IRA Energy Community Bonus Screener — 10% ITC/PTC Adder

Checks whether a project site's coordinates fall inside an IRA "energy community," which earns a 10-percentage-point Investment Tax Credit adder (sections 48/48E) or a 10% Production Tax Credit increase (sections 45/45Y). Built for clean-energy developers, tax-equity investors, and their counsel who need a defensible yes/no on the bonus before it goes into a pro forma.

How it works

You pass a list of sites (lat/lon, WGS84). For each one the actor runs a server-side point-in-polygon query against the two authoritative DOE/NETL energy-community layers hosted at arcgis.netl.doe.gov and returns one row per site:

1. 2024 Coal Closure Energy Communities (4,325 census-tract polygons) — a tract with a coal mine closure, a coal-fired generator retirement, or a tract that directly adjoins one. Every polygon in this layer qualifies.
2. 2024 MSAs/non-MSAs that are Energy Communities (901 polygons) — a Metro or non-Metro Statistical Area that meets both the Fossil Fuel Employment threshold and the unemployment-rate requirement. Every polygon here qualifies too.

A site qualifies if it intersects either layer. The query sends inSR=4326 so lon/lat points transform correctly against the NAD83 layers.

Not screened: the third statutory category, Brownfield Sites, has no single national polygon layer, so a "does not qualify" result here does not rule out a brownfield-based qualification. This is an informational screen, not tax advice or an IRS determination.

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 37.8, "lon": -81.5, "label": "Raleigh County, WV solar site" },
    { "lat": 44.29, "lon": -105.5, "label": "Gillette, WY wind site" },
    { "lat": 40.7484, "lon": -73.9857, "label": "Manhattan, NY (control)" }
  ],
  "maxAssets": 500
}

Key output fields

• qualifies_for_ira_energy_community_bonus — the headline yes/no; true if the site hits either category. Null if the coordinate was invalid.
• bonus_adder — 10% ITC / +10% PTC when qualifying.
• in_coal_closure_community, coal_closure_tract_geoid, closure_type (mine closure, generator retirement, both, or adjacency), coal_closure_county, coal_closure_state.
• in_energy_community_msa, msa_name, msa_type (MSA or non-MSA), msa_county, msa_state.
• determination_basis — a plain-language sentence you can paste into a diligence memo; determination_categories lists which categories matched.
• source_citation, disclaimer, error, checked_at.

A site in neither category returns a clean false row, not an error.

Who uses it

• Solar, wind, storage, hydrogen, and RNG developers modeling the 10% bonus into a project pro forma.
• Tax-equity investors, banks, and law firms running eligibility diligence across a portfolio.
• Site-selection and EPC teams comparing candidate parcels.
• AI agents that need a structured energy-community lookup.

Use as an MCP tool

The actor is callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, and others) through mcp.apify.com. It is a Pay-Per-Result API: pass coordinates, get back a structured eligibility determination with the census-tract GEOID or MSA name that drove it.

Data sources

Both layers are public, keyless ArcGIS FeatureServers published by the U.S. DOE / National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL 2024v1), backing IRS Notices 2023-29, 2023-45, 2023-47, and 2024-30. There is no API key and no scraping — these are the same layers behind the DOE energy-community mapping tool.

FAQ

Does a census tract adjacent to a coal closure qualify? Yes. The statute qualifies both a coal-closure tract and one that directly adjoins it; closure_type tells you which case applies.

What is the bonus worth? A 10-percentage-point ITC adder, or a 10% increase to the PTC, for a qualifying clean-energy project.

Why might a site fail here but still get the bonus? Because the Brownfield Site category is not part of this screen.

Is this tax advice? No. Confirm against current IRS guidance and the DOE mapping tool, and consult a tax advisor before claiming the credit.