The 2026 Clean Electricity Credit Is 0.6 Cents a Kilowatt Hour, or 3.1 Cents. Three Tests Decide Which.

The section 45Y clean electricity production credit is paid per unit of electricity, so the whole credit reduces to a published figure in cents per kilowatt hour. For calendar year 2026 the IRS has published two: 0.6 cents, and 3.1 cents. The notice carrying them, Notice 2026-47, appeared in the Federal Register on September 4, 2026 at 91 FR 56942 and was carried in the Internal Revenue Bulletin dated October 5, 2026.

Where the factor comes from

Section 45Y starts from statutory base amounts and adjusts them for inflation using the GDP implicit price deflator, not a consumer price index. For 2026 the IRS used 128.986 for calendar year 2025 over 62.707 for 1992. That ratio is the inflation adjustment factor: 2.0570.

The adjusted amounts are then rounded, and the two rates are rounded differently. The base amount rounds to the nearest 0.05 cent. The alternative amount rounds to the nearest 0.1 cent. This is why the published figures are clean numbers rather than the raw products of the multiplication.

Which rate applies

The difference between the two rates is more than fivefold, which makes the qualifying tests the most consequential part of the notice. A facility reaches the 3.1-cent rate by meeting any one of the following:

• Maximum net output of less than 1 megawatt.
• Construction began before January 29, 2023.
• The facility satisfies the prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements.

The three are alternatives, not conditions to be stacked. A small facility does not have to meet the wage and apprenticeship rules to earn the higher rate, and a large facility that does meet them does not need to be small.

What the figures do and do not settle

The notice is a pricing document. It fixes the per-kilowatt-hour amounts for electricity produced and sold during 2026 and nothing else. Whether a given facility is a qualified facility, whether its output was sold to an unrelated person, and whether its wage and apprenticeship documentation holds up are separate questions governed by other parts of the statute and the regulations under it.

Why it is published every year

Because the adjustment is tied to a deflator that is itself revised, the factor and the rates have to be republished for each calendar year. The number that matters for a 2026 tax position is the one in Notice 2026-47, and only for electricity produced and sold in 2026.