While House Republicans hold events across the country today — pushing discredited claims about the Environmental Protection Agency and drilling, through the ironically named House Energy Action Team — President Obama will make the case in Iowa for extending renewable energy tax credits to save American jobs. Speaking at an Iowa wind blade manufacturer in Newton, Iowa, Obama presents his “To Do” list for Congress, which includes prioritizing the Production Tax Credit for wind.

The Center for American Progress traveled to Iowa to talk to experts about the PTC. In this video, Dr. Harold Prior of the Iowa Wind Energy Association and Brian Crowe of the Iowa Economic Development Authority explain how lacking national renewable energy policies hurt development and investments in wind in the long-run. Watch it:

Wind energy provides thousands of jobs in Iowa, like this one of a turbine maintenance worker in Franklin County.

As a national leader in wind generation and jobs, Iowa workers benefit immensely from the PTC. There are more than3,000 manufacturing and operations jobs in Iowa, and 6,000 to 7,000 workers overall, with more than 215 wind-related businesses. Wind energy powers nearly 1 million Iowa homes with electricity, and 20 percent of the state’s total electricity.

Though some Republicans choose to ridicule wind energy, the PTC has broad bipartisan support. For instance, an op-ed from a Republican business owner argued, “The president kept our doors open and our employees working because of the wind-production tax credit and 1603 Treasury grant program.” Meanwhile, 64 percent of Americans support congressional efforts to encourage investments in clean energy. So with Americans firmly behind the President’s proposal, the question remains whether Congress will act.

by Daniel J. Weiss

Fossil fuel companies and their political allies have spent millions of dollars on advertising to persuade Americans that drilling and mining are the best solutions to our energy problems. Despite their spending, these polluters haven’t convinced most Americans – including many Republicans — to support their proposals.

A brand new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll found overwhelming public support for renewable energy tax credits, a clean energy standard, and increased regulation of hydraulic fracking for oil and gas production.

The nationwide poll of 1,004 adults was conducted from May 17-20. It asked respondents about whether tax credits for renewable energy — such as the Production Tax Credit for wind set to expire the end of this year — should be extended:

Supporters of these tax credits say they should be extended because they create jobs and encourage the development of cleaner sources of energy. Opponents say they should end because they cost too much and have not been effective at encouraging the use of renewable energy. Do you think Congress should extend these energy credits, OR allow them to expire?

By better than a two to one margin, respondents wanted to extend the incentives. Independents favored such an extension by 64 to 29 percent, as did 48 percent of Republicans.  Only 43 percent of Republicans opposed the PTC extension.

Today, President Obama plans to visit TPI Composites, a manufacturer of wind turbine blades in Newton, Iowa that employs 700 people.  He is expected to again urge Congress to extend the PTC because it is vital for job creation and maintaining competitiveness in the wind energy industry. The National Journal poll suggests that most Americans agree with him.

Poll respondents demonstrated additional strong support for clean energy when they were asked about whether they favored a Clean Energy Standard that would require utilities to generate 80 percent of their electricity with low- or no carbon resources by 2035.

Legislation recently introduced in the U.S. Senate would create a national clean-energy standard that requires the country to generate an increasingly large percentage of its electricity from cleaner sources of energy, including renewable energy, natural gas, and nuclear power. Supporters of this policy say it would promote cleaner energy and not add an undue cost onto consumers. Opponents say imposing a national clean-energy standard would cost jobs and create higher electricity costs. What is your opinion – do you think the country should or should NOT create a national clean-energy standard?

The National Journal poll found that supporters outnumbered opponents by nearly 40 percent. This included independents who favored it by 64 to 23 percent. Even Republicans favored a Clean Energy Standard by one percent.

Fossil fuel interests are spending millions of dollars advertising and lobbying to convince Congress to leave hydraulic fracturing unregulated — despite its production of large amounts of air, water, and climate pollution.   So far, it appears Big Oil has made little progress convincing the public to support their position. Respondents were asked:

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is a process used to develop deposits of natural gas recently discovered in many regions of America. Environmentalists and some residents living near drilling operations worry that fracking can contaminate drinking water sources and worsen climate change. The oil and natural gas industry maintains the process is safe and can create jobs and promote energy independence. Which of the following comes closest to your view of what the federal government should do on this issue?

