Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa announced furloughs of 165 U.S. workers last week, adding that it hopes to recall them once Congress renews the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC).

David Rosenberg, a spokesman for the firm, told Bloomberg bluntly, "The lack of a PTC is the cause for this action," explaining that it is not a situation that applies only to Gamesa, but to the entire wind turbine manufacturing industry.

Said the article, "Wind farms take years to plan and build, and developers are trimming orders now. Total 2013 installations may fall to 4.9 gigawatts from an estimated 10.5 gigawatts this year if ...

Read more

A vibrant domestic wind power industry not only creates a market for components to be used at wind projects around the country, it allows for made-in-the-USA products to be exported.
 
That reality was on full display recently, when 37-meter wind turbine rotor blades manufactured at LM Wind Power's plant in Grand Forks, N.D., began arriving at the port of Duluth, Minn., on tractor-trailers and were staged at the port's breakbulk terminal awaiting final delivery to Brazil. The blades will be used at IMPSA Wind's new CEARA 2 project in the state of Ceara in the northeastern part of the country, along the Atlantic coast. Departure was scheduled for last Friday.
 
North Dakota ...

Read more

In an article in today's Huffington Post, Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Clean Energy Program, calls for an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), which she says has been "wildly successful" in fueling domestic manufacturing of wind energy equipment.

Adds Cuttino, "Transparency, longevity, and consistency--TLC--are critical signals to investors and essential factors to increase American jobs, support businesses, and create renewable power.  While we dither, other countries are moving ahead, providing strong policy signals and incentivizing the growth of the clean energy sector in their countries. Even oil-rich Saudi Arabia understands the ...

Read more

Ozzie Zehner's new book purports to examine "Green Illusions" about several promising, clean new sources of energy. Unfortunately, Mr. Zehner's book perpetuates several myths about wind power that have been convincingly debunked through experience and careful study. Meanwhile it manages to ignore the continuing decline in the cost of wind energy, and sharp growth in capacity to the point that the nation is more than two years ahead of the growth scenario postulated in the U.S. Department of Energy’s 20% Wind by 2030 report. 



For example: he says that our society can't rely entirely on wind generation because we would have periods with no power. Hence wind is not a silver bullet. Well, who said it is?  In the Bush Administration's ...

Read more

While discussions about whether to extend the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) may at times seem academic in the halls of Congress, they will have very real consequences in Mitchell, S.D., according to Greg Von Wald, President of Mitchell Technical Institute (MTI).

MTI's wind turbine technology program has about 60 students who are hoping to find jobs in what has been a rapidly growing industry.  The question, according to Von Wald (who is also vice president of the South Dakota Wind Energy Association), is whether those potential jobs will be available once the students graduate.

Says a recent story in the Mitchell Daily Republic newspaper, "Von Wald said the tax credit would provide a benefit to the government, not a burden, because of ...

Read more

The Alaska Journal of Commerce reports that the 17.6-MW Fire Island wind farm being built by Cook Island Region, Inc. (CIRI), a native-owned corporation, will soon go online.

According to the article, "Roads, turbine pads and electrical infrastructure are nearly complete. Shore-side and submarine transmission lines will be complete by the end of the month. Construction is also under way for connecting roadways as well as an underwater transmission line from Fire Island to the Railbelt electric grid. Once completed, CIRI should begin producing commercial power before the end of the year.

"More than two-thirds of ...

Read more

Willem Post has an article on the EnergyCollective blog regarding wind power and emissions reductions.  The following was posted as a comment.

Unfortunately for Mr. Post, repeating a myth does not make it true. Regular readers of EnergyCollective have probably seen a nearly identical posting from Mr. Post almost a dozen times already. In fact, since everything in this posting has already been debunked, I'll just copy and paste the previous debunkings below. However, I would be curious how Mr. Post would attempt to explain away this inconvenient truth, which conclusively tests and refutes his entire hypothesis:

The Department of Energy collects detailed data on the amount of fossil fuels consumed at power plants, as well as the amount ...

Read more

The Boulder (Colo.) Chamber of Commerce has announced its support for an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), noting that the PTC "has driven more than $10‐20 billion in private sector investment [nationally] in each of the past three years."

The Chamber's statement came in the context of a recent energy roundtable, sponsored by the group along with the Boulder Economic Council and the University of Colorado-Boulder, at which Dr. David Danielson, Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), joined Boulder business leaders.

The Boulder Chamber said it has a history of "clean energy innovation and entrepreneurship," ...

Read more

While the U.S. small wind turbine market decreased 26 percent in 2011, exports drove a 13.4 percent increase in U.S. manufacturer sales, according to AWEA’s 2011 Small Wind Turbine Market Report, which was released in full this week. A fact sheet on the report’s results was released in the spring, and now the full report is available online.

In the U.S., more than 19 MW of small wind systems were installed, with revenues totaling $115 million. More than 7,300 small wind turbines were installed in the U.S. in 2011 for the sixth consecutive year (for ...

Read more

The lack of certainty going forward in the U.S. wind power market due to impending expiration of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) is causing some wind farm developers to look to Ontario for new projects, writes Lindsay Morris in Power Engineering.

Morris specifically quotes Mike Garland, CEO of Pattern Energy Group LP: “We clearly have increased our focus and spending in Canada compared to the U.S. Our Ontario projects help us to continue investing in projects and communities despite the political uncertainty affecting the U.S. market.”

The Canadian province currently has in place a strong Feed-In Tariff (FIT) ...

Read more