Congress asked to extend Production Tax Credit for wind projects starting next year

The American Wind Energy Association is urging Congress not to phase-out federal incentives for wind energy, saying, Were already showing were a leader in innovation. Now were showing were a leader in addressing the countrys fiscal issues.
Denise Bode, AWEAs CEO, stressed that, Our number one priority right now is not putting the wind industry over its own fiscal cliff.
Congress must extend the wind energy Production Tax Credit for projects that start next year, to save an entire US manufacturing sector and 37,000 jobs that well otherwise lose by early 2013. Specifically we urge Congress to extend the wind tax credit for all projects that commence construction in 2013, as adopted by the Senate Finance Committee on August 2, on a bipartisan 19-5 vote.
Several wind energy developments in Vermont hustled to get projects up-and-running this year to beat the phase out of incentives, including the Georgia Mountain Community Wind project, which came on line just this month. The four turbine, 10-megawatt project, enough to light 4,200 average Vermont households, straddles Milton and Georgia. It will send all of its power to Burlington Electric Department.
In Vermont, the wind industry has been embattled over environmental, cost and noise concerns, with construction of future projects in question.
The Production Tax Credit (PTC), a policy with long-standing bi-partisan support, has succeeded in incentivizing an average of $15.5 billion a year in private investment in US wind farms over the past five years. It works by providing a tax credit of 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour once the electricity is generated, for the first 10 years that a US wind farm is in operation.
Led by Members of Congress who worked to help build a domestic wind industry, to the benefit of local economies and energy customers, the PTC has become an American manufacturing and innovation success story.
The result of AWEAs analysis specifies that the tax credit would start at 100% of the current 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour for projects started in 2013, and be phased down to 90% of that value for projects placed in service in 2014; 80% in 2015; 70% in 2016; and 60% in both 2017 and 2018, ending after that.
Source: AWEA 12.12.2012