歐巴馬競選政見：展延風力發電減稅期

Obama Backs Wind Energy Tax Credit, Blasts Romney
HAVERHILL, Iowa, August 15, 2012 (ENS) – President Barack Obama used his Tuesday campaign visit to an Iowa farm that hosts wind turbines to slam his opponent, Mitt Romney, for his failure to support the wind energy production tax credit. The tax credit expires on December 31 unless it is reauthorized by Congress.

Farmers Richard Heil and his son showed Obama their wind turbines, recent additions to the land. The Heils formed a community cooperative with neighboring landowners to establish the Laurel Wind Farm, 52 wind turbines on 20,000 acres of land, which now power an estimated 30,000 Iowa homes.

Obama contrasted this campaign visit to the area with his 2008 campaign visit to nearby Newton, Iowa when the local Maytag plant was closing, throwing nearly 2,000 people out of work. Since then wind energy has offered those Iowa workers new job opportunities.

Obama said, “When I returned to Newton to visit that plant as President several months ago, some of the same folks who had lost their jobs at Maytag were back on the line building wind towers to support some of the most advanced wind turbines in the world. Earlier this year, at a different plant about five minutes from there, I met workers building enormous blades for these wind turbines. And I’m proud of the fact that, while we used to have to import parts like those, today they’re made in America by American workers.”

There are nearly 400 wind-related manufacturing facilities in the United States today, compared with just 30 in 2004.

But the wind energy industry is worried that Congress will not renew their production tax credit.
“Unfortunately, what we thought was a bipartisan consensus in supporting wind power has been fraying a little bit during election season,” the President said. “My opponent in this election says he wants to end tax credits for wind energy producers. He’s called these sources of energy ‘imaginary;’ his new running mate has called them a ‘fad.’”

“I think a lot of folks in Iowa would disagree, because wind farms like this and the good jobs that are down in Newton, they’re not a ‘fad’ and they’re not ‘imaginary,’ Obama said.

Today, wind-energy production supports 75,000 American jobs, including 7,000 jobs in Iowa, more than in any other state. Iowa gets about 20 percent of its electricity from wind.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that wind projects across the country created at least 52,000 jobs between 2009 and 2011.

A recent study by Navigant Consulting found that extending the production tax credit will allow the industry to grow to 100,000 jobs in four years, while an expiration would kill 37,000 jobs within a year.

Yet, Shawn McCoy, a spokesman for Romney’s Iowa campaign, told July 30, “He will allow the wind credit to expire, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.

“Wind energy will thrive wherever it is economically competitive, and wherever private sector competitors with far more experience than the President believe the investment will produce results,” McCoy said.

At the Heil farm, Obama said, “Over the past four years, we’ve doubled the amount of electricity America can generate from wind and to put that in perspective, that’s like building 12 new Hoover Dams.　That’s not imaginary. That is real. Unlike Governor Romney, I want to stop giving $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies that have rarely been more profitable”

“My expectation is that over the next several years, in the same way that we’ve doubled wind energy in the past,” he said, “we’re going to keep on doubling it in the future.”