AWEA Blog - ‘Make opinion known loud and clear’ on PTC

That’s the Mason City (Iowa) Globe Gazette, editorializing Monday on the benefits of wind power to the Hawkeye State and the importance of extending the PTC.

Added the Globe Gazette, “[W]hen it comes to finding places to cut spending, we hope it’s mitts off the production tax credit that wind energy advocates say is critical to the industry’s future. Around North Iowa, the wind industry’s impact is obvious, with the giant turbines cranking out electricity …

“Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Steve King, both Republicans, joined congressmen from Colorado and California along with about 40 veterans who have found post-military careers in the wind energy industry [in a recent press conference] to push for renewing the wind production tax credit. Grassley says it doesn’t matter whose plan is used; it’s a matter of getting something done.”

Iowa has embraced wind power, with striking results: last year, nearly 19 percent of the state’s electricity came from wind, which generated enough electricity to power the equivalent of 1.1 million homes. The wind industry provides 6,000 to 7,000 direct and indirect jobs, pays nearly $20 million a year in property taxes, and pays $13 million to farmers and other landowners.

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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