Tagged: wind power

It's not looking good for subsidies for renewable energy.

A 30 percent upfront tax credit for commercial renewable power projects known as the 1603 program expired at the end of 2011.

Another 30 percent credit for wind projects, that's a part of the long-debated payroll tax bill, is scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.

And while there are still a host of incentives offered by states and the federal government that remain unaffected, the question is inevitable:

Is the federal government preparing to cut loose the renewable power industry?

2011 was a choppy year for wind power in New York State.

It was marked by both high-profile failure, of an ambitious Great Lakes offshore wind project, and smaller-scale successes, like keeping a small wind farm in local hands. But overall, wind power in New York has been growing at a steady clip.

And while wind still accounts for about one percent of the state's energy mix, recent legislation in Albany has primed the pump for small-scale wind development across the state.

Kevin Schulte, CEO of Ontario, N.Y.-based Sustainable Energy Developments (SED), is eager to seize that opportunity.

"The status quo is changing,"says Schulte. "We've gotta move forward. We've gotta change. And that's not always easy."

Ralph Wilson Stadium has long been known as one of the windiest venues in the National Football League.

Now, the home stadium of the Buffalo Bills, known as "the Ralph," is taking advantage of it. Thirty small turbines now harness wind blowing into the venue for electricity.

The devices made their debut at the Bills vs. New York Jets home game Sunday. Painted red and blue, the turbines, about three feet in height, are located under the stadium's large western scoreboard.

Last month, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters that he thinks the power produced by downstate's Indian Point nuclear plant could be replaced, if the plant were to be taken offline.

What Cuomo thinks is important, because he's led the charge to shutter Indian Point, when its reactor licenses expire in 2013 and 2015, for safety reasons.  Six percent of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of Indian Point - the same evacuation zone threshold that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended for the Fukushima Daiichi plant following the Japanese earthquake earlier this year.

Not surprisingly, momentum to close Indian Point has increased since March.

But the state now has to figure out how to replace it.

It was just a single bullet point in a giant omnibus energy bill.  

Tucked between energy efficiency initiatives in the Power NY Act, Article X (pronounced "article ten"), had support from advocates for green power, who wanted to make it simpler to site new power plants in New York.

But now that single bullet point has blossomed into something else: a fight.

Western New Yorkers are still waiting to hear what the state’s Great Lakes Offshore Wind (GLOW) power project will look like. An announcement about where wind turbines would go - and in which lake, Erie or Ontario - was originally slated to come in January, and was then pushed back to the end of March. Now the timeline could run well into summer.