Lucrative tax breaks afoot for solar energy

By Deirdre Gregg
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)
Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET March 13, 2005

The Senate is considering two bills that would offer aggressive incentives to manufacturers and consumers of renewable energy. One bill, SB 5111, would provide tax breaks for solar energy system manufacturers, with additional incentives for those who build facilities in rural counties. A second bill, SB 5101, would help create a market for those products by essentially paying consumers who generate their own electricity using solar, wind or anaerobic digester systems, which convert farm waste to energy.
While many think of Washington, particularly the Puget Sound area, as too cloudy to generate much solar energy, Washington in fact has more than enough solar potential to provide power to all its residents. The state could, if built out with current technology, generate enough solar power to supply 4.2 million homes, far more than the roughly 2.4 million households in Washington, according to NW Energy Coalition, a group of consumer, environmental and renewable energy developers’ organizations.

Seattle gets more sun than the prime solar power sites in Germany, one of the world’s most prolific solar power generators, said Mike Nelson, manager of Northwest Solar Center. Even rainy Forks on the Olympic Peninsula gets more sunshine than most of Germany. In eastern Washington, solar conditions are better: Yakima gets more sun than the Gulf Coast of Texas, Nelson said.

Full article at MSNBC