This week: AWEA Blog - Senate tax chair optimistic about PTC extension

Mr. Baucus, whose committee in August endorsed a tax bill including a PTC extension, was quoted in the Billings Gazette as saying of the key incentive, “It will get extended, I think … Nothing is ever 100 percent [certain], but I think it will.”

At the groundbreaking, Mr. Baucus noted that property taxes from the wind farm will help to fund local schools and other projects, the article said. The Musselshell Wind Farm, located near Shawmut, Mont., will consist of 14 Goldwind Global turbines and generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 5,000 Montana households.

The PTC is an incentive that reduces taxes on the operators of wind farms and leaves more of the money they earn from electricity sales in private hands, helping to attract private investment not only in wind projects, but in component manufacturers, suppliers, trucking companies and more. 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 wind 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 110 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, 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 Des Moines Register, the Denver Post, the Daily Oklahoman, the Toledo Blade, the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Sun-Times, and The New York Times.

For more information on this article or if you would like to know more about what www.windfair.net can offer, please do not hesitate to contact Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net

www.windfair.net is the largest international B2B Internet platform – ultimately designed for connecting wind energy enthusiasts and companies across the globe!