U.S. renewable energy developers are racing to complete projects amid concern banks won't fill the gap in financing once a program of tax credits expires in December, said Arno Harris, head of Sharp Corp.'s solar unit.
"The U.S. has 30 gigawatts of utility-scale solar in the pipeline," Harris, chief executive officer of Recurrent Energy, the solar project unit of Osaka, Japan-based Sharp, told a conference in New York today. "All of that is at risk. Financing could drop off a cliff."
Solar power installations climbed 66 percent in the first quarter as panel prices fell and developers accelerated work on projects before the end of the tax grant program, according to a Solar Energy Industries Association report published June 16. U.S. Treasury grants have helped finance most renewable energy projects since the banking crisis cut lending and the recession reduced demand for tax credits to offset corporate income.
The U.S. Treasury started granting tax credits to renewable energy developers as part of the government's 2009 stimulus package. They provide up to a third of a project's total cost up front, rather than as an ongoing credit. Before the tax grants were introduced, developers had to rely on banks to match companies that needed tax credits with those that didn't have much profit to offset.
Economic growth will need to pick up before demand for tax offsets grows, said Eric Silverman, a partner at law firm Milbank Tweed, Hadley & McCoy LLP in New York, which helps finance projects.
"There's just so much demand for tax equity and it's not cheap," Silverman said at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum. "There are serious storm clouds on the horizon."
Geothermal and wind power developers are also concerned about the end of the tax grant program, said Dita Bronicki, CEO of Ormat Technologies Inc. (ORA), which builds and operates geothermal plants.
"The grant program was a lifeline," Bronicki said today in an interview. "We have a portfolio of projects that we hope to get done by the expiration but we also have to plan for a delay."
