Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet today highlighted the need to extend the wind energy production tax credit (PTC) to boost job growth and provide companies certainty during his tour of O’Neal Manufacturing Services in Pueblo. The PTC is set to expire at the end of this year if Congress does not act.
“The wind energy production tax credit has triggered tremendous economic growth in Pueblo, in Colorado and across the country,” Bennet said. “Wind energy supports about 6,000 jobs in our state and tens of thousands more across the country. Companies and workers, like the people I met with today, stand to suffer a huge economic blow if Washington doesn’t get its act together and extend this critical, bipartisan tax credit. I will continue to fight for its extension, which I believe will get done, allowing us to continue to move toward a clean energy economy.”
Bennet has led efforts in Congress to extend the wind energy PTC because of the tremendous economic potential the clean energy industry holds for Colorado. He led eight of the nine members of the Colorado Congressional delegation in a bipartisan letter calling for extension of the tax credit and later introduced a bipartisan amendment with Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), cosponsored by Senator Mark Udall, to extend the PTC. He has also partnered with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Udall to introduce the American Energy and Job Promotion Act, a bipartisan bill to extend the PTC for wind and several other renewable energy technologies.
Joining Bennet in his call for the tax credit extension were Tony Knopp, vice president of Vestas Towers Pueblo, and Jim French, production manager of O’Neal Manufacturing Services.
O’Neal Steel’s manufacturing facility in Pueblo produces the bracketing inside wind turbine towers for Vestas. Vestas Towers Pueblo is the largest wind tower manufacturing facility in the world. Vestas employs about 3,000 people in North America, including more than 1,600 in Colorado.