US Senate should ease provisions for clean-energy tax credits, Republican senator says

The U.S. Senate should make changes to House budget reconciliation bill provisions that phase out clean-energy tax credits, including easing start-date requirements, Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah said on Tuesday.

Curtis, one of a handful of Senate Republicans who have said they want to preserve some of the clean-energy tax credits in the Senate's version of the budget bill, said changes are needed to protect investors and jobs from major disruption.

"Let's just be thoughtful in how we phase them out. Let's not destroy careers and things like that. Let's give people a chance to adjust," he said at the Politico Energy Summit.

The House bill aimed to weaken clean-energy tax credits enshrined in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act by abruptly terminating several credits just 60 days after enactment for projects that have not yet begun construction, making most projects unfeasible.

Curtis said if a project has to start and be completed so quickly, any number of small snags would throw off the timeline and make the project ineligible for the full tax credit, which increases risks for investors and bank lenders.

Curtis said each of the tax provisions should "be evaluated in a vacuum" and preserved in the Senate version of the bill if it brings revenue to the Treasury and supports Republican-favored technologies like nuclear and geothermal energy.

Last week, despite supporting the House bill, 13 House Republicans wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune asking him to address their concerns about provisions that undermine clean-energy development, including the timeline, restrictions on foreign ownership and limits on "transferability" of tax credits that enabled developers to sell their tax credits and use the funds to finance project construction.