The economic stimulus package passed by the US Congress in mid-February has numerous provisions aimed at boosting the renewable energy industry; but some may be more useful than others, depending on what exactly a company does. The tax credit extensions will be most useful to big utilities such as Southern California Edison (SCE) which has made a concerted push into renewable generation and -this is the important part -has profits which make the tax credits useful.
Emerging solar and wind companies such as BrightSource -which announced a big deal with SCE in February to build 7 projects worth a total of 1.3 GW -are engineering companies and unprofitable, so the credits can't be used. However there is a new 'clean energy manufacturing' tax credit in the Bill which is targeted at companies that make wind turbines and solar panels. In addition, the legislation contains US$6 billion for a troubled Department of Energy loan guarantee which is supposed to provide loans to companies such as BrightSource (see later).
Utilities moving to include renewables in their portfolio will undoubtedly be aided by an extension to the wind-power-dedicated Production Tax Credit (PTC) from 31 December 2009 to 31 December 2012. The Bill also extends the placed-in-service sunset dates for closed-loop biomass; open-loop biomass; geothermal; landfill gas; municipal waste; qualified hydropower; and marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy facilities, from