Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman today chaired a Capitol Hill hearing about the importance of expanding a clean energy tax incentive that is helping New Mexico's manufacturing sector grow.

Bingaman is the author of a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that gives manufacturers an incentive to open or expand in the United States.  The credit allows companies to write off 30 percent of the cost of investing in facilities that manufacture renewable energy technologies, like solar panels.

"The clean energy industry will be a major source of new jobs in the global economy.  This tax incentive is one way to ensure that those jobs are created right here in our country – preferably in New Mexico," said Bingaman, who chaired the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure.

Until Bingaman's provision was included in the Recovery Act, all of our nation's domestic tax incentives focused exclusively on consumer tax credits to encourage the use of such technology as solar panels.  The Bingaman measure, for the first time, incentivized companies to manufacture green technology in the United States.

The Departments of Energy and the Treasury were authorized to award $2.3 billion in tax credits.  By January, they had fully allocated the $2.3 billion, among 183 projects representing the solar, wind, vehicles, nuclear, energy storage, smart grid, energy efficiency, and biofuel sectors.

Three businesses received a tax credit allocation to expand manufacturing in New Mexico.  They are:

• Schott Solar received a tax credit allocation of $33 million, which will leverage $110 million in investment in Schott's Albuquerque facilities.
• Johnson Plate & Tower received a $2.38 million tax credit allocation that it will use to establish a facility in Santa Teresa that will manufacture commercial wind towers.  According to news reports, Johnson Plate & Tower expects ultimately to employ 150 people at the facility.
• Sumco Phoenix received a $2.67 million allocation that it will use for a facility in Albuquerque that to manufacture and shape silicon solar blocks, which will be sold to solar equipment manufacturers.  This tax credit will enable Sumco to hire at least 35 more employees in Albuquerque.

Bingaman believes the projects in New Mexico made possible through this tax incentive represent a good start toward regaining global dominance in clean energy manufacturing.  As recently as 1999, the U.S. commanded a 30 percent share of the global solar manufacturing market.  But as the global market grew, domestic production declined, and by 2008, our nation's share slipped to a mere 6 percent.  A similar story can be told for the wind turbine industry; today, only one of the world's top ten wind turbine manufacturers is American.

"We've got to regain our command of clean energy manufacturing.  This tax credit is clearly working, and I believe we need to expand it so that more companies can benefit and more American jobs can be created," Bingaman said.