Amidst a flurry of energy and climate change legislation being introduced in the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, this week saw lawmakers reintroduce a perennial attempt to add stand-alone energy storage to the list of technologies eligible for federal investment tax credits (ITC).
The Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act, introduced Thursday by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), is the latest update to a bill first introduced in 2016 by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM). Its goal, broadly speaking, is to extend to batteries and other electric storage systems the same 30-percent ITC offered to solar PV systems.
This year’s House version wouldgrant full ITC eligibility for investments in commercial, residential and utility-scale energy storage, with the same ramp-down now set for solar – 30 percent through 2019, 26 percent in 2020, and 22 percent in 2021.
For residential energy storage, the ITC for storage would be zeroed out after 2021. But it would remain at 10 percent permanently for commercial and utility-scale projects, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which supports the legislation.
Energy storage advocates have long been clamoring for their own federal tax credits, but have found little purchase in a politically fractured Congress. It’s unclear whether this year’s version will be taken up as part of a broader push for a Green New Deal and other climate and environmental legislation amongst House Democrats, or how those efforts will face in a Republican-controlled Senate.
Even so, wind and solar groups applauded the Doyle bill for reintroducing what they called an important expansion of federal tax policy support for clean energy. “It’s clear that combining clean, reliable solar energy with effective storage is the next frontier in securing a resilient and reliable electrical grid,” SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said in a Thursday statement.
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