Political Quotes

“I am delighted to join my senior colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Jack Reed, on the Mark Udall national economic tour of the renewable energy production tax credit, and I am delighted that daily tour has touched on Rhode Island today. This renewable energy production tax credit is a vital part of our energy security strategy. It is pretty simple. It provides a per- kilowatt hour corporate tax credit for energy that is produced by various clean energy systems, such as wind, biomass, hydro, or geothermal. It makes a lot of sense. We need to do it. The problem is that it expires at the end of this year. And given the way that wind, biomass, solar, and other such projects have to be financed in advance and built over time, the market effect of the expiration of this production tax credit at the end of this year is already being felt in projects that are not going forward now or are under a cloud right now because of the uncertainty we are creating. We know what happens when we allow the production tax credit to fail: The installations of this kind of equipment drop dramatically. The Department of Energy estimates that new wind installations will be virtually nonexistent next year if the production tax credit is allowed to expire. I don't know if there is a State in the Union in which people are not seeking to build wind energy to capture this free and abundant resource. All those projects will become nonexistent if this does not continue.…”