Hope springs eternal, but reality likely to intrude — and soon

Bledsoe noted that Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who will be leading the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the 113th Congress, have repeatedly stressed their close personal friendship and their desire to make the next Congress a productive one on the panel. “There’s every reason to believe that an energy bill can move forward,” at least in the Senate, he said. “It strikes me that a package that included increased access to domestic oil and gas reserves in tandem with more robust energy efficiency standards could strike the right balance to gain broad bipartisan support in both chambers because both of those measures are good for the economy. A Wyden aide said the incoming energy chairman hopes for some successes in the new Congress.

“Senator Wyden isn’t going to give up trying to advance better policies, including overhauling energy incentives,” Wyden spokesman Keith Chu said in an email. “Given that those incentives were once again extended in piecemeal, short-term fashion, it’s even more important that Congress work on a permanent solution, to replace the boom-and-bust cycles and uncertainty that have plagued the energy sector.”
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With Congress at its back, wind power industry pushes ahead

While the eleventh-hour PTC extension will help keep the wind energy industry afloat, it did not ameliorate damage already done to an industry where investment activity shrank from robust levels at the end of 2011 to a near standstill by early December, when hopes for a stand-alone extension in the increasingly fractious Congress were nearly extinguished. In the ensuing months, dozens of wind power companies, including turbine, blade and tower manufacturers, scaled back or even shuttered operations in the United States in anticipation of the expiring tax credit. Vestas, the world’s largest turbine manufacturer, said yesterday that it expected a significant dropoff in wind turbine installations in 2013, even with the PTC extension. However, the industry will be stronger than it would have been if Congress had let the subsidy expire, the Danish company said. [ read more … ]

Wind tax credit is extended a year

A one year extension of the U.S. tax credit for wind power, part of the budget compromise Congress passed Tuesday, will save as many as 37,000 jobs in an industry that is expected to stall this year, the American Wind Energy Association estimates. The production tax credit was due to expire at the end of 2012. It will cover all wind projects that start construction in 2013.
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‘Cliff’ deal extends energy tax incentives

The one-year extension to the wind production tax credit delivers a big win for the industry that had made winning a PTC lifeline its top priority. The broad fiscal cliff deal included language extending the PTC deadline through the end of this year and modifying its requirements to allow projects to be eligible for the credit as long as construction begins by the deadline — a change that also benefits geothermal, hydropower, biomass and waste-to-energy developers that can claim the credit. The new language means, in effect, that wind developers have more certainty as they plan projects that would go into service over the next two years, because of the planning horizon inherent in such projects. Before the change, projects had to be “in service” and sending electricity to the grid before developers could claim the credit. [ read more … ]