One of six respondents wanted to “ban fracking altogether because it’s not safe for the environment.”  A majority supported an “increase in regulation of fracking to protect the environment, but NOT ban it.”  A total of sixty eight percent wanted either a ban or more safeguards from fracking. Only one quarter of poll subjects wanted to “reduce regulation of fracking to encourage more natural gas production.”

Some 68 percent of independents wanted to ban or regulate fracking. A clear majority of Republicans wanted either a ban or more regulation. Only 41 percent of GOPers wanted to reduce regulation.

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by David Roberts, via Grist

On Thursday, President Obama will visit TPI Composites, a wind manufacturer in Newton, Iowa (population, 15,254). There, he reiterated his support for the Production Tax Credit (PTC), a federal support program that has helped drive wind’s rapid expansion in the U.S. The PTC is now in peril, as Congress appears unlikely to renew it when it expires at the end of this year. The loss of the PTC would put tens of thousands of current jobs — and almost 100,000 future jobs [PDF] — at risk.

Newton’s experience is incredibly illustrative, so let’s recount a little history.

Vulture capitalism

Newton used to be the “washing machine capital of the world,” with five washing machine manufacturers. One by one they closed, until there was only Maytag, which at its height employed around 4,000 Newtonians. Then, in 2006, Maytag was the subject of a bidding war. On one side was Chinese manufacturer Haier Group, in partnership with none other than former Romney employer Bain Capital (Romney was gone by then). On the other was Whirlpool.

Whirlpool won, but it would have been vulture capitalism either way. The Maytag plant was summarily shuttered and the jobs sent out of state.

Manufacturing jobs return on the wind, with bipartisan support

Since then, Newton has turned itself around, in no small part by attracting several wind-turbine manufacturers, including Trinity Structural Towers and TPI Composites.

It’s not an unusual story in Iowa, which is a leading wind-power state. Almost 19 percent of the state’s power came from wind in 2011 and the industry employs some 6,000-7,000 Iowans. According to wind industry estimates, since the state passed a renewable energy standard in 1983, some $5 billion in wind investment has flooded the state.

Unsurprisingly, these developments have left wind power with broad bipartisan support in Iowa. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has defended the wind industry and the PTC against attacks from the right. Even Iowa Rep. Steve King (R), one of the most notoriously bigoted right-wing nutbags in all of Congress, has said, “Now is the time for stability in the wind industry, and the PTC offers just that.” When they were in the state, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Thaddeus McCotter (remember him?) all posed next to a wind-turbine blade made by none other than TPI Composites, to show their support for the industry.

(Side bar: A new analysis [PDF] shows that “adding more wind power to the electric grid could reduce wholesale market prices by more than 25 percent in the Midwest region by 2020.”)

But Romney hates wind

Despite support from Iowa Republicans for wind (and despite that turbine photo-op), Mitt Romney has expressed only contempt for the industry. He would end federal support for solar and wind alike, technologies that, he has said, “make little sense for the consuming public but great sense only for the companies reaping profits from taxpayer subsidies.” (Y’know, like Iowa’s own TPI Composites, the 700 people it employs, and the town it saved.)

And here he is in Colorado, smirking about the wind industry losing 10,000 jobs since 2009. That’s true, of course — it’s gone from a high of 85,000 to around 75,000 now — but mainly because the industry is nervous about the future of the PTC. Which Romney wants to kill for good. Thus insuring far greater job losses.

The fact is, if Republicans win Congress and Romney becomes president, all federal support for clean energy will dry up and Newton, along with other Midwestern towns that have been revitalized by wind, will suffer yet another devastating blow. I wonder if Iowa voters — sitting in one of 2012′s most important swing states — were thinking about that when Romney came to the state recently to lecture about the deficit.

David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist. This piece was originally published at Grist and was reprinted with permission.

By Richard W. Caperton

We’ve all heard that wind energy is too expensive, and that massive investments in wind will drive up electricity rates for consumers.  This argument is based on the belief that wind energy is more expensive on a per kilowatt-hour basis than traditional fossil fuels.  While even this premise is up for debate (for example, wind is now the least expensive option for new generation for some utilities in the upper Midwest), the bigger problem is that this argument ignores how electricity markets actually work.

According to a study by Synapse Energy Economics that was released today, electricity markets are structured in such a way that wind power will actually lower wholesale power prices, which can ultimately reduce consumers’ electric bills.  The Synapse study, which was released at an event organized by Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, finds that making substantial investments in wind power (and the necessary transmission lines to bring that wind to market) could save the average Midwestern residential consumer as much as $200 per year in 2020.

