The U.S. Department of Treasury announced today that it has begun accepting applications for grants in lieu of tax credits under section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). ARRA permits an applicant to receive a Treasury Department grant instead of claiming investment tax credits (ITCs) or production tax credits (PTCs) for certain renewable energy property. The Treasury Department expects to pay out $3 billion for about 5,000 projects generating power from solar, wind, biomass and other sources.
To be eligible for a grant, the property must be placed in service in 2009 or 2010, or if construction starts in 2009 or 2010, must be placed in service by the end of 2012 (for wind), 2013 (for biomass, geothermal and other resources) or 2016 (for solar). The grant amount is typically equal to the amount of the ITC for which the project owner would otherwise have qualified (for example, generally 30% of the qualified cost of the project). For more details on the grant program, please see our client alert of July 10, 2009: http://www.troutmansanders.com/recoverygrants/
Applications may only be submitted online, and the Treasury Department has enabled the online application form. Treasury has also provided a form for obtaining an accountant’s certification for any project that has a cost basis greater than $500,000, or for which the requested grant payment exceeds $1 million. For applicants who want to assign grant payments to another person, the Treasury Department provides a notice of assignment form and a link to register with the Central Contractor Registration, which is required to qualify for the grant.
To review the online Treasury Department application and other forms, see http://www.treas.gov/recovery/1603.shtml.
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