On April 24, 2013, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives reintroduced a revised version of the Master Limited Partnership Parity Act (the MLP Parity Act) to the Senate and House. Currently, a company can qualify as a master limited partnership (MLP) only if at least 90 percent of its gross income consists of "qualifying income," including income form the production and sale of oil and natural gas, coal extraction, and pipeline projects.

The MLP Parity Act would enable clean energy companies to qualify for MLP status by expanding the definition of "qualifying income" to include income from clean energy resources, including wind, solar, biomass, municipal solid waste, hydropower, and hydrokinetic energy. The expanded definition would also include waste-heat-to-power, carbon capture and storage, energy efficient building properties, and biochemicals, and would allow for income from certain transportation fuels to qualify, such as cellulosic, biodiesel, and algae‐based fuels. A company could qualify as an MLP under the MLP Parity Act only if at least 90 percent of its gross income is included in one or more categories of qualifying income, as modified by the MLP Parity Act.

MLPs offer significant benefits to investors. An MLP is a business structure that is taxed as a partnership, but its ownership interests are publicly traded like a corporation’s stock. This means that unlike corporations, which are subject to two-layers of tax (corporate-level tax on income and shareholder-level tax on the receipt of dividends), MLPs provide for a single-layer of tax. MLPs do not pay taxes on profits. Rather, the income of the MLP flows through to its partners, who are taxed on their share of the MLP’s income at their own rates and who are not taxed on the receipt of cash distributions from the MLP. In addition, taxable income of the partnership is reduced by non-cash deductible expenses (e.g., depreciation and amortization), which typically provide a "tax shield" to the partners of up to 80 to 90 percent of the amount of cash distributions from the MLP (i.e., partners recognize taxable income equal to 10 to 20 percent of the amount of cash received from the MLP). The tax-deferred portion of the distribution reduces a partner’s basis in its MLP units and is taxed upon a subsequent sale of the units. In addition to the tax benefits, MLPs enjoy greater liquidity than non-publicly traded limited partnerships, since the MLP units are publicly traded on national stock exchanges.

According to the Senate sponsors, a main objective of the bill is to "unleash significant private capital into the energy market." Whether the updated MLP Parity Act will pass both houses of Congress, or become law, is uncertain. In addition, even if the bill passes, it also remains to be seen whether, or what type of, clean energy MLPs will attract significant investment. A common feature of current MLPs is that they have a steady stream of income, e.g. from oil pipeline operations, in order to fund regular distributions. How many clean energy companies fit the financial profile of an attractive MLP investment or whether investors will develop an appetite for companies that may not have the financial profile of current MLPs are other issues that will evolve if the MLP Parity Act becomes law.
of the Master Limited Partnership Parity Act (the MLP Parity Act) to the Senate and House. Currently, a company can qualify as a master limited partnership (MLP) only if at least 90 percent of its gross income consists of "qualifying income," including income form the production and sale of oil and natural gas, coal extraction, and pipeline projects.

• Requires 1% of cooperatives' retail sales to come from distributed generation (DG) and .75% for a cooperative with less than 10,000 meters;
  

• Expands the definition of eligible energy resources to include coal mine and landfill methane if the PUC qualifies the projects to be greenhouse gas neutral;
  

• Removes the additional RES credit for new generation built in Colorado after Jan. 1, 2015.
  

As a conversation starter at the Energy Commercialization Center's Energize 2013 conference, I had the pleasure of visiting Snowbird, Utah (my first time in the Utah mountains) and participating in the first effort to connect and build the Rocky Mountain regional cleantech ecosystem.  The Energy Commercialization Center at the University of Utah was one of five 2010 DOE EERE-funded Innovation Ecosystem Development Initiatives that will accomplish such activities as pursuing intellectual property protection for technological innovations; nurturing and mentoring entrepreneurs; engaging the surrounding business and venture capital community; and integrating sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation across university schools and departments. 

During the course of the two-day event, research organizations, companies and industry trade groups from Utah, Colorado and Idaho met to share best practices and ideas for policy, access to capital, and tech transfer among other topics.  My colleagues from Colorado included Dick Franklin, Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Cleantech Open, and Steve Berens, Executive Director of the Cleantech Fellows Institute, who spoke about Rocky Mountain resources for clean technology innovation and entrepreneurship. 

My session concerned best practices in cleantech policy and how policy can successfully drive job creation.  While the surrounding states are not yet as organized as Colorado, there's a lot we can do together to facilitate the cooperation to grow our clean technology industries.  One of the best parts of the program was meeting new partners like RenewableTech Ventures and Navillum Nanotechnologies that I can plug into Colorado's clean tech universe.  I look forward to future collaboration with Utah's Energy Commercialization Center and the ongoing energy conversation.