The authors didn’t intend it as an an analysis of the wind power production tax credit, but it’s hard not to see the results as one more argument to keep the PTC alive: Wind power reaches right down to the local level as an economic engine, boosting incomes and jobs in the counties where turbines go up, according to a new study.
“Taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location, we find an aggregate increase in county-level personal income and employment of approximately $11,000 and 0.5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008,” write researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Eoconomic Research Service, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
US wind power tax credit news