Maximizing financial benefits of investment tax allowances in renewable energy portfolios

ABSTRACT Policy makers offer fiscal incentives to encourage companies to invest in renewable technologies. This work considers generation companies that take advantage of fiscal incentives to minimize income tax. Thus, a novel mixed-integer linear optimization model that minimizes total tax payments of a company owning a portfolio of energy projects is designed. The model strategically manages depreciation, tax loss carryforward, and tax incentive use for minimizing discounted income tax. A set of revenue scenarios was employed to analyze model results. The proposed model yields tax savings between 8.2% and 19.2% of the company’s taxes. Tax savings are significantly larger for companies with a large generation portfolio; which represents a clear advantage over small generation companies. The proposed model can also be employed by policy makers to adjust future ITA policies by taking advantage of the anticipative knowledge of the optimal tax strategies implemented by generation companies.