Energy-Storage.news speaks with Nathan Picarsic, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, at the 2026 US Battery Asset Management and Solar and Storage Finance Summits in Garden Grove, California.
Changes to traditional tax equity structures and growing geopolitical tensions are fundamentally reshaping how renewable energy projects secure financing in the US, according to Nathan Picarsic, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a geopolitical and supply chain risk intelligence provider.
Picarsic outlines how legislative changes enabling tax credit transferability have opened up renewable energy financing to a much broader pool of capital allocators, whilst mounting US-China tensions are forcing developers to reassess their supply chain strategies.
Transferability expands capital access
The introduction of tax credit transferability created what Picarsic describes as a “secondary tranche” in renewable energy financing, allowing a more diverse set of capital allocators to participate in the market beyond traditional tax equity investors from major banks.
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“That generates this demand and potential that means a more diverse set of projects can also find their way to this different set of capital,” Picarsic explains. “You can have more risk-accepting capital backing projects that carry features that might have meant they wouldn’t have been able to receive financing previously.”
The expanded capital pool is enabling a higher pace of project execution whilst spreading risk across a broader base of investors, according to Picarsic.
This allows projects that might previously have struggled to secure financing to move forward, whilst creating a more risk-adjusted investment universe.
Domestic content versus speed to market
Developers now face a complex trade-off between navigating regulatory hurdles to gain domestic content tax credits versus importing components to accelerate project timelines. Picarsic characterised this as “a new type of consideration, a new challenge” for the market.
“Developers are ultimately looking at economic return,” he says. “There’s the timeline on which they need to deliver a project and generate liquidity for their upstream capital formation.”
Many developers are currently in a “sit and wait situation” seeking maximum certainty before proceeding, though some are moving forward where the economic delta between domestic and imported components justifies faster execution.
However, Picarsic suggests the political and regulatory environment is pushing towards models that support domestic manufacturing capacity, pointing to challenges in the data centre space as an early signal of these political realities.
“There’s both leadership in US government as well as popular support on economic development, but a certain type of economic development,” he says. “People need electrification to deliver all sorts of common goods that people want across the country, and we need to decrease emissions in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of places across the country.”
Credit expiry timelines versus policy direction
With solar investment tax credits (ITCs) set to expire at the end of 2027 and storage credits running to 2033, developers face strategic decisions about capital allocation sequencing.
Picarsic identifies a current rush to lock in anything that can be safe harboured or imported and put into service as quickly as possible, independent of credit expiry dates.
However, he argues that credit timelines are less important than the underlying bipartisan policy push towards stronger domestic and allied supply chains for critical infrastructure.
“Investors, developers, suppliers who understand and build their businesses around that logic are likely the ones that are going to win out by the time we’re to 2037. There’s a capex story that you’ll see playing out toward that trajectory that is a little bit indifferent toward the 2027 or 2033 deadlines,” he says.
FCC inverter ban and implementation challenges
Regarding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 28 July equipment bans targeting Chinese inverters and other components, Picarsic emphasises that implementation details will prove critical.
He suggestes successful models would pair bans with white lists or approved vendor lists, where suppliers clearly documenting their supply chains and firmware can guarantee compliance upfront, lessening the burden on broader markets dependent on cost-competitive inputs.
“You end up in some place where domestic and some whitelisted set of things can substitute for where risks exist,” he says.
Picarsic notes that subnational regulations may carry as much or more weight than federal import bans, pointing to authorities already on the books in Texas’s ERCOT market that could be leveraged to accomplish or supersede the scope of potential FCC bans.
“That’s the space that I would look for the actual pacing of timing enforcement,” he notes. “It might be from state, local authorities that have their own set of regulatory approaches and legal authorities.”
Long-term US-China trajectory
On the broader question of how the US-China relationship might evolve, Picarsic—who serves as a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank known for its hawkish foreign policy positions—offeres a notably pessimistic outlook on bilateral relations.
Picarsic characterises the long-term trajectory as one of structural divergence driven by fundamental disagreements in worldviews, representing a more confrontational perspective than some mainstream analysts.
“Over the long run of history, that’s the direction that things head,” he says. “The higher tension dynamic is the one that is going to rule the day and define the relationship over the next 10 to 20 years.”
Whilst acknowledging the possibility of short-term warming or dialling back of aggressive announcements, Picarsic advises market participants to map their expectations and return timelines against a trajectory of increasing competition, tension and decoupling of ties between the two nations.
“Depending on where you sit in these supply chains or in interaction with these supply chains, I think it’s prudent to map out your expectations and return timelines against the trajectory that that relationship might take,” he says.
