WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) released the first Annual Table that provides greenhouse gas emissions rates for certain types or categories of facilities that are eligible for the Clean Electricity Production and Investment Tax Credits – also known as the technology-neutral credits – in tax code sections 45Y and 48E.
The Clean Electricity Credits encourage innovation by allowing new technologies that develop over time to become eligible for the tax credits. The Annual Table released today provides important confirmation that certain clean electricity facilities qualify categorically for the credits – including geothermal, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, wind, solar, hydropower, marine and hydrokinetic, and certain waste energy recovery property facilities – consistent with the final rules released earlier this month.
Taxpayers with types or categories of facilities that are not described in the Annual Table will be able to request a Provisional Emissions Rate (PER) for those facilities. Those PER requests will be evaluated by the National Labs consistent with the final rules. For example, a combustion and gasification facility would require a lifecycle emissions analysis consistent with the statute and the final rules, whereas a non-combustion and gasification facility (such as a fuel cell that exclusively utilizes electrolytic hydrogen) would require a technical and engineering assessment of the fundamental energy transformation into electricity and would not have to undergo a full lifecycle emissions analysis. The National Labs are already working on such an assessment for fuel cells utilizing electrolytic hydrogen, which the Department of Energy expects will be complete in the coming weeks. This assessment will accelerate the PER request process for such fuel cells.
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