Give a 30% tax credit for first-of-its-kind clean energy technology
Energy and environment
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Tax credits are written by Congress, so the goal itself sits with government. Corporate behavior helps at the margin: the companies commercializing first-of-a-kind technology claim the credit, and their advocacy shapes whether it survives. InfluenceMap found two-thirds of corporate advocacy on the Inflation Reduction Act's climate and energy provisions was supportive, and Ceres brought 20 major companies to Capitol Hill in April 2025 to defend clean economy tax credits during budget negotiations. Shareholder pressure can align more corporate lobbying behind the credits but cannot enact them. Nothing but congressional priorities blocks such a credit: no documented corporate campaign opposes it, and business advocacy on clean energy credits has mostly urged keeping them, so the decision waits on Congress itself.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Energy & the Environment, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey October 2020
- US Corporate Climate Advocacy Going Into 2025, InfluenceMap, 2024-12
- Businesses return to Capitol Hill to champion clean energy tax credits as Congress debates budget reconciliation, Ceres, 2025-04
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates the investor campaign that asks companies to disclose and align their direct and trade association lobbying with the Paris Agreement, the channel through which owners press companies to back rather than undermine clean energy policy.
Reports and supports the climate lobbying resolutions its members and allied investors file, which won majority votes at several large energy and transport companies in 2021.
Filed climate and general lobbying resolutions at six large companies in 2022 and withdrew all but one after the companies agreed to report on their own lobbying and that of their trade associations.
3 campaigns on record
Report on the company's own lobbying and the lobbying of its trade associations, and show whether that lobbying aligns with the company's stated climate positions.
Result: Withdrawn after the company agreed to the request
JPMorgan Chase agreed to provide a report on its own lobbying and that of its trade associations.
Evaluate and report whether the company's direct and trade association lobbying aligns with the Paris Agreement goal of holding warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Result: 64.4 percent in favour
Similar proposals at Valero Energy and other companies were withdrawn after the companies agreed to improve disclosure.
Produce a report disclosing the extent to which the company's lobbying aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Result: 53 percent majority support, the first year such a measure appeared on Chevron's ballot.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.