MO solar energy companies want to extend renewable energy tax grant

KBIA | By Véronique LaCapra

Published December 19, 2011 at 4:37 PM CST

The Missouri Solar Energy Industries Association, or MOSEIA, wants Congress to extend the 1603 Treasury Program.

That program lets renewable energy developers get a cash grant in lieu of a 30 percent tax credit. MOSEIA executive director Heidi Schoen credits the tax grant program with supporting recent growth in the renewable energy sector.

“Right now, if it expires, it would shrink total financing available for energy projects by 52 percent in 2012, and it would stifle job creation and restrict the market's ability to leverage private sector capital to finance new domestic energy projects,” she said.

Without Congressional action, the tax grant will expire at the end of this month.

Science and Technology

Véronique LaCapra

Véronique LaCapra first caught the radio bug while writing commentaries for NPR affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C. After producing her first audio pieces at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies in N.C., she was hooked! She has done ecological research in the Brazilian Pantanal; regulated pesticides for the Environmental Protection Agency in Arlington, Va.; been a freelance writer and volunteer in South Africa; and contributed radio features to the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from the University of California in Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in environmental policy and biology from Cornell. LaCapra grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and in her mother’s home town of Auxerre, France.

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