The key to understanding how this works is something called “price suppression”.  In competitive power markets, like the one managed by the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO), power is sold through an auction.  Generators bid in a certain amount of power at a certain price.  When the market is functioning properly, the price is always the marginal cost of operating the power plant.  For a natural gas plant, the marginal cost is primarily fuel, with some amount of labor and other expenses.  For a wind turbine, the marginal cost is effectively zero, since there’s no fuel cost and there are minimal other operating expenses.  MISO has a supply curve, ranging from very low marginal cost resources like wind, through nuclear and coal, and ultimately ending at very expensive power from inefficient peaking plants fired with natural gas.

In these power auctions, the “clearing price” is the price bid by the most expensive generator whose bid is accepted.  So, if the MISO market needs power from a costly peaking plant, the clearing price is very high.  Every generator receives the clearing price, no matter what price they bid into the auction.

The price suppression effect refers to the fact that when lower marginal cost resources come into the market, there’s less need for higher cost resources.  This reduces the clearing price, which is the price that utilities have to pay for wholesale power.  This is also known as the “merit order effect” and is described in more detail in a recent paper on Germany.

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It must have been the attack ads criticizing clean energy that caused Republican Rob Hatch to speak up. A 10-year veteran of the wind industry, Hatch, who calls himself a former “Iowa farm boy,” has expanded his wind business to 28 employees.

And now he’s defending his livelihood from the “oil billionaires spending millions of dollars on false smear TV commercials” in a spirited op-ed:

It is difficult to watch these people air their TV ads slapping around the president’s support of my employees’ jobs and ridiculous claims that he created jobs in Mexico and China.

The president kept our doors open and our employees working because of the wind-production tax credit and 1603 Treasury grant program.

And we were able to keep jobs in Iowa. The majority of the people I employ here in Alta are either farm kids or still working on the family farm in the evening. Today, the school district in Alta receives somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of its revenue from wind turbines. And almost 30 percent of the taxes paid into the county are off wind turbines.

Wind is an American success story in Iowa.

With 2,900 turbines in Iowa providing 20% of the state’s electricity, creating more than 215 businesses, 6,000 jobs, and helping spur more than $14.46 million in annual lease payments to farmers and other landowners, wind has been a major driver of economic activity. And that activity is benefiting business owners like Hatch:

I can tell you that I’m not reaping massive profits like the oil billionaires funding these ads with their billions in subsidies and tax breaks. Right now my wife and I are living invoice to invoice, praying we have enough money to make payroll every two weeks. I have missed Christmas concerts, wedding anniversaries and school plays and sacrificed so much more to keep my business going.

These economic success stories have been well documented. They involve people like Nathan Crawford, a wind technician based in Fraklin County, Iowa, who we visited in December:

Today, behind closed doors in Charlotte, North Carolina, legislators from 15 states will meet with the oil and gas industry to discuss so-called “model legislation” as part of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The result could be laws that handicap renewable energy targets — while creating loopholes for fossil fuels, written directly by the oil and gas industry itself.

ALEC has faced backlash recently for its role in crafting Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws. Now the organization is taking the same secretive approach to kill renewable energy development across the country.

Oil and gas corporations have a very strong role in politics through groups like Americans For Prosperity, American Petroleum Institute, and, of course, ALEC. Four of the largest oil and gas corporations and two of the most profitable U.S. corporations overall, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, sit on ALEC’s task forces. And so today, according to documents posted by Common Cause, representatives from these and other energy groups will discuss potential legislation that would undermine clean energy standards and limit regulations of polluting industries.

The agenda items illustrate ALEC’s objectives. An economist from the oil lobby American Petroleum Institute leads a discussion on oil and gas prices, and a few of the panels include, “The Dirty Truth Behind Reusable Bags” and “Resolution Supporting a Reasonable Compliance Timeline and Economywide Impact Study of EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Rule.” Peabody Energy — one of the largest coal companies in the world — will give the presentation on “Regulation Through Litigation Of Greenhouse Gases Is Unsound Public Policy.”

ALEC already benefits from special exemption from some state laws: For example, South Carolina, Indiana, and Colorado have specifically exempted ALEC from lobbying status.

