Energy Tax Credits, Meant to Help U.S. Suppliers, May Be Hard to Get

The Inflation Reduction Act contains tax breaks for solar and wind companies to buy American equipment. Qualifying wont be easy.

In April, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Qcells, a solar panel manufacturing facility in Dalton, Ga., to announce an early triumph of the Inflation Reduction Act: Summit Ridge Energy, one of the nations largest developers of utility-scale solar projects, would purchase 2.5 million U.S.-made solar panels.

Subsidies under the new law brought the price in line with that of imported panels, allowing the companies to fight climate change and promote American manufacturing in one fell swoop.

A month later, the Treasury Department issued guidance that functionally would require the solar cells not just the panels to be made in the United States for Summit Ridge to have confidence that it will get its 10 percent tax credit on installations that use them. Qcells wont be able to produce cells until late 2024, sending Summit Ridge scrambling to find cheaper components for projects currently in its pipeline.