Government Incentives

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have laws that require a minimum percentage of electricity to  be produced from renewable sources such as water, biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.  On the federal level,   the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Renewable Electricity Standard of 20 percent by 2020 in June  2009, but  similar legislation has yet to be approved by the Senate. There is a federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind power, initially created by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and subsequently amended and extended, but it is set to expire at the  end of 2012, likely before any currently proposed offshore wind farms would be installed. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) allocated nearly $100 million to offshore wind research and test facilities.