A senior official at Entergy Corp. said this week that the energy company believes a sweeping federal legislation package passed over the summer that includes tax incentives for nuclear power plants could bring value to its stakeholders.
Entergy is “optimistic” about the potential benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in August by President Joe Biden, company chief financial officer Kimberly Fontan said Wednesday during an earnings call with investors. The utility “expect[s] to see meaningful value” for its customers stemming from a federal production tax credit for nuclear plant operators included in the law.
However, Fontan cautioned that the overall value of the nuclear tax credit and other incentives offered by the Inflation Reduction Act depend on “volatile” commodity prices. “We will work with our retail regulators to flow the value of the production tax credits to customers in a manner that mitigates volatility on their bills,” she said.
A nuclear power tax incentive comes as Entergy’s own nuclear fleet is shrinking. The New Orleans-based company, which currently operates six nuclear plants across the southeast U.S., has shuttered and sold off several of its sites in recent years.
Most recently, the company in June handed control of Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station over to nuclear services company Holtec International. Entergy has also sold Indian Point Energy Center in New York and Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station in Massachusetts to Holtec for decommissioning.
Meanwhile, the new production tax credit is just one of the federal government’s current efforts to prop up the aging U.S. nuclear fleet. The Department of Energy is reviewing applications for the first funding round of its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credit program, a bailout aimed at keeping at-risk nuclear plants from shutting down prematurely.
