Renewable Energy & Low-Carbon Fuels, Electrification, End-Use Emissions Reductions | Strategic Insight

While the built environment certainly benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act, the lion’s share of the federal funds made available by the historic legislation is reserved for investment in the overhaul of the U.S. energy system—particularly in the electric power and transportation sectors.

Even still, electric power and transportation sector fund recipients will need to work with developers, equipment manufacturers, and service providers of the buildings and construction to capture and leverage their incentives. Moreover, they will need to act quickly, as the availability of many of the IRA’s appropriated funds to support renewable energy and low-carbon fuels is limited.

For instance, prospective claimants of the renewable energy investment tax credit (Sect. 48) will only be able to do so for their projects whose construction began prior to January 1, 2025. And for prospective claimants of the technology-neutral clean electricity investment tax credit (Sect. 48E), the indefinite onset of the credit phase-out warrants bringing their eligible projects online sooner rather than later.

In short, business leaders endeavoring to take advantage of these funds cannot afford to waste either time or resources in the construction and activation of their eligible projects.

SPOTLIGHT: SPOTLIGHT:

Project And Property Credits Clean Energy Assets

Business leaders attempting to overhaul their building infrastructure footprints in pursuit of Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C), or invest in the development of new building facilities altogether in order to claim the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit (30C), will need the necessary engineering and plant management expertise.

Owners of eligible industrial facilities capable of receiving these funds must ensure their projects are implemented safely, affordably, and of course, in compliance with industry standards, government regulations, and tax credit eligibility criteria.

Commercial real estate owners and developers—be they public or private organizations—are not excluded from the unique opportunity to leverage public funds toward reducing their operational expenses, improving local environmental quality, and advancing public health outcomes with clean electricity-producing infrastructure.

They will, however, be competing with incumbent renewable energy infrastructure developers for public funds whose availability is limited.

The installation of rooftop solar, small-scale onsite wind, microgrid controllers, combined heat and power, and other clean power-producing properties is technically complex. It requires careful implementation to avoid disrupting mission-critical operations of their host facilities.