The oil industry’s astroturfing does not end with ALEC. Heartland Institute, part of the consortium of ultra-conservative think tanks leading a broad attack on clean energy, will also speak at ALEC’s meeting. Americans For Prosperity, funded by money from the Koch brothers, is also involved in Big Oil’s PR campaign against clean energy.

We have already seen oil dominating election ad spending this year, with well over $24 million spent by groups like Americans for Prosperity and American Energy Alliance since January. More than 80 percent of election year attack ads have focused on energy — all of them thoroughly debunked.

In February, a group of anti-wind activists gathered in Washington, DC. Their goal: establish a coordinated, nation-wide program of “wind warriors” who could be dispatched to fight the industry anywhere, anytime.

The organization would combine efforts and create “what should appear as a ‘groundswell’ among grass roots” to counter legislation supporting wind energy on the federal, state and local levels.

The leader of the group was John Droz, Jr, a long-time wind opponent and a senior fellow at the ultra-conservative American Tradition Institute. ATI calls itself an “environmental” think tank. The organization, known best for suing climate scientist Michael Mann, is devoted to spreading doubt about climate change, opposing state-level renewable energy targets, and stripping away environmental regulations.

The ATI is so extreme that it was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributing to an “environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.”

According to a memo just obtained by the Checks and Balances Project and reviewed by Climate Progress, Droz has also been focused on crafting a fake grassroots campaign to fight renewable energy projects — specifically wind — in legislatures, zoning boards and town halls across the country.

In a poorly timed suggestion, Droz contemplates joining with the Heartland Institute (because there is “substantial commonality”) and launching a fake billboard campaign to derail wind developers. What could go wrong with that?

The memo shows that Droz brought together these wind opponents from all over the country last year to “cause subversion in message of [the wind] industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit they are for it.”

The minimum national PR campaign goal is to constructively influence national and state wind energy policies. A broader possible goal is to constructively influence national and state energy and environmental policies.

The goal will be realized by coordination of a focused message along many channels and with multiple voices. The intent is to target three audiences with consistent messaging to create the change.  Public opinion must begin to change in what should appear as a “groundswell” among grass roots.

By “constructively influence” the authors really mean “disrupt” any piece of legislation supporting wind energy — and likely other forms of renewable energy as collateral damage.

The document, authored by Illinois anti-wind attorney Rich Porter and edited by Droz, outlines in great detail how a national PR campaign would function. The American Tradition Institute says Droz acted alone in crafting the plan, according to the Guardian.

The group’s campaign efforts would include outreach to a who’s who of conservative media outlets and think tanks already working to discredit renewable energy: Fox News, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Heartland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Americans for Prosperity.

The memo outlines more than 20 ideas for undertaking a national campaign, including teaching anti-wind curriculum in schools and creating “dummy” companies to trip up wind developers attempting to build projects. Below is a list of some of their ideas:

• Youth Outreach will create program for public school coordination as well as college coordination. This will include community activity and participation with sponsorships for science fairs, school activity etc. with preset parameters that cause students to steer away from wind because they discover it doesn’t meet the criteria we set up (poster contest, essays etc).
• Setup a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development, proposing to build 400 foot billboards.
• Create a “think-tank” subgroup to produce and disseminate white paper reports and scientific quotes and papers that back-up the message.
• Employ a well-known spokesman with star credibility. (Find one to volunteer?)
• Create counter-intelligence branch (responsible for communicating current industry tactics and strategies as feedback to this organization)
• Write expose book on the industry, showing government waste, harm to communities and other negative impacts on people and the environment.
• A team investigates links to any organization supporting wind in order to expose that support.

The release of this memo follows public statements from highly-influential conservative groups like ALEC and Americans for Tax Reform about their plans to eliminate targets for renewable energy in states around the country. The Droz anti-wind plan is more proof that these organizations are stepping up their political campaigns against the industry.

We have posted the memo here.

Will Boehner put a stop to the heel dragging over wind tax credits? AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

A new survey shows that Ohio — the home state of House Speaker John Boehner — supports between 5,000 and 6,000 jobs in the wind industry.

But those jobs are now under imminent threat as a key tax credit for the industry nears expiration at the end of this year.

Just this week, a wind company in Ohio said it will abandon plans for a $20 million, 54-turbine project without an extension of the production tax credit (PTC). The project would create between 150-200 construction jobs for Ohioans, according to Everpower Renewables, the company building the wind farm.

