The US Congress on Tuesday approved an additional five years for the solar-power investment tax credit (ITC), which is scheduled to end at the end of next year. It also provided a five-year retroactive extension of the production tax credit (PTC), which benefits wind-power developers and expired at the end of last year.
Extending the ITC has been one of the solar industry’s top lobbying goals this year and uncertainty over its future has been a drag on development. Solar companies got an additional boost from California, where regulators proposed upholding policies that promote the use of rooftop panels, erasing another big question mark.
“The holidays have come early for the solar sector,” Jeffrey Osborne, an analyst at Cowen & Co, said in a research note on Wednesday.
Both the tax-credit extension and California’s proposed decision would help attract new investment and carry the industry until solar can compete without subsidies, Osborne said.
“The two issues have been an overhang on the space for several quarters,” he said.
In Washington, the Congress agreed to let the ITC run through the end of 2021 as part of a broader budget deal. The credit would apply to projects that begin construction in that period instead of the current policy that applies to power plants that go into service before the deadline. It currently pays 30 percent of costs, and is set to gradually decrease.
The PTC used primarily by the wind industry pays US$0.023 per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. It is set to be gradually decreased over the next four years and phased out completely in 2020.
The tax credit extension is expected to spur more than US$125 billion in new investments for the US economy, Solar Energy Industry Association chief executive officer Rhone Resch said.
“Members in both Houses have re-established America as the global leader in clean energy,” Resch said in an e-mailed statement.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure