Posts

Half of the Missing Tax Rules Are Out

Image
  The Treasury Department published long-awaited guidance for claiming the clean energy tax credits on Thursday, ending the state of limbo in which project developers have languished since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last summer. Well, sort of. Trump’s tax law put new restrictions on many of the clean energy tax credits, limiting eligibility to projects that could prove they had minimal material inputs or oversight from a handful of countries labeled “foreign entities of concern,” i.e. Russia, North Korea, Iran, and, most problematically, China. The problem was that it was hard to suss out exactly how to follow these rules. The Treasury Department would have to provide clarification, or in the parlance of federal tax law, “guidance.” Without this, developers might unintentionally break the rules, get audited, and then owe the government a bunch of money — a risk that financiers are not keen to take. Now, developers have, shall we say, partial guidance. The FEOC rules have...
Post a Comment
Read more

New York’s Electricity Prices Among the Highest in the Country

  Albany, NY  — New York households continue to pay some of the highest electricity prices in the nation, according to  data  from the Empire Center and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.    In November 2025, the average residential electricity price in New York was 26.49 cents per kilowatt-hour, ranking 8th highest in the U.S. and exceeding the national average by 49 percent. Over the past 12 months, electricity prices in New York rose by 7.1 percent, compared to 5.5 percent nationwide.    Average residential natural gas prices were $17.95 per thousand cubic feet, ranking 19th highest nationally and 20 percent above the U.S. average.   Electricity prices in New York have surged since 2019, widening the gap between what New Yorkers pay and the national average.    “Electricity demand and prices are rising nationwide, but New York is seeing costs climb even faster than other states,” said Zilvinas...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Climate of Exhaustion

  Waiting for the world to end will exhaust you. Democratic zeal for the climate once ran red hot. Catastrophism produced the steam that powered the progressive engine. You may have been a little wobbly on open borders, or you may have been a little unsure about defunding the police. But you never doubted for a moment that the Earth had a fever and human activity was to blame. Now, in the bleak midwinter of Trump and ICE and Ukraine and AI, you’re a little like, eh, do I have to? Still? On Thursday, the Trump administration announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” the 2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. It was the legal basis for most federal climate regulation, allowing Washington technocrats to treat carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases as pollutants. The White House trumpeted the repeal as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” That sounds right to me. I’m no scientist, b...
Post a Comment
Read more

The EU’s plan to make electricity uniformly expensive for all.

Image
  Feb 11, 2026 ∙ Paid “The more storage you have, the more stuff you accumulate.”  – Alexis Stewart While doomscrolling  ZeroHedge  early Friday morning—as one does—we  learn  that  Finland’s foray into the world of wind energy isn’t going well .  Having invested to the point that wind is now the country’s second-largest source of electricity, residents are grappling with reduced supply and skyrocketing prices, with many forced to burn wood just to stay warm. Wind generation has all but  gone dormant  during an epic cold snap, made worse by the decision to skimp on expensive in-blade heating technology that could have minimized ice formation. Even without looking, we guessed that intermittent sources of electricity in Finland must now exceed highly dispatchable ones— a predictable point of pain where stuff begins to break . Sure enough, a quick check of  government data  and the  Statistical Review of World Energy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

US publishes interim tax credit rules meant to restrict China clean energy influence

  February 12, 2026 1 Feb 12   (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday ‌unveiled interim rules for ‌enforcing provisions in President Donald Trump's ​ new tax law that restrict companies from claiming federal clean energy subsidies if they ‌are overly   ⁠ reliant on Chinese-made goods.   The guidance, which applies   ⁠ to lucrative tax credits for clean energy manufacturing and   ​ electricity generation,   ​ has ​ been eagerly awaited ‌by solar and wind project developers and factory owners since passage of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act ‌last July.   The Treasury's   ​ Internal Revenue Service   ​ said the   ​ interim rules can ‌be relied on until   ​ it ​ proposes formal regulations. It is seeking public comments for ​ 45 ‌days for future guidance   US publishes interim tax credit rules meant to restrict China clean energy influence     This from Microsoft CoPilot:   🏛️   What Treas...
Post a Comment
Read more

Renewable Blackouts?

  By  Andrew Stuttaford February 13, 2026 Last year, Spain, Portugal, and a small part of France suffered a massive power failure. Jim Geraghty wrote about it  here  and  here . Geraghty: Authorities in [Spain and Portugal] say they still don’t know why the power failed , which is A) not reassuring and B) going to spur suspicious minds to conclude that authorities secretly  do  know why the power failed but don’t want to tell them. Those immediate insistent arguments that the blackout had nothing to do with reliance on renewable energy certainly seem to be driven more by political and reputation concerns than a thorough examination of the evidence. I wrote about this mysterious failure too  here , where I noted this: one central issue, as so often in this context, is intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow) and how that is compatible (or not) with running a reliable grid. [Bloomberg’s Javier] Blas quotes from a co...
Post a Comment
Read more