The cost and price of wind electricity have come down steadily in recent years, allowing wind companies to sign power purchase agreements for as little as a few cents per kilowatt-hour. However, the glut of supply in the natural gas sector — a sector that enjoys numerous permanent tax credits for drilling and production — has made it difficult for wind producers to compete without an equivalent tax credit.

The PTC provides an owner of a wind farm with a tax credit of 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of renewable electricity generated. The credit has allowed the wind industry to compete with the heavily-subsidized fossil fuel industry and expand dramatically throughout the U.S.

Under Speaker Boehner, the House of Representatives has failed to extend this key tax credit for wind — even with very strong support from many Republicans. 47 members of the Senate has also balked on the credits, voting to preserve $24 billion in oil and gas industry tax credits, while voting down the PTC for the wind industry.

In the last five years, wind has brought $20 billion of annual private investment to the U.S., according to the American Wind Energy Association. There are now 75,000 jobs across the country in wind manufacturing, operations, maintenance and education.

With the PTC under threat, the industry says it expects around 37,000 job losses in the coming year. The wind turbine manufacturer Vestas (which, coincidentally, provided the wind turbines for Ohio’s first wind project) says it will lay off 1,600 American workers if the credit is not extended.

There are reportedly no U.S. new wind projects in the works for 2013 due to the uncertainty around tax credits.

Over the last few months, numerous coalitions of bi-partisan political leaders have sent letters to Congress urging immediate passage of the PTC. Congress has continually failed to act.

Speaker Boehner says that jobs are his top priority for 2012. And he has the opportunity to save hundreds — if not thousands — in his own home state just by helping pass a simple extension of the wind tax credit.

A protester hits Trump's hair with a balloon.

Donald Trump is on a warpath against wind turbines, because they may obstruct the view of his billion-dollar golf resort in Scotland. Protesters greeted Trump today as he asked Scotland to abandon a project to build 11 offshore turbines.

Trump has encountered controversy on his golf resort from the start, since he bulldozed over environmentally sensitive sand dunes.

With his resort due to open in July, Trump has only heightened the attacks. In February, while digging up 1,235 acres for his resort, he said wind farms are “destroying” Scotland. In March, he called windmills “disgusting.”

Now, Trump says they will destroy Scotland’s economy:

“Scotland, if you pursue this policy of these monstrous turbines, Scotland will go broke,” Trump told the group. “They are ugly, they are noisy and they are dangerous. If Scotland does this, Scotland will be in serious trouble and will lose tourism to places like Ireland, and they are laughing at us.” [...]

“When challenged to produce hard evidence about his claims on the negative impact of turbines, Trump said: “I am the evidence, I am a world class expert in tourism.”

Trump knows a lot about going broke. As ABC reported last year, “Donald Trump — or companies that bear his name – have declared bankruptcy four times.”

Trump also said the project “is the most serious problem that Scotland will have or has had.”

That is unlikely, however much the 11 turbines seem like the end of the world to Trump.

Koch Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) — who is deeply indebted to Koch Industries for more than $100,000 in donations — is outspoken against clean energy investment. Recently, he celebrated when the Senate failed to extend the wind energy tax credit in a 49-49 vote. However, he is celebrating the threat to 37,000 jobs in the relatively young industry, when the production tax credit is set to expire at the end of the year.

Even as the oil industry enjoys $4 billion in subsidies a year, Pompeo lamented the cost of the production tax credit, claiming the wind industry would be fine on its own:

“The program has been around an awfully long time and it’s time to let that industry stand on its own two feet. And I’m confident that they’ll do it,” he said. “There’s great, creative engineers and innovators in the alternative energy field, and I’m confident they’ll be successful.”

It now costs the government more than $1 billion a year to hand out 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of wind power — and enough is enough, says Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.).

“We’ve been subsidizing some of these industries with tax credits for multiple decades, and every time they get to the end of the line, they get within a year, they say, ‘If you just give me’ — fill in the blank — ‘one more year, four more years, that’s all I want. Just a little more time,’” said Pompeo, who is leading a charge against the PTC and other energy subsidies.

“What history would demonstrate is they would continue to come back to the federal trough and ask for more time yet again at the end,” he added.

History has shown that the three times the production tax credit expired, wind investments dropped. Meanwhile, Big Oil has benefited from 100 years of consistent tax breaks, even though the industry had a record-high year of $137 billion profits. And Pompeo, who benefits from these profits, has made clean energy his punching bag.