“Maybe Hunter Biden can be the new CEO [of ACPA], reporting straight to Dad in a Biden presidency. Surely Robert Hunter learned much about energy (still searching) in his previous life.”

This above headline will not be the name of the new powerhouse renewable energy trade group. Instead of ‘crony’ there is ‘clean,’ as in the American Clean Power Association (ACPA).

Here is some background:

Renewable energy companies are looking to strengthen their lobbying muscle in Washington, and they’re creating a new trade association to do it.

More than 30 companies, including GE Renewable Energy, Invenergy, Google, and NextEra, have been working throughout this year to form the American Clean Power Association. The American Wind Energy Association has helped to lead the group’s creation and plans to merge with the new group, according to a statement from the wind energy group Thursday.

Three important questions are tied to the future of industrial wind power to continue to expand in the nation’s electricity mix.

1. Can the wind industry survive without the PTC?

The industry can no-longer claim to be nascent. There are more megawatts of wind operating in the US than nuclear power with tens of thousands of megawatts in development.

Moreover, for nearly a decade the wind industry has touted that it was ready (or nearly ready) to move off the PTC and grow on its own dime. The phase-down was intended to provide a glide path to traditional sources of construction financing.

But in 2020, tax equity still represents between 50-65% of project costs.

The industry used the phase-down as a six-year extension of the tax credit. In the period from 2016 to 2020, developers made no apparent effort to reduce reliance on the subsidy.…

“In recent years, wind energy development costs have dropped while capacity factors increased dramatically. As such, the benefit to developers of the adjusted PTC is staggering.”

Wind power’s Production Tax Credit (PTC) has not expired as of 2020. And there is no certainty that it will ever be allowed to expire.

Under the phase-out, 2019 was supposed to be the last year wind projects could qualify for the PTC. Projects that started construction in 2019 and are placed in service within four years would earn 40% of the PTC or 1¢/kwh during the first 10-years of operation. But during the final hours before the December 2019 holiday break, Congress voted for a 1-year extension of the PTC through to 2020 and increased its value to 60% or 1.5¢/kwh.

Projects that started construction in 2019 would still earn the 40% PTC.…

“… the production tax credit will cost taxpayers $4.3 billion in 2021 and a cumulative $33.8 billion in the ten-year period from 2020 to 2029. After nearly 30 years, the wind industry’s reliance on the PTC has grown as has its cost to US taxpayers.”

The Production Tax Credit (PTC), first established under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, is a driving force for constructing otherwise uneconomic industrial wind turbines for electric generation. A per-kilowatt-hour credit, initially set at a lucrative 1.5¢, adjusted annually for inflation is 2.5¢ today.

The credit covers the first ten years of wind-turbine generation. The monetization occurs when wind developers sell the tax credits to federal tax-owing corporations, which offsets a significant percentage of the project’s capital costs.

Depending on actual power generation, and with very low marginal costs, wind energy can be sold at very low, and even negative, prices, ruining the economics of traditional power generation.…