August 9, 2022 |
More wind turbines may be on Wyoming’s horizon, literally. The Inflation Reduction Act passed Sunday by a single vote in the U.S. Senate includes $369 billion to fight climate change and a tail wind of a tax break for the wind energy industry.
The push to accelerate so-called “green” energy will be felt in the Cowboy State through a continued crackdown on carbon production. Also tucked away in the 755 pages of government spending is a jackpot for wind energy companies. The bill makes wind tax credits permanent, not phased out as originally sold. Tax credits are also extended for solar energy.
The bill erases the 2016 phase-out of the wind production tax credit, restores the credit to the full value (2.6 cents per kWh) and extends it through to the end of 2024. The windfall does not stop there. The bill injects a new provision that allows wind energy projects that started construction during the phase-out to reap the full production tax credit if placed in service in 2022. A new “Clean Electricity” tax credit program allows the credit to live on to at least 2032, and perhaps beyond.
The takeaway: After arguing for 30 years that it can live without a safety net, the wind energy industry has found a way to make the 1992 temporary subsidies permanent.
Wind energy watchdogs say get ready. Just as the original tax credits pushed the wind energy boom in the early 2000s, the next generation of unlimited tax credits means land requirements will continue to grow. One analysis shows that based on published project footprints of recently sited wind projects in Wyoming, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado, new wind turbines will spread across 30 million acres (50,000 sq. mi.) by 2032. The wide open, uncluttered spaces of the American West may become a thing of the past.
Pictured above: Photo of an untagged eagle killed in August 2009 from Mike Lockhart’s presentation entitled “The Impacts of Existing and Proposed Wind Energy Projects on Golden Eagles in Albany and Carbon Counties, WY.” Photo by Mike Lockhart.
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