December 21, 2012
Minnesota

Wind farms fail to catch political momentum

By David Shaffer and Jim Spencer | Star Tribune | via www.registerguard.com

WASHINGTON – Geronimo Wind Energy recently won regulators’ permission to build two wind farms in Minnesota.

What happens next for the ventures depends partly on the political winds in the U.S. capital.

Right now, those winds seem to be blowing in the wrong direction for the projects. With the Senate and House struggling to strike a deal to avoid a fiscal cliff of automatic spending cuts and tax increases, chances worsen for extending a federal renewable energy production tax credit that expires Dec. 31.

Without the credit, experts think investors will be reluctant to put money into building wind farms, customers will be leery of signing long-term contracts to buy electricity from them and companies making parts for giant windmills will go out of business in states such as Iowa, Colorado and Minnesota.

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., favors extending the production tax credit, known as PTC. But he struggles to find a scenario in which a majority of his colleagues in the Republican-controlled House will agree.

“Wind energy is way down the list of priorities (of tax breaks) for extensions,” Peterson said. “I just don’t see how this gets done.”

That’s bad news for folks like Joe DeVito, a vice president for RES Americas, a unit of a large international wind developer. “Uncertainty means nothing happens,” DeVito said.

The production tax credit gives wind power investors a 10-year subsidy on a wind farm’s output that’s roughly equivalent to 30 percent of a project’s original cost. The tax credit has existed, off and on, for two decades, helping to build a wind power industry that powers more than 13 million U.S. homes.

The possible expiration of the credit comes at a tough time for the industry. It faces an array of market challenges – slack electric demand, competition from low-cost natural gas and some utilities questioning the need for new power plants of all kinds.

“Right now, the PTC is the immediate thing that is holding our projects up,” said John Ihle, founder of PlainStates Energy, a renewable energy developer based in Breckenridge, Minn., that has approval from the state to build three wind farms in the state.

Industry officials say it is difficult to negotiate power-sales deals until Congress decides the fate of the tax credit.

RES’ proposed Pleasant Valley Wind project near Austin, Minn., is the largest permitted project that hangs in limbo, facing many of the market challenges squeezing the industry.

“Utilities have seen a lessening in demand, and their desire to go out and buy new electricity is a problem,” DeVito said.

Xcel Energy, for example, projects a drop in electric sales in 2013, according to regulatory filings.

Even when utilities need new power plants, increasingly they’re attracted to those fueled by natural gas. With the tax credit, new wind farms can profitably sell electricity to utilities at 4 cents to 6 cents per kilowatt hour, industry officials say. While that’s a competitive price for power, it’s still more than the price of electricity from a new natural gas-fired generator.

“When you compare the cost of new generation, a wind farm is far cheaper than a new coal plant,” RES’ DeVito said. “If it wasn’t for all this fracking that was making gas very competitive, wind would be the cheapest.”