Inflation Reduction Act Lifts Prospects for Constellation Energy

December 20, 2022--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Timing is everything, goes the old saying. That's certainly true for Constellation Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CEG) (Baltimore, Maryland), which was created in early 2022 when Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ:EXC) (Chicago, Illinois) decided to exit electric generation and focus on its transmission and distribution (T&D) business. Overnight, Constellation became a clean energy merchant generation giant, with a portfolio of more than 32,000 megawatts (MW) of generation, anchored by nuclear power plants but also including wind, solar, hydroelectric and gas-fired generation.

Seven months later, in August, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which contained billions of dollars in federal production tax credits (PTCs) for non-emitting generation, including nuclear power.