AWEA Blog - Sen. Grassley appears in video to urge extension of PTC

Mr. Grassley, a senior member and former Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee (which has jurisdiction over tax legislation), was the original author of the PTC, a provision that has been extraordinarily successful in encouraging the growth of a domestic U.S. wind power manufacturing industry.

In the video, he comments, “This production tax credit for wind energy is working, and should be part of the effort in Washington here to get more Americans working as well.

“As much energy as possible, both traditional and renewable, should be produced here at home to create jobs and strengthen national security …

“There is no reason to exacerbate America’s unemployment problem by letting this successful incentive lapse.”

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 119 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.

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