Green Incentives Usually Help The Rich. Here’s How the Build Back Better Act Could Change That. – December 2021
Energy Institute Faculty Affiliate, Lucas Davis is quoted in Grist on how some tax credits may not be to every household’s advantage.
“’Clean energy tax credits overwhelmingly go to high-income households’ said Lucas Davis, a professor of business and economics at the University of California, Berkeley. According to a study by Davis and a co-author, the current batch of clean energy tax credits — which were started in 2006, with the Energy Policy Act, and expanded in President Barack Obama’s financial stimulus package — mostly went to the richest 20 percent of Americans. Between 2006 and 2012, the authors found, the top earners received about 60 percent of all the federal tax credits doled out for electric cars, solar panels, and retrofitting homes to save energy. For electric cars, the disparity was even more extreme: The top 20 percent of earners claimed 90 percent of the credits.”
Photo: grist.org