Wind Power Projects Pick Up in Oklahoma, Despite Continued Tax Credit Uncertainty

• Logan Layden
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Logan Layden is a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma. He is a native of McAlester, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Logan spent three years as a state capitol reporter and local host of All Things Considered for NPR member station KGOU in Norman and six years as a reporter with StateImpact from 2011 to 2017. Most recently, he was news director for McAlester Radio before returning to public radio in 2020.

amk713 / Flickr

A federal production tax credit on renewable energy production keeps expiring and getting renewed by Congress, creating a lot of uncertainty in the wind energy industry. Still, by the end of 2013, there were two new wind projects under construction in Oklahoma, and the national trend was toward wind.

As The Oklahoman‘s Paul Monies reports, despite the tax credit being renewed at the beginning of 2013, it took a few months for the industry get going on new projects:

The pipeline of wind projects began to fill back up in the second half of 2013, and the year ended with more than 12,000 megawatts under construction across the country, the [American Wind Energy Association] said.

By the end of 2013, two wind projects were under construction in Oklahoma. Enel Green Power NA owns the 150-megawatt Origin wind farm planned for Murray and Carter counties in southern Oklahoma. TradeWind Energy Inc. started work on the 136-megawatt Mustang Run development in Osage County.

TradeWind CEO Rob Freeman told the paper his company is involved in five wind farm projects he expects to be built over the next two years. Oklahoma ranks 6th nationally for wind power capacity.