Biden infrastructure plan targets electric cars

The president’s plans, part of a $2.25-trillion infrastructure and stimulus blueprint he is set to unveil in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, are meant to catalyze investments in a clean energy economy and encourage low-emission technology necessary to constrain global warming.

Biden’s initiative would give a ten-year extension to tax credits that have been a boon to wind, solar and other renewable energy projects. His plan, which requires congressional approval, would also make those clean energy tax credits refundable -- a so-called direct-pay option that developers have sought as tax equity financing has dried up.

Backers of the extension argue the historically unpredictable nature of the tax credits have rendered them less effective and insisted that consistency is necessary to propel renewable power projects.

“It’s that type of long-term reliability that we need as industry,” Suzanne Leta, head of policy and strategy at SunPower, said in an interview Tuesday. “The stops and starts of the past should not be the way forward for this administration or Congress.”

Biden’s announcement could boost stocks in the EV and clean-energy sectors, both of which have slumped in recent weeks amid the investors’ shift from growth to value names. This market rotation, prompted by optimism about accelerating vaccination rates and a reopening economy, is heightening demand for beaten-down sectors like airlines and restaurants and hurting stocks that surged last year and are seen to be overvalued.

Tesla Inc., the bellwether for the space, is down about 10% this year after soaring over 700% in 2020, while many smaller EV names including Workhorse Group Inc. and Nikola Corp. are also lower. And the Invesco Solar ETF has lost 13% in 2021 after gaining more than three-fold last year.

Biden is also asking Congress to dedicate spending to electric vehicle rebates, charging ports and electric school buses in a quest to drive motorists away from conventional, gasoline-powered automobiles. Some $174-billion in government funding would go to the electric vehicle initiatives, according to a White House fact sheet summarizing the Biden plan.

Under Biden’s blueprint, Congress is also being asked to sustain tax incentives that encourage more motorists to buy electric vehicles. Those tax credits are currently valued at as much as $7 500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle. But Tesla and General Motors have already passed an existing 200 000-per-manufacturer ceiling at which the value of those credits phases down.

Biden is asking Congress to “give consumers point-of-sale rebates and tax incentives to buy American-made EVs, while ensuring that these vehicles are affordable for all families and manufactured by workers with good jobs,” the White House said.

Senator Debbie Stabenow and Representative Dan Kildee, both Michigan Democrats, are working with the White House and Democratic leadership on a plan to do away with the 200,000-vehicle ceiling. Another possible change includes better targeting the credit to middle- and lower-income motorists -- a shift that was part of the Biden campaign’s tax plans, according to the Tax Policy Center, which analyzed them last year.

Biden is also seeking an expansion of a tax credit that supports the underground storage of carbon dioxide, which is popular with both environmentalists and oil companies. According to the White House summary, Biden’s plan would revamp the carbon-capture tax credit so it benefits retrofits of existing power plants, technology directly capturing greenhouse gas emissions from the air and hard-to-decarbonise industrial sectors, such as steel and cement making.

Electric grid improvements are also on Biden’s agenda, which envisions the creation of an investment tax credit focused on electric transmission, as well as permitting changes to promote the siting of new power lines along roads and railways. The tax credit would help encourage the buildout of some 20 GW of high-voltage capacity power lines, according to the White House.