Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) has introduced the Ending Intermittent Energy Subsidies Act, legislation to responsibly phase out production and investment tax credits for wind and solar energy over the next five years. The legislation is cosponsored by Energy and Commerce Republicans Gary Palmer (R-AL), Randy Weber (R-TX) and Craig Goldman (R-TX).
“Wind and solar are no longer emerging technologies — they’re mature, market-proven, and widely deployed,” Fedorchak said. “By continuing to incentivize these intermittent energy sources through generous tax credits, we’re distorting energy markets and sending the absolute wrong signal to investors. As all the grid operators are saying, we need more dispatchable resources. We must stop providing generous incentives that run contrary to that.”
The Ending Intermittent Energy Subsidies Act would:
- Phase out the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for wind and solar over a five-year period, 20% each year
- Maintain incentives for other dispatchable technologies like nuclear, hydropower and geothermal
- Eliminate transferability of these wind and solar tax credits
News item from the Office of Rep. Julie Fedorchak
The US should also end its massive subsidies to nuclear power and only slightly less massive subsidies to “natural” gas and oil.
Let’s see, Texas with the largest Natural Gas Field, probably in the U.S. under the Permian Basin, why would two Texas Legislators want to get rid of the PTC(sic)? Alabama has the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, yet still seems to be generating electricity using coal and natural gas.
Instead of being (smart) and keeping the PTC until 2032, reformatting additional requirements to add utility scale energy storage as part of the project. Find a way to allow retrofit of existing solar PV and wind farms to add utility scale energy storage facilities. There’s still this paradigm of generate on demand and “intermittent energy” that just won’t LET GO. There is at least one company project out there that intends to install a solar PV farm, then capture the daily output in an on site energy storage system, it appears using redox flow batteries? One could actually split duties of the solar PV farm day into night dispatch. Store time shift and dispatch at night or extend a curtailed generation output as, instead of 500MWh for 8 hours, 166MWh for 24 hours. With a properly Engineered and designed operation, one could put out full power during the day and use the on site energy storage for grid services such as FCAS and arbitrage, if constructed along side a major HVAC transmission line.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Take away the fastest growing energy sector ITC that provides millions of jobs. Washington is incentivized.