Rural electric cooperatives want Republicans to preserve the parts of the Inflation Reduction Act that benefit clean energy projects, the head of the industry’s influential trade group told POLITICO’s E&E News.
“Let’s take a nuanced approach to the IRA instead of an all or none approach,” National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson said in an interview. “There are components to it that represent important investments in rural America, where our democratically elected utilities, that are governed by the consumers and owned by the consumers they serve, have made decisions within their community that this is an investment they want to pursue.”
The position is notable, considering electric cooperatives tend to serve overwhelmingly Republican communities in rural parts of the country. NRECA has resisted the Biden administration’s efforts to shutter coal plants, suing EPA over its plan to limit greenhouse gas regulations from power plants.
But the trade group hopes that parts of President Joe Biden’s signature climate law stay in place. The law included so-called direct pay provisions that enabled cooperatives and other nonprofit power companies to access renewable energy tax credits for the first time. Previously, those credits were only available to for-profit power companies, which were able to utilize their tax liability to qualify for the subsidies.
