Ever.green adds 122 more Energy Communities to its IRA map

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentivizes building new clean energy in areas known as Energy Communities, where jobs are more likely to be moving from fossil fuel to clean energy. Building projects in these regions can mean an extra 10% Investment Tax Credit (ITC) or Production Tax Credit (PTC) bonus, which can enable additional projects to clear hurdles for investment.

We’ve discussed in detail the different ways a region can qualify as an Energy Community. One of those paths was retroactively updated by the IRS for projects built in 2023 and early 2024, expanding this support to 122 additional counties. In particular, all of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, home to nearly 30% of California’s large-scale solar1, now qualify as Energy Communities.

This was made possible by the IRS adding two job codes (NAICS 221200 and 237120) used to determine if enough people are employed in the fossil fuel industry to meet the threshold defined in the IRA. Ironically, these two job codes were ones that we expected to be included in the initial guidance and used in early versions of our IRA Map – we’re excited to add them back.

To this end, we have now updated our IRA Tax Credit Map available on our website to reflect the new energy community guidance. We are also notifying developers with projects on Ever.green in these new regions and will do so again once the IRS issues updated guidance for 2024-2025. Please also note that, as of the posting of this blog, the Department of Energy appears not to have updated their official mapping tool for the new guidance available on their Energy Communities homepage, so you may notice discrepancies if conducting a cross-check against that site. 

Ever.green stands ready to assist developers in maximizing the value of their tax credits - and monetizing those credits in our marketplace. Please reach out to marketplace@ever.green with any questions.

Disclaimer: Our IRA Tax Credit mapping tool and the estimates it provides are subject to change, may not be relied upon by taxpayers to substantiate a tax return position or for determining whether certain penalties apply, and will not be used by the Internal Revenue Service for examination purposes. The mapping tool does not reflect the application of the law to a specific taxpayer’s situation, and the applicable Internal Revenue Code provisions ultimately control.

1. Source: EIA-860 (data as of 2022)