U.S. House of Representatives bill extends Wind Investment Tax Credit for a year
House foregoes new tax credits for storage, offshore wind as it approves $1.4T spending bill
- The U.S. House of Representatives approved a broad spending bill on Tuesday extending tax credits for wind energy, which expire at the end of 2019, for another year.
- The House had proposed a wide-reaching clean energy package of tax credits, including new incentives for energy storage and offshore wind, and extensions for electric vehicles and solar. Those proposals were not included in the $1.4 trillion spending measure.
- On Monday night, House Republicans and Democrats agreed to a slew of extensions of other credits that had already expired, from biodiesel energy to geothermal. The bipartisan legislation includes credits for energy efficient homes and Native American-owned coal plants.
Dive Insight:
Renewable energy stakeholders were disappointed in the deal, having hailed the previous House Democratic draft bill as a crucial way to advance clean energy deployment.
The Senate is expected to pass the package, which includes an extension of a biodiesel tax credit, a key priority for Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa..............................
...................................The wind tax credit extension through the end of the 2020 tax year would therefore still create a sense of uncertainty for industry, she said....................
Read the full article here:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/house-foregoes-new-tax-credits-for...
U.S. spending bill holds win for wind energy, setback for solar
U.S. clean energy producers would get only some of what they hoped for under a massive U.S. spending bill unveiled late Monday, with wind developers getting more time to land a big subsidy and solar developers losing their bid to extend a key investment credit.
Under the bill, wind energy projects would be able to qualify for a 30% Investment Tax Credit if they start construction by Jan. 1, 2021 – as opposed to current law requiring them to break ground by Jan. 1, 2020 to get the credit, according to the amendment.
Capital Alpha Partners, a political and financial consultancy, said the amendment could benefit European power company Iberdrola (IBE.MC), which is hoping to build America’s first big offshore wind farm – Vineyard Wind – but is dealing with federal permitting delays.
Meanwhile, the bill would preserve a planned reduction scheduled to begin next year in an investment tax credit for solar companies, a setback for solar companies that had been lobbying hard for an extension.
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/12/18/u-s-spending-bill-holds-...
*************************************
Fair Use Notice: This website may reproduce or have links to copyrighted material the use of which has not been expressly authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available, without profit, as part of our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, economic, scientific, and related issues. It is our understanding that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided by law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Views: 154
Comment
-
Comment by Willem Post on December 18, 2019 at 12:20pm
-
That is a lot of rah rah on top of expensive wind and solar in New England.
https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/liquid-air-storage-offers-c...
Comments on Below Table
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-na...
Indirect subsidies are due to loan interest deduction and depreciation deductions from taxable incomes.
Direct subsidies are due to up front grants, waiving of state sales taxes, and/or local property (municipal and school) taxes. See URL.
An owner of ridgeline wind would have to sell his output at 18.8 c/kWh, if the owner were not getting the benefits of cost shifting and upfront cash grants and subsidies.
That owner could sell his output at 16.4 c/kWh, if his costs were reduced due to cost shifting.
He could sell his output at 9 c/kWh, if on top of the cost shifting he also received various subsidies. The same rationale holds for solar. See table.
In NE construction costs of ridgeline wind and offshore wind are high/MW, and the capacity factor of wind is about 0.285 and of solar about 0.14. Thus, NE wind and solar have high prices/MWh. See table.
In US areas, such as the Great Plains, Texas Panhandle and Southwest, with much lower construction costs/MW and much better sun and wind conditions than New England, wind and solar electricity prices/MWh are less.
Those lower prices often are mentioned, without mentioning other factors, by the pro-RE media and financial consultants, such as Bloomberg, etc., which surely deceives the lay public
Future electricity cost/MWh, due to the planned build-out of NE offshore wind added to the planned build-out of NE onshore wind, likely would not significantly change, because of the high costs of grid extensions and upgrades to connect the wind plants and to provide significantly increased connections to the New York and Canadian grids.
NOTE: For the past 20 years, Germany and Denmark have been increasing their connections to nearby grids, because of their increased wind and solar.
The subsidy percentages in below table are from a cost analysis of NE wind and solar in this article. See URL.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...
Values for 2018 are represented in below table.
NE Wind/Solar
NE Wind
%
NE Solar
%
Ridgeline
Large-scale
c/kWh
c/kWh
Price to utility
No direct/indirect subsidies
No cost shifting
18.8
100
23.5
100
Less cost shifting
2.4
13
2.1
9
Price to utility
No direct/indirect subsidies
With cost shifting
16.4
87
21.4
91
Less subsidy, wind
45% of 16.4
7.4
39
Less subsidy, solar
45% of 21.4
9.6
41
Price to utility*
With direct/indirect subsidies
With cost shifting
9.0
48
11.8
50
-
Comment by Frank J. Heller, MPA on December 18, 2019 at 11:30am
-
Time to remedy the exclusion of wind turbines from a full environmental impact assessment; who will sponsor it?
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
Not yet a member?
Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?
We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"It's not whether you get knocked down: it's whether you get up."
Vince Lombardi
Task Force membership is free. Please sign up today!
Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
© 2025 Created by Webmaster.
Powered by
You need to be a member of Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine to add comments!
Join Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine