The present article is an important addition to the nonperturbative formulation of QED with x-steps presented by Gavrilov and Gitman (Phys. Rev. D. 93:045002, 2016). Here we propose a new renormalization and volume regularization procedures which allow one to calculate and distinguish physical parts of different matrix elements of operators of the current and of the energy–momentum tensor, at the same time relating the latter quantities with characteristics of the vacuum instability. For this purpose, a modified inner product and a parameter 