The ripple effects from your investment in clean energy transferable tax credits (TTCs) extend far beyond managing your tax liability.
Corporate Buyers
With your purchase of TTCs, not only do you provide financing support to solar, wind, battery storage, advanced manufacturing, and other clean energy projects, you generate an attractive return on cash, boost your company’s earnings, and reduce your effective tax rate.
Buyers yield a return on cash as they reduce their income tax liability by the face value of the credits they purchase at a discount. Additional timing factors can add further to the benefit. For example, a buyer could reduce estimated tax payments in Q2 and Q3 based on TTCs they pay cash for in Q4.
Buyers boost their financial statement earnings as they recognize an income tax benefit and a reduction to their effective tax rate when they utilize the credits. The net income increase recognized adds another layer of benefit to the decision to support the green energy transition.
Clean Energy Projects
From start-ups to long-established generators, clean energy projects across the nation are experiencing strong growth. Built-in incentives like TTCs attract corporate buyers from all industries who are looking to offset tax liability and help advance clean energy projects through their purchases of credits.
The market reflects that momentum. In 2025, TTC transactions reached approximately $42 billion, up 48% from the prior year. Roughly one in four Fortune 1000 companies now participate in the TTC market, another sign that these purchases are no longer considered a niche strategy but rather have become a mainstream tax planning tool.
Developers added more new utility-scale generating capacity to the U.S. grid in 2025 than in any year since 2002, and roughly $187 billion has been invested in U.S. clean electricity generation and storage over the last two years. Transferability is an important contributing factor to that activity. By opening project financing to any company with a federal tax liability, it widened the pool of investors a developer can turn to and lowered the cost of capital for building. Projects that once depended on a small circle of very large tax equity investors can now raise money from companies like yours.
The Planet
The U.S. has a long history of responsible environmental stewardship that has made our skies and waterways among the cleanest in the world. Continuing in those footsteps of successful policies, transferability is now broadening the scope of participants involved in helping the natural world remain a better, cleaner place to live.
The purchase of TTCs is a proactive strategy, not only to achieve short-term financial goals, but to make meaningful, lasting impacts, locally and globally, on decarbonization efforts and continued pollution and waste mitigation. As global demand for electricity increases, driven in part by new data centers and the broader electrification of the economy, corporate investment will continue to be a driving force behind the innovation and financing the clean energy sector needs to meet that demand sustainably.
People Everywhere
As the health of environments improve, so too does the health and well-being of the individuals and families who inhabit them. With every dollar invested in clean energy financing and generation, we move closer to safer, more affordable energy solutions and the opportunity for people everywhere to enjoy fresher air, purer drinking water, and the beauty of our natural world.
By trusting Smith Dierking to help your company achieve financial goals today, you’re also playing a part in taking care of the planet and its people tomorrow. We can work together to create a strategy where everyone benefits.