Tax Analysts provides news, analysis, and commentary on tax-related topics, including energy taxation, which can encompass various incentives to use a particular type of energy such as the oil depletion allowance and expensing of oil and gas development and drilling costs, or credits for using alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind power.

Credits include the alcohol fuels credit under section 40, the biodiesel fuels credit under section 40A, the enhanced oil recovery credit under section 43, the renewable electricity production credit under section 45, the low-sulfur diesel fuel production credit under section 45H, the marginal oil and gas well production credit under section 45I, the advanced nuclear power facility production credit under section 45J, the nonconventional source production credit under section 45K, the new energy efficient home credit under section 45L, the energy-efficient appliance credit under section 45M, the carbon dioxide sequestration credit under section 45Q, the energy credit under section 48, the qualifying advanced coal project credit under section 48A, the qualifying gasification project credit under section 48B, and the qualifying advanced energy project credit under section 48C.

The energy credit for any tax year is the energy percentage of the basis of each energy property placed in service during the tax year. Energy property is equipment that uses solar energy to generate electricity, to heat or cool a structure or to provide solar process heat; equipment that uses solar energy to illuminate the inside of a structure using fiber-optic distributed sunlight; equipment used to produce, distribute, or use energy derived from a geothermal deposit; qualified fuel cell property or qualified microturbine property; combined heat and power system property, qualified small wind energy property, or equipment that uses the ground or groundwater as a thermal energy source to heat a structure or as a thermal energy sink to cool a structure.