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| Marita Noon |
On February 1, an urgent alert was sent to supporters of wind energy. It stated: “The PTC is the primary policy tool to promote wind energy development and manufacturing in the United States. While it is set to expire at the end of 2012 ... the credit has already effectively expired. Congress has a choice to make: extend the PTC this month and keep the wind industry on track...” The wind energy industry has reason for concern. America's appetite for subsidies has waned. Congress is looking for any way it can to make cuts, and the twenty-year old Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy is in prime position for a cut. It naturally expires at the end of 2012. Without action, it will go away.
The payroll tax extension will be a hot topic over the next few weeks as it expires on February 29. Wind energy supporters are pushing to get the PTC extension included in the bill. Whether or not it is included will be largely up to public response. After all, regarding the PTC's inclusion in the payroll tax extension bill, the February 1 alert stated: “our federal legislators heard us loud and clear.” In the December payroll tax bill negotiations, the wind energy PTC was placed on a “short list of provisions to be extended through that bill.” Wind supporters are worried—hence the rallying cry.
Due to a deteriorating market, Vestas, the world's largest manufacturer of industrial wind turbines, is closing a plant and laying off workers. Everyday citizens, armed with real life information gleaned from the wind energy's decades-long history, are shocking lobbyists and killing back room deals by successfully blocking the development of industrial wind plants in their communities. As it becomes widely known that actual wind energy contracts are coming in at three and four times the cost of traditionally generated electricity, and natural gas prices continue to drop due to its newfound abundance, states are looking to abandon the renewable energy mandates pushed through in a different economic time and a different political era. American Wind Energy Association spokesman Peter Kelley reports: “Industry-wide we are seeing a slowdown in towers and turbines after 2012 that is rippling down the supply chain, and the big issue is lack of certainty around the production credit that gives a favorable low tax rate to renewable energy.” All of this spells trouble for the wind energy industry. Read rest of the column here:
News New Mexico
All those billions, blowing in the wind
From KOB-TV.com - By: Stuart Dyson, KOB Eyewitness News 4 - The only absolutely mandatory piece of business in the 30-day legislative session is now almost a week overdue. It is the New Mexico state budget that will run state government and the public schools and universities for an entire year. The budget was scheduled, by law, to be voted on by last Tuesday in the state House of Representatives and then sent over to the state Senate. Instead it has languished in the House Appropriations Committee while lawmakers worked out a compromise. They reached agreement Monday morning, unanimously approving the budget bill and moving it along to the House floor, where it could get an up or down vote as early as Tuesday, but more likely on Wednesday. What held things up in the Appropriations Committee was a disagreement between Democrats and Republicans over how much power to give the governor to either cut spending, if revenues don't roll in as expected, or to cut taxes for small businesses if the revenues do come in. Read more
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