Oklahoma Claims It Owns The Wind, Caves To Oil Lobby To Tax Energy From The Air
By Claire Bernish
ActivistPost.com
FEBRUARY 11, 2017
In a slavish display of fealty to the oil and gas industry, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin put forward a plan in the executive budget proposal to tax the state’s wind industry out of existence.
By ending tax credits — ahead of schedule — and imposing the nation’s highest tax on wind power, this Oklahoma law would make renewable wind energy cost-prohibitive while enriching the fossil fuel industry.
EcoWatch reports, “The budget proposes a .5 cent per kilowatt-hour on wind energy—five times the wind tax in Wyoming, which along with South Dakota are the only states that tax wind energy—and accelerates the end of a tax credit, currently set to expire in 2021.”
The governor’s budget mirrors another bill working its way through state legislature.
Separate legislation proposed by Rep. Earl Sears would end “accumulation of new credits for zero-emission electric generation July 1 and caps annual payments for existing credits at $15 million a year,” reports Tulsa World.
“There’s no question wind has a place in this great state, and has a place in the energy sector,” Sears noted. “What is at hand, we absolutely have to have serious discussion about credits for wind.”
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