SO DAKOTA WANTS WIND

SD Senate panel endorses incentives for wind power

Chet Brokaw, February 14, 2013 (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

“…[The] South Dakota Senate Commerce and Energy Committee voted 6-1 to pass a measure…that would provide financial incentives to encourage the stalled construction of wind power projects in the state…[The] construction of wind farms has drawn to a standstill in South Dakota because the state imposes much higher taxes during construction than neighboring states do.

“…South Dakota currently would charge $7 million to $11 million in sales taxes and contractor's excise taxes during the construction phase of a typical wind farm. North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa would charge only $1 million to $2 million…[T]he committee approved a…[measure that] would give a wind project an incentive payment roughly equal to 2 percent of its final cost. For example, a $5 million project would get a $100,000 incentive payment. One costing $100 million would get a $2 million incentive payment…”

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“Rob Rebenitsch, director of the South Dakota Wind Energy Association, said South Dakota has 784 megawatts of installed wind power, while North Dakota has twice as much. Iowa has 4,536 megawatts of wind power installed…Rebenitsch said more than 13,000 megawatts of wind generation was installed across the nation last year in 192 projects costing $25 billion…[but] none of that generation was installed in South Dakota…

“Wind energy officials said the bill is a good start, but they believe larger incentives are needed…Sen. Mark Johnston, R-Sioux Falls, said he objected to the bill because it deals with only one industry…[S]tate officials and legislators are making progress in devising an overall incentive program that would cover agricultural processing and all other kinds of large construction projects.”

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