From the Haas School of Business of the University of California at Berkeley, June 2024:
Energy Institute at Haas working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes.
They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to review by any editorial board. The Energy Institute acknowledges the generous support it has received from the organizations and individuals listed at https://haas.berkeley.edu/energy-institute/about/funders/.
Abstract
Over the last two decades, U.S. households have received $47 billion in tax
credits for buying heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles, and other “clean
energy” technologies. Using information from tax returns, we show that these
tax credits have gone predominantly to higher-income households. The bottom
three income quintiles have received about 10% of all credits, while the top
quintile has received about 60%. The most extreme is the tax credit for electric
vehicles, for which the top quintile has received more than 80% of all credits.
The concentration of tax credits among high-income filers is relatively constant
over time, though we do find a slight broadening for the electric vehicle credit
since 2018. The paper then turns to the related question of cost effectiveness,
examining how clean energy technology adoption has changed over time and
discussing some of the broader economic considerations for this type of tax
credit.
....MUCH MORE (48 page PDF)