to take on. “We’ve had members reach out to tax equity groups in the past and there was very little interest,” Arnett said

While a few plant owners might have enough tax appetite to benefit from credits directly, most have depreciating assets on their books that greatly reduce their liability. “Without transferability, for many of our members, it’s very difficult for them to actually monetize those credits,” said Arnett. “In a way, nuclear is disproportionately impacted by removing that ability to transfer.”

In February, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright declared that “the long-awaited American nuclear renaissance must launch during President Trump’s administration.” But so far on Trump’s watch, between the proposed loss of transferability and early phase-out of nuclear tax credits, plus cuts to loan programs at the Department of Energy, we’ve only seen policies that would kill the nuclear renaissance.