Posted on 05/27/2016 8:53:40 AM PDT by Lorianne
y all conventional measures, 2016 is a good time to be a wind developer.
Wind provided a record 4.7% of U.S. electricity last year and accounted for 41% of all generation capacity additions — well outpacing solar and natural gas, which each accounted for about 28%.
That growth is expected to continue after the five-year extension of vital federal tax credits at the end of 2015. But as they phase out in the coming years, the extensions now appear to lead to unforeseen trouble.
“The PTC has helped wind get to its current position, but a day of reckoning is coming,” Chris Brown, the incoming chair of the board at the American Wind Energy Association, said Tuesday at the trade group’s annual conference in New Orleans.
The wind industry is approaching a “valley of death” in the early 2020s, Brown said, as the tax credits phase down and utilities meet their initial emissions standards under the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
Even if the federal carbon regulations survive their court challenges, renewables growth is expected to drop in the early part of the next decade before plateauing out to 2030. But wind leaders who spoke at the conference said they are already devising strategies to allow strong growth to continue across the so-called valley.
Into the ‘valley of death’
Brown, the president of developer Vestas Americas, explained that current U.S. energy policies create a gap in support for renewables.
Under the extension package, the tax credits for wind phase down for five years before sunsetting in 2020. But the compliance period for the Clean Power Plan is not slated to start until 2022, and is likely to be delayed for a year or more due to a judicial stay applied by the Supreme Court as the carbon rules are litigated.
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later
“Unforeseen trouble” is coming?
Unforeseen?
Spending a dollar to produce twenty-five cents worth of energy.
Wind power didn’t “provide” 4.7% of our power, it generated it. Most of it went unused.
Prove your claim. Inaccurate.
*Across the ‘valley of death’: How the wind industry will cope without tax credits*
do they really mean tax credits or is it lefty code for subsidies?
Same thing. Tax credits are one form of subsidy.
wellll.. I could split hairs and equivocate but nah
Ask the GOP, it was the GOP controlled congress that passed what was called the Ryan Budget that extended the renewable tax credits.
Most windmills are located in GOP House districts. Most windmill component manufacturers are located in GOP House districts.
In the great republican state of Texas they spent over $7 billion on new transmission lines to transport wind power, but that is paid for by ratepayers, not taxpayers
Very simple.
It will die.
is it named after Paul Ryan, the one everyone hates?
But, but, I’m sure all these projects were required to post a closure/reclamation bond before construction was approved.
That’s what the mining industry is required to do.
Gee, kinda like the ethanol scam! It’s all politics, 24X7.
#EagleLivesMatter. Not.
Wind and solar have their place, but can’t come close to nuclear and fossil fueled plants in cost effectiveness.
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