By Dave DeWitte
The Gazette
dave.dewitte@gazettecommunications.com
The $790 million compromise stimulus bill should help get the nation’s wind industry moving again, industry leaders said this week.
The bill included a three-year extension of the production tax credit, which provides an economic incentive to wind developers to invest in new wind farms. It also funds a new grant program to finance up to 30 percent of projects that are not able to benefit from the wind tax credit, and a loan guarantee program.
Backers of the bill include Clipper Windpower, which recently laid off close to 90 employees at its Cedar Rapids wind turbine plant because customers were not able to obtain financing.
Douglas Pertz, Clipper’s CEO, said the three-year extension of the production tax credit is key for the industry’s growth, because previous one-year extensions haven’t provided a long enough window of certainty for project financing.
“We can now plan better,” Pertz said.
The $7.5 billion loan guarantee program should help “prime the pump” for project financing in tight credit markets, Pertz added.
The American Wind Energy Association also praised the agreement.
“The renewable energy provisions in the final bill will stimulate economic and job growth in the wind industry,” said Greg Whetstone, the association’s senior director of governmental affairs. He called the bill a “a critical down payment on long-term policies needed to meet the President’s ambitious renewable energy goals, enhance America’s energy security, grow our economy and reduce global warming pollution.”
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sometimes referred to as the father of the wind energy tax credit, reportedly favored an even longer five-year extension of the credit.
Pertz said the stimulus bill doesn’t solve all of the wind industry’s challenges, but certainly helps. He said it could take all of 2009 for the impact of the bill and other federal interactions to begin to thaw financial markets enough that business gets back up to last year’s levels at Clipper.
An energy bill expected to come up before Congress this spring could further improve the prospects for green energy, Pertz added.
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