The production tax credit for wind turbine powerplants is an ineffective incentive

Abstract

The US Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 1992 created a production tax credit of 1.5¢/kWh available for 10 years to promote certain renewable energy technologies, including wind turbines. This paper argues that the impact of the wind turbine production tax credit will be minimal. The argument depends entirely on the nature of the project finance structure used by the private power industry for wind turbine development. We show that tax credits can only be absorbed by equity investors if there is a large fraction of equity in the project capital structure. This raises the financing cost of wind turbine projects compared to conventional power technology, which relies on a large fraction of low cost debt. If the tax credit were paid as a cash subsidy, the capital structure could be shifted to low cost debt and financing costs could be significantly reduced.