Manufacturing Tax Credit Will Accelerate Solar Job Creation

For Immediate Release
December 16, 2009

Administration announcement means more solar jobs, faster deployment of clean energy

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) released the following statement on today’s announcement by Vice President Joe Biden of an expansion of the Section 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit:

“The Administration is taking action to meet our most pressing economic need – job creation – by expanding the manufacturing tax credit for renewable energy equipment like solar,” said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

“This incentive improves our nation’s competitiveness with other solar industry market leaders like China and creates high-quality jobs with good benefits. We’re bringing back a sense of pride in the American worker that a job can do something positive for the country and for our planet.

“The solar industry is creating manufacturing jobs from coast-to-coast and in the states where they are most needed. In Ohio, where communities are feeling the sting of the decline in traditional manufacturing, the solar industry is stepping in to fill that void. Over the past 10 years, 6,000 people have become employed in the solar industry in the city of Toledo alone, double what the coal industry employs in the entire state.

“By stimulating more domestic manufacturing, we can expand on this momentum.”

Today’s announcement builds on President Obama’s commitment made in the American Recovery and Restoration Act to double America’s generation of renewable energy in the next three years. The program covers a number of clean energy technologies, including solar. It provides a 30 percent tax credit for investments in factories that manufacture products used in clean energy technology.

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Established in 1974, the Solar Energy Industries Association is the national trade association of the solar energy industry. As the voice of the industry, SEIA works with its more than 1,000 member companies to make solar a mainstream and significant energy source by expanding markets, removing market barriers, strengthening the industry and educating the public on the benefits of solar energy. Learn more at http://www.seia.org.

SEIA President & CEO Rhone Resch is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RhoneResch . SEIA is on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/thesolarindustry ) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Solar-Energy-Industries-Association/112495296809 ).

Read the Solar Bill of Rights at http://www.solarbillofrights.org/

Media Contacts:
Jared Blanton, 202.556.2886, jblanton@seia.org
Brian Mahar, 703.302.8393, bmahar@tigercomm.us

This news release brought to you by the Indiana Renewable Energy Association.