As president Trump’s administration prepare to levy tax cut reforms, other Congressional lawmakers are taking a different tack.
Several bills that would bolster energy storage are waiting in the wings this congressional season, signaling the growing significance of the resource.
“At this stage there are a lot of moving parts, but we expect multiple pieces of legislation related to storage and taxes to be introduced,” Matt Roberts, executive director of the Energy Storage Association said.
Chief among those bills could be one that failed to make it through the last congressional session, but will likely be re-introduced in the current session.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) said he plans to re-introduce legislation in the current congressional session that would provide an investment tax credit for energy storage. He first introduced the tax credit in 2016, but it failed to pass out of committee.
The Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act, which Heinrich’s office said will be introduced “in the near future,” would provide the same investment tax credit (ITC) for commercial energy storage installations as is currently available for solar energy in section 48 of the Internal Revenue Service code.
All forms of storage technology, from flywheels and batteries to pumped hydro and thermal energy, would qualify for the credit as long as they have at least 5 kWh of capacity. Qualifying projects could be consumer-owned, grid-connected, or off-grid.
The proposed legislation, co-sponsored with Dean Heller (R-NV), would also extend the ITC to residential applications of at least 3 kWh, but would apply only to battery storage systems.
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