29 Governors Want Action on Renewable Energy

A coalition of 29 governors wants Washington to act on renewable energy. Aaron Nathans writes in the News Journal that the governors presented a specific list of policy proposals to Congress:

A group of 29 governors, including Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, is calling on Congress to extend renewable energy incentives and require every U.S. electric utility to buy one-10th of its energy from renewable sources by 2012.

The Christian Science Monitor has more on the policy proposals:

Building new interstate transmission lines and infrastructure to bring renewable energy from large centralized facilities sited in remote but sunny deserts or the windy plains states to US population centers in the Midwest and East Coast.
Increasing explicit support for coastal, deep water, and offshore wind technology and transmission research and development at the Department of Energy, as well as streamlining the permitting process for locating wind farms.
Extending the Treasury Department's financing program that offers cash up front instead of the Investment Tax Credit, as well as a renewable energy production tax credit.

Last week, Tom Carper joined up with Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Sherrod Brown of Ohio to introduce a bill to extend the production and investment tax credits for offshore wind. Why would a senator from Ohio be interested in offshore wind? Look at a map. The entire northern edge of Ohio looks out on Lake Erie.
Absurdly, the current tax credit expires in 2012. It is difficult for developers to take advantage of the credit when their lead time is longer than the life of the credit itself.