Feeling fuddish tonight, eh?
American wind power continues to ramp up in 2015
Policy stability critical so industry doesn’t face another cliff
July 22, 2015
Washington, D.C., July 22, 2015 — With 1,661 megawatts (MW) of newly installed wind turbines coming online during the second quarter of 2015 and more than 13,600 MW under construction, American wind power continues to increase its contribution to the U.S. electric power grid. The approval in May of Florida’s first purchase of wind energy, from a wind project in Oklahoma, added to the growing trend of Southeastern states purchasing wind power, as did the recent announcement of the first utility-scale wind farm to be built in North Carolina.
Building on that momentum, Congress also took a step in the right direction yesterday when the U.S. Senate Finance Committee voted 23-3 to extend the primary federal tax incentives for growing renewable energy as part of a larger tax policy extension bill.
“With a near-record amount of wind capacity under construction, this looks to be a strong year for American wind power,” said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). “However, to create longer term stability for the industry the full Senate and the House of Representatives must move quickly to extend the PTC and ITC. Hence the overwhelming bipartisan vote by the Senate Finance Committee yesterday to extend the PTC and ITC is good news for the 73,000 Americans employed by the wind power industry.”
The federal renewable energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), which has the option to be taken as an Investment Tax Credit (ITC) instead, is the primary federal tax incentive for wind energy. This incentive has helped drive more than $100 billion in private investment in the U.S since 2008, and has been instrumental in allowing the industry to lower costs by more than 50 percent in the last five years....
http://www.awea.org/MediaCenter/pressrelease.aspx?ItemNumber=7732
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