Political Quotes

“This is an amendment that eliminates the credits for wind energy. According to the industry itself, they are now competitive and they no longer need the subsidy we provide to them. As a matter of fact, quoting from their own material from the American Wind Energy Association: The state-of-the-art wind power plants are generating electricity at costs as low as 4 cents per kilowatt hour, a price competitive with many conventional energy technologies. This is without the production tax credit that would be extended under this legislation. The AWEA further projects by the year 2005 the costs will be in the area of 2.5 to 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour, just about exactly the range of the cost of production by coal or nuclear or other generation, or natural gas. This is a tax credit that is simply no longer needed. Since the Department of Energy Information Administration has analyzed that the RPS mandate in this legislation will only be fulfilled through additional wind energy capacity, we are just basically giving a huge gift to the producers of wind energy that would have essentially a monopoly on this new renewable power we are mandating.”