The League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund has run a local TV ad blaming Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for job losses in Colorado’s wind industry.
The claim: Former Vestas employee Chris Maese and other wind-energy employees in Colorado lost their jobs this year because Republicans, including Romney, do not want to renew the wind-energy production-tax credit, which expires Dec. 31.
The facts: Romney announced at the end of July he opposes an extension or gradual phasing-out of the wind-industry incentive, saying the subsidy “distorts markets and props up an industry that could not otherwise make it on its own.”
Romney’s statements reportedly prompted members of the Senate Finance Committee to remove wind energy from a bipartisan deal that would have renewed the Federal Production Tax Credit on Dec. 31.
Vestas chief executive Ditlev Engel said he believed the wind-energy market would fall by 80 percent in 2013 if the credits were not renewed. He said the company may need to act before the incentive expires because of the lead time necessary for building wind turbines. Vestas reportedly lost key investors and project developers after Romney’s statement.
In August, Vestas announced it would lay off 30 workers from its plant in Brighton. Since then, the company has cut 500 jobs statewide, including 90 in Pueblo and 200 in Windsor.
But according to the American Wind Energy Association, the wind sector in the U.S. has been in a slow, steady decline for about three years because of multiple factors.
Record-low natural-gas prices have caused gas consumption to rise, and an influx of less expensive windmill components from China has hurt Vestas’ expansion. To compensate, Vestas and other wind-energy businesses have been scaling back employment.
According to Susan Innis, a spokeswoman for Vestas, the U.S. wind industry is indeed experiencing a slowdown “due to the uncertainty around the Federal Production Tax Credit that expires at the end of December.”
Innis added that the company has a flexible business strategy in North America and that, “during this period of changing market dynamics, we continue to scale up or down depending on our business needs and the market demands.”
So, while the potential loss of the tax credit may have played a role in Vestas laying off Maese and other employees, it’s impossible to say it was the only factor in that decision or even the predominant one.
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-1223, mmitchell@denverpost.com or
