USA – NEW YORK Trends and Developments Contributed by: Marius Griskonis, Lauren Bachtel, Michael Rodgers and Diana Jeschke, Linklaters
ing two offshore wind leases off the North Carolina and New York coasts and committing investments in US LNG production and Gulf of Mexico oil and gas development. The Administration announced similar contingency agreements with offshore wind develop- ers with leases off the coasts of New Jersey, New York, and California. NYSERDA manages the delivery and procurement of offshore wind energy to the State, and selected pro- jects enter into contracts to sell ORECs to NYSERDA on behalf of the State’s electricity ratepayers. Due to federal actions and challenging market conditions, NYSERDA’s OREC solicitations have had mixed results, and NYSERDA did not offer a solicitation award in 2026 because of the uncertainty. In February 2026, NYSERDA issued an RFI seeking industry input on pre-development support, such as State funding, to build a “steady and sustainable pipeline” and to explore whether new or modified approaches to off- shore wind procurement could support new projects capable of advancing future offtake and construction. Data centre moratorium In July 2026, Governor Hochul established the first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centres and current incomplete permit applications for one year while creating a development regulatory frame- work. This comprises 50+-megawatt centres which must also have Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), specialised cooling, and cybersecurity systems and provide data storage, cloud computing, or content delivery. The Executive Order (EO) directs NYDPS to create a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) assessing potential environmental impacts and con- sider creating a Grid Acceleration Fund requiring data centers to front capital contributions to finance grid improvements and fund dedicated new clean energy supply. Additionally, DEC is directed to assess water withdrawal regulations. Meeting the Climate Act’s clean energy goals in a post-”One Big Beautiful Bill Act” world In 2025, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (the “OBBBA”) imposed significant changes to clean energy tax cred- its, sunsetting them earlier than previously scheduled
under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Invest- ment tax credits (ITCs) for certain technologies, such as standalone battery energy storage systems, were however generally preserved, while the advanced manufacturing credit was terminated for wind energy components. In addition, the Department of the Treas- ury guidance eliminated the “Five Percent Safe Har- bor”, which would have allowed solar or wind projects to rely on spending 5% of the project’s total CapEx by a certain date to establish when construction of the project began for purposes of claiming the ITC or pro- duction tax credit (PTC). If the aforementioned Treas- ury guidance survives recent successful challenges in federal court, such projects will instead need to satisfy the more subjective “Physical Work Test” to establish the date construction begins. Under the IRA as modified by the new OBBBA, PTCs and ITCs for wind and solar projects can be claimed for projects beginning construction after 4 July 2026 that are placed in service on or prior to 31 December 2027. The ITC is based on 30% of the basis of the energy property, and the PTC is generally equal to 1.5 cents (adjusted on a yearly basis for inflation) per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by the taxpayer and sold to an unrelated party, both dependent on prevailing wage and qualified apprentice rules. The rate of the ITC/PTC can increase up to 10% (for PTCs) or ten percentage points (for ITCs) for projects that are located in “energy communities” (ie, speci- fied areas associated with the fossil fuel industry or brownfield sites), meet certain US-manufactured con- tent thresholds, and/or are located in specified low- income communities. Projects beginning construc- tion or placed in service after 2026 will also have to contend with “foreign entity of concern” (FEOC) rules designed to prevent components and investors of eli- gible projects from being sourced from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The IRA also instituted a new ITC/PTC for hydrogen production, a new PTC for zero-emission nuclear pow- er production from certain existing nuclear facilities, and a significant rate increase for the existing carbon capture credit. While the new OBBBA exempted the ITC/PTC for hydrogen production from FEOC require- ments, it also eliminated the ITC/PTC for hydrogen
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