WASHINGTON — The American Energy Alliance joined today with 30 other organizations in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee urging them to oppose an extension of the wind Production Tax Credit. The letter comes as the committee prepares to examine a tax extenders bill. The letter reads:
“Choosing to extend the wind PTC further will only serve to place more burden on taxpayers. The projected cost of another one-year extension is $6.1 billion dollars and a five-year concession would cost $18.5 billion. The American people deserve a full airing of the cumulative economic impacts of wind subsidies.
“What is so dangerous about the wind PTC is not only that we are choosing to throw away money on a technology completely incapable of keeping the lights on, but the PTC is designed to harm reliable sources of energy like nuclear and coal through predatory negative prices that the PTC enables. The PTC is so large that it allows wind producers to pay the electricity grid to take their electricity and still make money.
“The PTC has been a failure for taxpayers and ratepayers. In exchange for tens of billions of dollars in handouts to wind producers, the states with the highest wind production have seen their electricity rates increase nearly five times faster than the national average. In fact, states with at least 7 percent wind power have seen their electricity rates increase at an average of 17.4 percent over the last 5 years compared to an increase of only 3.5 percent for the U.S. as a whole”
To read the full letter, click here.
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