Wind Energy

Sierra Club, BP Wind Energy agree: Extend the PTC

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune says it best: "It’s not every day that you’ll find me agreeing with an executive from BP, but Katrina Landis, the CEO of BP’s Alternative Energy division, was exactly right when she said last month that it would be a mistake to allow the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) to expire at the end of this year: ‘It’s a really compelling case of the government incentivizing the development of an industry … that is actually really working.’"

In a post titled "Let success breed success" for his blog at the San Francisco Chronicle, Brune notes that the PTC has attracted support from both parties, adding, "[T]he wind blows in both red states and blue states (actually, the red states might have an edge there), and the wind industry employs thousands of American workers — whose jobs would be directly threatened by letting the PTC expire.

"Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Because we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot by putting the brakes on both a growing industry and an important alternative energy source … "

A House bill seeking to extend the PTC has 90 cosponsors, including 20 Republicans, and has 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, while a Senate bill to extend it was introduced March 15 by seven Senators, including three Republicans. 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.

Further endorsements of the wind energy production tax credit.

Tom Gray, www.awea.org/blog