An extension of the solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) would spark $87 billion in new private sector investment and add 113,000 American jobs over baseline estimates by 2030, according to 10-year forecasts released by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
The forecasts come as SEIA ramps up its efforts to secure an extension of the ITC in Congress, and as nearly 20,000 solar and storage professionals descend on Salt Lake City for Solar Power International.
“These forecasts prove that an ITC extension will continue to deliver real results for our economy and the planet,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA. “The ITC has helped us add billions to the economy, employ thousands of Americans and be a real solution for cities and businesses that want to do their part to reduce emissions. We’re telling members of Congress to take this climate win now. You don’t have to wait for a comprehensive solution to take action on our energy future.”
Key Forecast Data:
- With an ITC extension, annual investment in solar would reach $41 billion by 2030, more than 141% greater than the $17 billion invested in 2018.
- An ITC extension would offset an additional 363 million metric tons of CO2 emissions over the next 10 years, equivalent to 21% of all emissions from U.S. electricity generation in 2018.
- By 2030, annual offsets will be equivalent to eliminating the emissions from 93 coal plants.
- The 82 GW of additional capacity spurred from an ITC extension is enough to power more than 15 million American homes.
Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables developed the capacity forecasts while SEIA extrapolated on this data to develop additional analysis.
“The utility-scale segment will see the greatest benefit of the tax credit extension, with 63 of the 82 additional GW coming from that segment, as solar will gain ground against other generation resources based on price competitiveness,” said Colin Smith, senior analyst with Wood Mackenzie.
Austin Perea, Wood Mackenzie senior analyst added: “The distributed solar segment will benefit as well, as a tax credit extension accelerates the timeline for which emerging state markets achieve grid parity relative to our base case outlook.”
Since its implementation in 2006, the ITC has helped create more than 200,000 American jobs, added $140 billion in private sector investment and grown solar deployment by 10,000%.
The solar ITC is currently scheduled to begin stepping down at the end of this year, with the commercial system credit dropping to a permanent 10% in 2022, and the residential system credit phasing out entirely.
Read the 2019 Solar ITC Impact Analysis report here and learn more about SEIA’s campaign to extend the solar Investment Tax Credit at www.seia.org/DefendTheITC.
News item from SEIA
I’m surprised the moralists haven’t taken apart the proposal on some disingenuous grounds of “all subsidies need to be taken away from oil and gas as well as solar PV and wind too.” Let the “market” decide the winners and losers. Nice comic book or fairy tale, but not the reality of today and very probably tomorrow. From some of the technology reported from the SPI, it seems things are actually steaming right along with or without the moralists. @ Billy Ludt, do you think that people don’t realize the ITC is actually something they can use to install solar PV and energy storage, while decreasing their personal Federal taxes by 30% of the total system cost?
From just 15 years ago, the common “wisdom” of , “It doesn’t pencil out”. “What’s the ROI?” Has fallen by the wayside. Why? Because some folks despite the “common wisdom” put in solar PV anyway. What they found the electric utilities screw up and expect the ratepayers to pay the bill for the failure. The utility tells the ratepayers, if you don’t save energy we will have to build a new power plant and your electric rates will go up. So, what happens is folks replace appliances with Energy Star units, put in LED lighting and even change when they do some tasks like laundry later in the evening. The utility doesn’t sell as much electricity as it did, now there is a rate case to the PUC to increase electricity rates to capture “lost revenues”. An old generation plant like a coal fired plant is decommissioned, there is a cost to the ratepayers there, and there will most likely be another rate case to the PUC to raise rates on electricity to take care of “unforeseen” decommissioning costs and coal sludge ponds environmental costs.