Wind Credit Boosts Jobs at Low Cost

Wind credit boosts jobs at low cost

2:49 AM, Mar. 11, 2012 | 2 Comments

Stephen A. Smith

Written by Stephen A. Smith

Here we go again — another misleading rant by Sen. Lamar Alexander against clean energy. With political gridlock in Washington, a struggling economy and rising energy costs, we need solutions the American people can support that create domestic jobs, provide clean, safe energy, and lower monthly bills.

Wind energy is just such a solution.

It is disappointing that Sen. Alexander continues to drive a wedge between hard-working Americans who want to make an honest living. By calling for an end to the Federal Renewable Production Tax Credit for wind (PTC), he is effectively eliminating 37,000 American jobs and billions of dollars a year in private-sector investment. In Tennessee, this jeopardizes as many as 1,000 wind jobs at seven manufacturing facilities in Knoxville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Franklin. This is particularly troubling as wind energy represents one of the fastest-growing sources of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

More than 400 facilities in 43 states are involved in wind power manufacturing — a 12-fold increase over the past six years. As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes, "Wind turbine manufacturing is at the core of the multifaceted wind power industry. Because of the use of castings, forgings, and machining, turbine manufacturing is a significant contributor to U.S. heavy manufacturing." This is an American success story, with the PTC for wind driving it. Congress needs to extend the PTC and keep taxes stable and low on wind to keep this success story going.

The PTC extension bill now moving through Congress has 70 co-sponsors — including 18 Republicans. Numerous Republican

policy makers at all levels of government have also expressed support.

Extending the PTC is not a partisan issue. It is a manufacturing jobs issue, and jobs are only one of the benefits. The price of American wind power has dropped more than 90 percent since 1980, benefiting utilities and consumers. One prime example of wind's cost-cutting power comes from Clean Line Energy Partner's proposed transmission project, which expects to bring 7,000 megawatts of affordable wind power from the Midwest to Memphis. This power will cost around 5.5 cents a kilowatt-hour, cheaper than new coal and nuclear and competitive with new natural gas.

Sadly, Sen. Alexander's attack on clean energy comes on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the catastrophic nuclear tragedy in Fukushima, Japan. The senator's misleading information about nuclear power plants needing only one square mile of land fails to account for the more than 8,000 square miles now contaminated with radioactivity in Japan, which has displaced thousands of people.

U.S. farmers love wind turbines, because they supplement income and food can easily be grown around them. In contrast, some Japanese farmers cannot safely grow food due to vast areas of radioactive contamination from the accident. More than 90,000 square miles were contaminated after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, and some is still uninhabitable 25 years later. I'm confident in saying that more land has been rendered unsafe from nuclear power operations and uranium mining than is employed globally to provide renewable energy from wind and solar.

Wind power's progress is threatened because the PTC is set to expire. As families and businesses struggle, it's high time for Congress and policy makers like Sen. Alexander to focus on ideas and efforts that will create jobs, support clean safe energy, and get our economy moving again.

Stephen A. Smith, DVM, is executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.