Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

House Democrats Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California may have been hoping for a little more unity yesterday when they billed their briefing in Longworth House Office Building as the “End of Climate Change Skepticism.”

Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes. The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 othersolar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009.

The New York Times led today’s edition with a story that got it wrong on wind power. Here’s why:

Biofuels and wind power are having the biggest new impact in American power generation, according to a report released today by the U.S. Energy Department. Consumption of biofuels has risen 16-fold since 2000 and wind power use has seen an eight-fold increase during the same period.

U.S. wind turbine sales may dry up in 2013 unless lawmakers extend tax credits supporting the market beyond the end of next year, said Vestas Wind Systems A/S Chief Executive Officer Ditlev Engel.

Energy development capitalizing on the high winds in the area — which quickly turned sunshine to chill rain one afternoon in late October — has injected sluggish rural communities with new economic lifeblood. More than one local resident has called it the “windfall,” and it has bestowed hundreds of millions of dollars on West Texas schools.

Former lawmaker, FERC chairman to lead new Bipartisan Policy Center panel

Vestas Wind Systems forecast lower sales and profit margins in the next four years and said it would lay off workers at its American factories at the end of 2012 if the United States doesn’t renew the renewable energy production tax credit.

The production tax credit for renewable energy projects doesn’t expire for another year, but supporters are gearing up for a year-long fight in a presidential election cycle to win a four-year extension.

Lawmakers are poised to introduce a bipartisan bill extending a key federal incentive for wind energy developers through 2016. It’s emerging during a stormy debate over renewable energy subsidies and as lawmakers struggle to identify massive spending cuts before year’s end.