This week: AWEA Blog - Wind power companies anxiously await PTC extension

Company president Rob Hach told radio station KMA in an interview Saturday that the PTC, which provides tax relief to wind farm operators based on the amount of electricity they produce, benefits companies like his, which offers wind measurement services. If the credit expires, he said, jobs will be lost: “If we don’t have the tax credit, then we’re going to have to be paying for it with unemployment. I would rather be working, putting money into the economy, than sitting there collecting unemployment.”

KMA also quoted Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Environment Group Clean Energy Program, as saying that layoffs are already beginning in the wind industry, which employs 75,000 Americans: “Causing this kind of turmoil and uncertainty in a market is completely unnecessary. There’ve been really no new orders for wind, and that is going to have a significant impact on jobs.”

The PTC provides an income tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of electricity production from utility-scale turbines. It is set to expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress extends it first. A recent study by Navigant Consulting found that extending the Production Tax Credit will allow the industry to grow to 100,000 jobs in just four years, while an expiration would kill 37,000 jobs within a year.

A House bill seeking to extend the PTC has 109 cosponsors, including 25 Republicans, while a similar Senate bill is cosponsored by seven Senators, including three Republicans. PTC extension efforts have received the endorsement of a broad coalition of more than 370 members, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Western Governors’ Association. A PTC extension also has the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Governors Association, and the bipartisan Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, which includes 23 Republican and Democratic Governors from across the U.S. A PTC extension has been endorsed by a number of newspapers across the country, including the Houston Chronicle, The New York Times, the Denver Post, the Daily Oklahoman, and the Toledo Blade.

Further endorsements of the wind energy production tax credit can be found under http://www.saveusawindjobs.com/about-us/endorsements/