Urge Your Senator to Extend the Investment Tax Credit

What you can do:

We are asking everyone to call their Senators and urge them to extend the solar investment tax credit to 8 years and eliminate the $2000 cap on residential solar. You should also voice your overall support for HR6049, the Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

Please call the Chief-of-Staff as soon as possible and make the following points:

· According to Navigant Consulting, 116,000 jobs and $20 billion in capital investment are at stake in 2009 alone.

· Not extending the solar credits is an enormous tax increase that will cost American jobs.

· The clean energy tax incentives play a vital role in creating new high-wage American jobs, spurring economic growth, promoting consumer purchases of energy efficient products, lowering energy bills for consumers and businesses, and of course reducing global warming pollution. The incentives also help the U.S. catch up with other countries on the development and deployment of clean energy technologies.

· It is outrageous that Congress wants to spend $110 billion on energy security in Iraq, but won’t spend a dime on energy security in the United States.

· The extension of the ITC recently passed the Senate in the Cantwell-Ensign Amendment by a vote of 88-8.

Arguments for extending the Commercial ITC for 8-years (as opposed to 6):

· An 8-year extension of the ITC encourages development and deployment of numerous solar energy technologies. For CSP, a shorter-term extension dictates that only solar technologies that currently have signed utility contracts will benefit.

· The utility-scale solar industry is in an emerging stage, marked by tremendous innovation, competition and creativity. An 8-year extension of the ITC is necessary to establish solar energy’s competitiveness with fossil fuel generation.

· An 8-year extension of the ITC allows the solar industry to be a large part of federal renewable electricity standards and climate policies.

· A 2006 study by the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) found that utility-scale CSP plants have the potential to begin competing directly with conventional power technologies by 2015 if the current 30% income tax credit is extended through that time frame.

Arguments for total elimination of the $ cap on the Residential ITC (as opposed to doubling to $4,000)

· The proposed $4000 cap represents only 4%-10% of the actual cost of a residential system and will fail to stimulate market growth.

· The catalytic effect of beneficial tax treatment will not be realized without total elimination of the cap. The residential market growth will be limited to states with generous incentives.

You should also feel free to e-mail your Senators office. To locate your Senators’ Washington phone number, go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt and type in your company’s zip code. Alternatively, you can reach your Senators’ offices through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121.

Every day that passes without an extension places more American jobs at risk. Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold while overseas growth in jobs and the manufacturing of equipment is surging overseas. This is slowing our transition towards energy independence and our ability to remain competitive in the new clean economy that is going to be a huge part of the future.

As early as Thursday morning, the Senate will take up the tax extenders legislation – HR 6049, the Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

Senator Reid filed a cloture petition on the motion to proceed to H.R. 6049, the Energy Tax Extenders bill before adjourning this afternoon. Under the rules a vote will occur on Tuesday. The vote will be on proceeding to debate on a substitute amendment to HR 6049.

As of now, the final content of that amendment is still under discussion. The store is open and Chairman Baucus is soliciting suggestions from Republicans in exchange for their support of the underlying measure. NOW IS THE TIME TO GET R’S TO REQUEST ANY CHANGES TO THE MEASURE, (8-year extension, total elimination of the residential monetary cap, etc…) The final version of the bill will be fully paid for. The one exception to this may be an AMT fix that is included in the final version.

2 comments.

Is solar-generated electricity right for you? Yes, if you can afford it.

And it is making more sense with each passing headline about oil prices.
Kirk Maust, COO and chief engineer of Solar Direct in Bradenton, says photovoltaic panels are selling well, despite the performance of the real estate market the past couple of years. I interviewed Maust on Tuesday in Englewood, at the opening of two green model homes — one of them equipped with photovoltaic panels — in Beechwood Builders’ Heritage Creek subdivision. The models are featured in today’s Home & Real Estate section.
“We’ve seen a real escalation in sales the past year and a half,” said Maust, who oversaw the installation of a 2.8-kilowatt solar system on the roof of one of the models. “People see the cost of natural gas and propane has come up to as much as the cost of electricity, which is rising fairly rapidly right now. Last spring, we saw a dip in sales because of the overall economy slowing, but incentive-wise, and because of the cost of energy going up, there is a lot of buzz around these products.
“So we have been able to stay even keel or a slight loss. The pain threshold is a big thing for people — they feel it at the pump, they feel it in electric bills, so it starts to make a lot more sense.”
Maust said a 5-kilowatt system will cost $45,000, but with a $2,000 federal tax credit and a $20,000 rebate from the state of Florida, the cost drops to $23,000, resulting in a payback of 10 to 12 years “on an average system.” That means that the cost of the equipment and installation will be offset by lower electric bills within 120 to 144 months.
With the advent of net metering, which means the power company has to buy surplus electricity generated by a homeowner’s PV system, the payback period is much shorter, said Mike Evans of Eco-$mart Inc. “Net metering is in place from the governor … it should be official in August or September,” Evans said.
Maust said the 2.8-kW system on the Beechwood model will meet the house’s electricity needs except for the air conditioner and hot water, which is heated by solar power in a separate system.
“If you want to drive your whole entire electric bill,” the array of PV panels “would probably fill up most of your whole roof,” Maust said. “We’re doing systems of 5 to 10 kilowatts for people who really want to maximize results. But most of the rebates and incentives cap off at 5 kW. The public tends to stop where the incentives stop.”
The Beechwood model does not have storage batteries, which can cost $10,000, so in the event of a hurricane-caused power failure, it would not have full power.
“Almost all of the systems we are doing are grid-interconnects — the (Florida Power & Light power) grid is actually a big, giant battery, so when you are making power, if you are using it, you consume it, and if you are not using it, you sell it back to the utility. When you are not making power (at night or on cloudy days), you use their utility power to operate the house,” said Maust.
The effect of PV systems on electric bills is dramatic.
“We’ve done a house for a lady in Lehigh Acres who has a $15 electric bill now because she bought a 5-kW system,” Maust said. “She’s done other (green) things. Most of the people who jump onto this also see the need to be conservative in other areas, so they will do other things to help reduce the load on the house before they actually generate the power.”
One of Maust’s customers in Orlando saw his $450 electric bill reduced to $150. “He did more than just solar electric, though. One of the primary things anyone should do is go solar hot water first. It’s got the best payback and is the most sensible thing to do, and water heating is usually 30 percent of most people’s electric bills.” The typical solar water heating system costs $5,000, and the payback is four to five years, Maust said.
Of course, the payback is faster in sunny locales.
“We are named the Sunshine State,” Maust said, “but Arizona and Southern California outperform us in total energy per year. But obviously we’ve got plenty of energy hitting every square foot. Definitely if it were all captured …
“We have 5.5 hours of solar, what is called the solar window, and places like California and Arizona would have 6 and a half, approaching 7, hours a day.”
Home builders, Maust said, are getting the PV message: “Up until a few years ago, they were a real hard nut to crack, but now more and more are jumping into the green philosophy, probably more from the marketing aspect because they see that the public now wants it. Prior to this it was something they didn’t want to talk about; it was something above the norm that would just add to their headaches.”

~Original Article Publish May 31, 2008 Sarasota Herald Tribune

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