The Honorable Charles E.

Grassley United States Senate 135 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-1501

April 9, 2012 Dear Senator Grassley, On behalf of our 1.4 million members, supporters, and activists, we thank you for offering your bill, S.2201. The Sierra Club is dedicated to helping our country transition to cleaner, renewable sources of energy, like wind, and we appreciate your longstanding support for this effort. The financial incentives extended by your bill have been crucial to the formation of the U.S. renewable energy industry and will be vital to sustaining this sector in years to come. At a time when we need clean energy more than ever, we simply cannot afford to let the Production Tax Credit expire. As you know, the primary industrial beneficiary of the PTC has been the wind industry, but the benefits to the American people have been two-fold. First, wind energy is clean and home-grown. Second, the supply-chain for wind is based in the U.S., which means the jobs in the wind industry- manufacturing, transporting installation - all stay at home. We are working to let Americans across the country know about your efforts to save this industry, and to ask their elected officials join you in the fight. Today, the wind industry employs 78,000 Americans in more than 400 facilities, in 43 states. In 2012, more than 60% of a wind turbines value was produced in the United States, compared to only 25% in 2005. Over the last four years, private investment in wind energy has averaged $17 billion a year. A failure to extend the PTC could lead to the loss of approximately 37,000 jobs in the wind industry. It will also cancel billions of dollars in private investment, and slow recent progress to put America on a path toward a clean energy future. If the PTC remains in place, the wind industry is projected to create 54,000 additional American jobs in the next four years, including 46,000 manufacturing jobs. This rate of growth would keep the industry on track to support 500,000 jobs by 2030. Congress must act soon or the wind industry will face crippling setbacks, so we are ramping up our efforts to encourage expeditious passage of your bill. Manufacturers have to get their orders in from operators today so that they can be ready for next year. Without the certainty that the PTC will be in place, no operator is willing to make these investments in materials.

We also wanted to raise our longstanding concern with extending tax credits for biomass, landfill gas and waste to energy. For various reasons we do not support the extension of credits to these industries without significant reforms, however, on balance, the bill is an important step forward in continuing the growth of our nations clean energy economy. In the coming months, the Sierra Club will do all we can to help your office make sure we sustain this important investment in our countrys future. Again, we thank you for your leadership on this issue and look forward to working with you.

Best,

Michael Brune Executive Director