Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman today applauded the White House for supporting his call to expand a key tax incentive that would create jobs by encouraging the manufacture of clean energy technologies in the United States.

Bingaman helped shepherd through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act a new tax credit that allows qualified companies to write off 30 percent of the cost of creating, expanding, or re-equipping facilities to manufacture renewable energy technologies, like solar panels, wind turbines, and advanced batteries.

The original program allowed the Departments of Energy and the Treasury to award up to $2.3 billion in tax credits.  Today's announcement calls for an additional $5 billion, which must be approved by Congress; Bingaman committed to lead the legislative effort to secure enactment.

"There is so much potential for clean energy manufacturing in our country that the first $2.3 billion in tax credits were exhausted in just a few months," Bingaman said. "Today's announcement will help put us on the path toward being the exporter to the world for clean energy technology.  I applaud President Obama for taking this step to help us create jobs of the future," Bingaman said.

Until ARRA was enacted in February, all domestic tax incentives focused exclusively on business and consumer tax credits to encourage the use of such technology as solar panels.  The 30 percent tax credit – created first in ARRA and proposed for expansion through the American Clean Technology Manufacturing Leadership Act -- for the first time incentivized companies to manufacture clean technologies in the United States.

Last week, Bingaman introduced the American Clean Technology Manufacturing Leadership Act (S. 2857) – a bipartisan bill that would have added an additional $2.5 billion in tax credits, enough to leverage $8.33 billion in new domestic investment.

Bingaman chairs the Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources & Infrastructure, and plans to convene a hearing in 2010 on tax incentives for energy manufacturing.