Victory For Clean Energy Tax Credits (Sort of)

Today the U.S. Senate voted to pass an amended version of the bill, H.R. 3221 to include an extension of both the Production Tax Incentive (PTC) and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). The PTC provides extra money for wind power while the ITC helps fund solar installations. So hooray! Now, before you get too drunk off of the legislative lager, this doesn’t mean the ITC and PTC have all green lights. The bill will now have to head back to the House where Democrats will likely, and rightfully, question where the money for these extensions is going to come from.

The amended bill passed with overwhelming 88 to 8. While the House has passed extensions for these renewable energy tax credits several times over the past year, the Senate has failed repeatedly to extend them past their December 2008 expiration dates, often times failing to pass by just one or two votes.

While the Democrats have been adhering to their tough “pay-go” policy of not passing legislation that doesn’t stipulate where its funding comes from, Josh Dorner at Grist points out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Dems easily passed a $17 billion package for clean energy just last month.

While the Democrats would love to fund these extensions by cutting some of the billions that Big Oil collects from Uncle Sam in the form of tax breaks, this has been the sticking point for Senate Republicans.

The Senate amendment was drafted by Sens. Mary Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.), who had previously introduced their bipartisan Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008 just last week.

So, while this is certainly not the final chapter in the ITC/PTC renewal saga, it does show that there is good will on both sides of the aisle for this issue. Now the two sides just need to figure out how to fund it.

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