Republican Senator says US Senate should relax provisions on clean energy tax credits

John Curtis, Republican Senator from Utah, said that the U.S. Senate needs to make some changes to House Budget Reconciliation Bill provisions which phase out clean energy tax credits. This includes a softer start-date requirement.

Curtis is one of only a few Senate Republicans to have stated that they would like to see some clean-energy tax credit credits preserved in the Senate version of the budget. He said there are changes needed to protect jobs and investors from disruption.

Let's be careful about how we phase out these products. We shouldn't destroy careers or do things like this. "Let's give the people a chance for adjustment," he said during the Politico Energy Summit.

The House bill sought to weaken the clean-energy tax credit enshrined within the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, by abruptly ending several credits 60 days after its enactment. This would make most projects impossible.

Curtis explained that if the project is to be started and completed quickly, even a small problem could throw the schedule off and prevent the project from being eligible for the full credit. This increases the risk for investors and lenders.

Curtis said that each tax provision should be "evaluated in a vacuum", and preserved in the Senate's version of the bill, if they bring revenue to the Treasury while supporting Republican-favored technologies such as nuclear and geothermal.

13 House Republicans, who supported the House bill last week, wrote to Senate Majority leader John Thune to express their concern about provisions that would undermine clean energy development. These included the timeline, restrictions of foreign ownership, and limitations on the "transferability" (or transferability) of tax credits, which allowed developers to sell tax credits to use the funds for project construction.

(source: Reuters)