Wind and solar credits end in 2027 unless construction began by July 4

Wind and solar projects not placed in service by the end of 2027 lose the federal investment and production tax credits, said Heather Cooper, a partner at law firm McDermott Will & Schulte, speaking at a Canary Media forum. "Those credits go away if your project isn't placed into service by the end of 2027," Cooper said. The forum, sponsored by Intersolar & Energy Storage North America, was titled "Hold onto Your Tax Credits: How to Get Ahead of the 2027 Deadline."

Projects that began construction by July 4, 2026 generally have four calendar years to reach service, putting projects begun this year at the end of 2030. That window is the exception to the 2027 cutoff: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, gave solar and wind projects one year to begin construction and keep eligibility, a countdown that closed on that date, Canary Media reported.

For allocators, the two clocks turn a tax question into an underwriting one. A credit's value depends on which deadline governs a given project and on the record a developer can produce to show construction began before July 4, 2026 and service followed within four years. A project that missed the begin-construction window and cannot reach service by the end of 2027 would lose the credits, Cooper said.

One analysis published after the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August 2022 projected an additional 155 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity by 2030 and more than $270 billion in additional investment. The IRA gave developers what Canary Media described as a decade of reliable access to the ITC and PTC. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act sharply shortened that timeline and tightened the qualification rules. Canary Media reported that the law was expected to crush clean-energy growth and did not, but that its immediate effect was confusion over who still qualifies, for how long and what companies must show.

The hard dates make claiming the credits look like a black-and-white matter, and Canary Media reported that they are not: the definitions of "placed in service" and "begin construction" leave room for interpretation. The IRS lists five factors it considers in deciding whether a project qualifies, according to the report.