Posted by Michael Terrell, Program Manager, Google.org
Yesterday Google.org, along with representatives from the business and venture capital community, called on the U.S. Congress and the Bush Administration to work together to quickly approve extensions of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC). The PTC and the ITC are tax incentives designed to spur the market for renewable energy and are critical to financing a new renewable energy generation. The credits are currently scheduled to expire on December 31, 2008.
Speaking at a news conference at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, Dan Reicher, Google.org's Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, said: “We are at the dawn of a green energy revolution that could fundamentally reshape the way the world generates energy. It is critical that we get the policy right in order to drive investment in clean energy and push these technologies out of the lab and into the mainstream. Policy makers can make or break this revolution."
The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), TechNet and the National Venture Capital Association sponsored the press conference which also included representatives of GE Energy Financial Services, Credit Suisse, and the venture capital firm Nth Power.
In a recent ACORE letter to Congress, over 350 industry leaders warned that a failure by Congress to immediately pass ITC/PTC extensions could jeopardize U.S. job creation and over 42,000 MW of planned renewable energy projects currently in development in 45 states. (That’s an amount equivalent to 75 base load electricity generation stations and enough to power 16 million homes.)