Access our new Elective Pay Model 3.0 here. Access the updated Elective Pay Model 3.0 Report here. The Center for Public Enterprise (CPE) is pleased to announce Version 3.0 of its Elective Pay model. It allows users to model publicly owned hydropower, nuclear, and geothermal projects (in addition to the solar, wind, and storage projects […]

Read our report on public developers here. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) have greatly expanded the reach of the public financing of renewable energy through tax credits and public lending programs. The goal of these policies is to help reduce the cost of capital for energy projects by utilizing the […]

Revolving Loan Funds (RLFs) allow governments to speed up and reduce the costs of socially important investments by providing critical pieces of finance that private capital markets are unable to supply at an acceptable rate, while receiving sufficient enough returns to be self-sustaining. RLFs have a crucial role to play in accelerating the energy transition and catalyzing the potential of the Inflation Reduction Acts (IRAs) provisions to enable a greater public role in the energy sector. 

Access our new Elective Pay Model here. Access the updated Elective Pay Model Report here. In September 2023, Center for Public Enterprise (CPE) published the first iteration of our Elective Pay Model. The model is a free tool that allows users to analyze project-level financial considerations for state, municipal, or nonprofit projects claiming elective pay […]

A Model RFI for Engagement and Collaboration with the Loan Programs Office

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is criticized for "derisking" private investment by increasing the gains to private firms. The derisking critique argues that the IRA insufficiently disciplines private firms; it does not utilize legal or financial penalties which would force firms to undertake green investment and bar emissions-intensive investment. This paper answers that critique by providing a Post-Keynesian theory of capital expenditure.

The CPE Elective Pay Model is a tool developed in-house to help understand the financial considerations public utilities and other public agencies might face when making an elective pay investment in clean energy assets. Included here is report detailing the model, its assumptions, and results, a simulator tool (below) comparing tradeoff scenarios for the primary clean energy tax credits (Investment Tax Credit and Production Tax Credit), and the financial model itself.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a situation where it may be difficult in the near term for domestic supply of petroleum products to match domestic demand. This has led to record high gasoline prices. The use of strategic petroleum reserves has proved insufficient to bring supply up to the level of demand. But the other side, the demand for petroleum products, has not been directly addressed. 

While there is quite a bit of uncertainty about the future of the IRA, the clean energy tax credits appear to be the most robust part of the law. They have extremely strong, bipartisan interest groups behind them. In addition, despite being the biggest line item in the bill, their budget impact is small compared […]

This post was originally published in the the July 2024 edition of our monthly Capacity Factor newsletter. For the public sector to access all of the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment facilities, states and municipalities must develop or augment their legal and financial capabilities, including: filling out IRS tax forms, underwriting, project development, and strategic planning. […]

What happens to electricity prices when variable resources (VREs) like solar and wind become the grid’s dominant source of energy? Energy modelers have ideas, but no clear answers. Wind and solar are relatively unique compared to nuclear, gas, and coal systems because, despite having some upfront capital costs, they do not have fuel costs. This […]

The Senate’s near-unanimous 88-2 passage of the ADVANCE Act to speed the permitting of the new nuclear reactors is a bipartisan victory for energy policy. Yet, while the Federal government deploys massive resources to support new nuclear—including a generous tax credit and low-cost loans—and tries to streamline the surrounding administrative process through this new law, […]

It has been a big few months for transmission. On the heels of FERC Order No 1920, which overhauled regional transmission planning, Senators Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY) released the text of their permitting reform legislation, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (EPR), in mid-July. (See the detailed and one-page summaries, as […]

Entities seeded by the GGRF will have to change their strategy when governing the markets that they created: they will have to work to become public options that compete with and shape the behavior of other market participants. This is important not only because private investors may underbuild, but because they may deliver bad outcomes. Just because a market works does not mean it is not predatory or prone to faltering—look no further than rooftop solar.

There has been over a decade of advocacy by the Coalition for Green Capital and others for green banks, alongside proposals for even more comprehensive infrastructure and public development banking options. As a watershed moment in public policy, this blog explores some of the theories behind why the GGRF, and the green bank model, is necessary for clean energy investment and decarbonization in the US.

The Center for Public Enterprise (CPE) submitted comments on domestic content rules as they relate to the elective pay provisions under § 6417 of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). You can read those comments in full here.

This post is republished from the March installment of our Capacity Factor newsletter. Subscribe here. Mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM recently published 2025-26 estimates of “effective load carrying capability” (ELCC) that show gas plants carrying more load (a measure of electricity demand), on average, than any of the four battery storage options during peak energy demand events. This […]