PTC Won’t Drop the Ball if You Don’t Drop It
May 17th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan
One more advocacy guest post of the day to keep clean energy advancing as fast as possible. This is comes to us from the Power of Wind / the American Wind Energy Association — it’s a repost of an email I recently received from the organization. Read it, Share it, & Take Action.
by Peter Kelley
While there is not a lot of legislation moving forward on Capitol Hill right now, we need you to keep in touch with your legislators and let them know that the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) urgently needs to be extended.
Congressional leaders are considering the possibility of extending some tax provisions earlier in the year than they usually do, as Congress is expected to have a fairly full agenda after the November elections. At least one of your elected officials is in a position to have particular influence on the timing of the PTC extension.
So, now is the perfect time to e-mail your legislator and make the case for the urgency of the PTC extension. I encourage you to share your story with your legislator. You can include these points as well if you’d like:
- The PTC has been the most effective policy to attract private capital and deploy wind technology in the US.
- With the PTC, the US wind industry has attracted over $15 billion annually in private investment to the US, and up to $20 billion in a single year, during the last five years.
- The industry has built out a significant domestic manufacturing sector, with nearly 500 U.S. manufacturing facilities producing wind turbine components.
- The wind industry’s uncertain policy future is causing job layoffs today, and we expect that 37,000 jobs will be lost by the end of the year without a PTC extension.
I’ll stay in touch with you about developments on Capitol Hill.
Thanks, as always, for your support.
Sincerely,
Peter Kelley
Vice President, Public Affairs
American Wind Energy Association
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