Copyright 2001 The Seattle Times Company The Seattle
Times
October 27, 2001, Saturday Fourth
Edition
SECTION: ROP ZONE; Local News; Pg. B1
LENGTH: 632 words
HEADLINE: Sunset nears for wind-farm tax credit With
focus on war, renewal not certain
BYLINE: Kevin
Galvin; Seattle Times Washington Bureau
DATELINE: Washington
BODY: WASHINGTON A tax credit designed to promote wind power expires this
year and clean-energy advocates are concerned that Congress may not find a way
to extend it before lawmakers end this difficult session.
Failure to extend the wind-power tax incentive would have direct
implications in the Pacific Northwest, where improving technology has led to
increased interest in turbines turned by the power of the zephyrs.
"There would be tremendous disruption in the market for
this new technology," said Randall Swisher, executive director of the American
Wind Energy Association.
The credit
grants a 1.7 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit for new wind-power
facilities for the first 10 years of a plant's operations. It expires Dec. 31.
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) officials say
that several current developments, as well as its program to buy into 1,000
megawatts of new wind-power projects, would be jeopardized.
Wind power represents a tiny fraction of the nation's power supply, but
wind farms are cheaper to bring online than new coal or nuclear plants and, with
the credit, they are competitive with new gas facilities.
"It would have a huge effect on our ability to do additional wind,"
said BPA spokesman George Darr. "We told the developers from the very beginning
that our ability depended on renewal of the production tax credit because of the
huge impact on the price."
In addition to the 1,000
megawatts worth of proposals BPA is considering for future development, several
projects already under way could be stalled if the tax credit failed, according
to Darr.
Those include a wind farm in Condon, Ore., and
the Maiden project in Yakima and Benton counties. The 300-megawatt Stateline
Wind Project along the Oregon-Washington border is expected to be online before
the end of the year and therefore would qualify before the credit expires.
Originally, lawmakers were looking at energy bills in both
the House and the Senate as logical vehicles for a five-year extension. But work
on a comprehensive energy package was bogging down in the Senate before Sept. 11
and has been all but abandoned in the aftermath of the attacks.
The anthrax letters sent to members of Congress shuttered lawmakers'
office buildings for several days, complicating efforts to coordinate work on an
extension.
Congress plans to adjourn before
Thanksgiving, but still must complete work on its annual appropriations bills as
well as measures crafted in response to terrorism.
The
Republican-controlled House included a two-year extension in the
economic-stimulus package it passed Wednesday. But that bill's emphasis on tax
cuts and credits was expected to draw opposition in the Senate, where the
Democrats in charge are pushing for worker relief.
Sen.
Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, did offer an
amendment this week to extend all expiring credits for one year.
But Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-Mont., one of wind power's leading proponents
in Congress, warned that a short-term fix would undermine confidence in wind
projects and lead to a "boom and bust cycle."
"Many
wind developers will not move ahead with new wind energy projects unless we
provide them with assurances that if they build and purchase equipment, secure
financing, obtain environmental permits and take other steps needed to bring a
new wind facility on line, that they will be able to access the production tax
credit," Dorgan said in letter to Baucus that was circulating among senators.
The American Wind Energy Association predicts that wind
power will grow by 100,000 megawatts over the next 20 years. Still, that would
represent just 6 percent of the nation's power supply.
Kevin Galvin can be reached at 206-464-8550 or
kgalvin@seattletimes.com.
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