Pilar Thomas Offers Insight for Marketplace Story on How IRA Can Boost Tribal Clean Energy Projects
Pilar Thomas, a Quarles & Brady partner who leads the firm’s Indian Law & Policy team, discussed how funding from the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) can spur tribal clean energy projects in a Marketplace story on the topic. Thomas is based in the Quarles Tucson, Ariz., office.
The Marketplace story, part of a series looking at the different ways federal funding could change the economy, focuses on clean energy efforts on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota and how the projects could impact the employment and poverty rates on the reservation.
Thomas explained how IRA funding can make it possible for tribes to pursue clean energy projects. An excerpt from the written version of the story:
Pilar Thomas, a lawyer at Quarles & Brady who practices in tribal energy and economic development, has been educating tribes about the IRA and other available federal funding. Thomas is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and also worked at the Department of Energy in the Office of Indian Energy during the Obama administration. For her, one of the most important aspects of the IRA is a change in the tax code that makes clean energy tax credits available to tribes for the first time.
“For-profit renewable energy developers have been relying on tax credits to fund these projects since they were developed in the early aughts,” Thomas said. “Tribes have never been able to do that.”
Tribes are non-taxable entities. No taxes means no tax credits, essentially locking tribes out of these federal incentives to build projects like wind and solar.
Now, with the Inflation Reduction Act, tribes can get a direct payment in lieu of a tax credit — worth whatever the tax credit would be.
In addition to making these credits available to tribes, the IRA also increases available tax credits overall. Before the law, a solar project could earn up to a 30% tax credit. Now, if a project meets certain federal incentives, it can get up to a 70% tax credit.
Thomas used the example of a $10 million solar project built by a tribe.
“That now goes from a $10 million project to a $3 million project, because Uncle Sam will write you a check for $7 million for your 70%,” said Thomas. “That will incentivize a lot of clean energy deployment on tribal lands.”