Preliminary evaluation of the Section 1603 treasury grant program for renewable power projects in the United States

Mark Bolinger, Ryan Wiser and Naïm Darghouth

Energy Policy, 2010, vol. 38, issue 11, 6804-6819

Abstract: This article evaluates the first year of the Section 1603 Treasury cash grant program, which enables renewable power projects in the US to elect cash grants in lieu of the federal tax credits that are otherwise available. To date, the program has been heavily subscribed, particularly by wind power projects, which had received 86% of the nearly $2.6 billion in grants that had been disbursed as of March 1, 2010. As of that date, 6.2Â GW of the 10Â GW of new wind capacity installed in the US in 2009 had applied for grants in lieu of production tax credits. Roughly 2.4Â GW of this wind capacity may not have otherwise been built in 2009 in the absence of the grant program; this 2.4Â GW may have supported approximately 51,600 short-term full-time-equivalent (FTE) gross job-years in the US during the construction phase of these wind projects, and 3860 long-term FTE gross jobs during the operational phase. The program's popularity stems from the significant economic value that it provides to renewable power projects, relative to the otherwise available tax credits. Although grants reward investment rather than efficient performance, this evaluation finds no evidence at this time of either widespread "gold-plating" or performance problems.

Keywords: Wind; power; Cash; versus; tax; incentives; Financing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00518-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:11:p:6804-6819

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().