Title 26 › Subtitle Subtitle A— Income Taxes › Chapter 1— NORMAL TAXES AND SURTAXES › Subchapter A— Determination of Tax Liability › Part IV— CREDITS AGAINST TAX › Subpart D— Business Related Credits › § 45X
If you make clean-energy parts in the United States (or a U.S. possession) and sell them to an unrelated buyer as part of your business, you can claim a tax credit for each part you produce and sell. The parts that qualify are solar components, wind components, inverters, battery components, and a long list of critical minerals. A sale to a related company can count too if you elect to treat it as a sale to an unrelated person, and a part counts as sold if it is built into another qualifying part that is then sold. Parts made at a factory that already claimed the section 48C investment credit do not qualify. Each part has its own credit amount. For solar: 4 cents per watt for a photovoltaic cell, $12 per square meter for a photovoltaic wafer, $3 per kilogram for solar grade polysilicon, 40 cents per square meter for a polymeric backsheet, 7 cents per watt for a solar module, 87 cents per kilogram for a torque tube, and $2.28 per kilogram for a structural fastener. For wind: per watt of the turbine the part is built for, 2 cents for a blade, 5 cents for a nacelle, 3 cents for a tower, and 2 cents (fixed platform) or 4 cents (floating platform) for an offshore wind foundation; a vessel built or retrofitted for offshore wind work earns 10 percent of its sales price. Inverters earn between 0.25 cents and 11 cents per watt depending on type — for example, 6.5 cents for a residential inverter and 11 cents for a microinverter. For batteries, the credit is 10 percent of your production costs for electrode active materials, $35 per kilowatt-hour for a battery cell, and $10 per kilowatt-hour for a battery module ($45 if the module does not use battery cells). Battery cells and modules must meet minimum size and energy-density rules, and the credited capacity is capped at a 100-to-1 ratio of storage capacity to maximum discharge power. For critical minerals — like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and dozens of others that meet purity or conversion standards — the credit is 10 percent of production costs, or 2.5 percent for metallurgical coal used in steelmaking. The credit is phasing out. For most parts, you get the full amount through 2029, then 75 percent for sales in 2030, 50 percent in 2031, 25 percent in 2032, and nothing after December 31, 2032. Critical minerals (other than metallurgical coal) phase out a year later: 75 percent in 2031, 50 percent in 2032, 25 percent in 2033, and nothing after December 31, 2033. Two cutoffs come sooner: wind energy components earn no credit if produced and sold after December 31, 2027, and metallurgical coal earns no credit if produced after December 31, 2029. A 2025 law added foreign-entity limits. For tax years beginning after July 4, 2025, no credit is allowed if you are a specified foreign entity or a foreign-influenced entity, and parts made with material assistance from a prohibited foreign entity do not count as eligible components. The 2025 changes generally apply to tax years beginning after July 4, 2025, except the rule about parts built into other components, which applies to components sold in tax years beginning after December 31, 2026.
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Internal Revenue Code — Source: USLM XML via OLRC
Legislative History
Reference
Citation
26 U.S.C. § 45X
Title 26 — Internal Revenue Code
Last Updated
Apr 6, 2026
Release point: 119-73