I have big news to report from the front lines of our current campaign to protect wind in 2015.

And though there's bad news and good news ? it all points to how critical your voice is going to continue to be in our fight for clean, homegrown energy.

Here's what's happening now:

As you know, a few weeks ago, when Congress began negotiating the terms of a bill that could make a huge difference in bringing affordable wind power to American families in 2015, we launched a nationwide campaign to support it.

However, we weren't the only ones reaching out to Congress. Anti-wind organizations have been fired up beyond any opposition we've seen before.  They 've been spending millions of dollars and writing messages to legislators urging them to leave wind policy out of this bill.

Late last week ? we started to see the impact of our opponents' attacks, and our own efforts to defend wind. By a vote of 378 to 46, the House voted to pass H.R. 5771, a bill that proposed to extend multiple tax incentives through the end of this year, including two common-sense energy policies - the production tax credit and investment tax credit.

The bad news is, this extension falls short of what we were pushing for. We wanted to see a two-year extension, which would make a huge difference in providing more clean and affordable energy to Americans than ever before.

The good news is ? your voice preserved common-sense wind policies through this year. At a time when our opponents were fighting to eliminate wind policy, we powered through and gained an extension of the wind policies vital for clean energy growth.

The fight is not yet done, and we've proven that we can counter the well funded voices of the anti-wind movement. As the bill is expected to move on to the Senate for consideration this week, our campaign will carry on to ensure that American families can benefit from some pretty exciting wind power trends:

  • Wind power prices are coming down fast - In the past five years, the cost of wind power has dropped by over 50%?and is still decreasing!
  • Wind is reaching more and more families - Wind power has delivered a third of all new generating capacity over the past five years, and a record amount of new projects are under construction.

You and thousands of others are the reason common-sense wind policy can carry on.  In these past three weeks, you've helped us exceed our goal - placing over 52,000 calls and emails in that short time!

Here at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), we recently released some exciting news - that the U.S. has more wind projects under construction right now than ever before.

Here are some more highlights from our
Fourth Quarter 2013 Market Report -

  • There is enough wind power under construction in the U.S. to power the equivalent of 3.5 million American homes, or all of the households in Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas - that's over 12,000 megawatts (MW) in total.
  • Some of the states poised for major growth in wind energy include Texas, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, and Michigan.
  • U.S. manufacturing production capacity has ramped up dramatically, with major manufacturing facilities active in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa and South Dakota.

In contrast, however, the amount of wind power installed in the U.S. this past year is the smallest the country has seen in the past nine years - only 1,084 MW, a 92% drop from 2012.

The reason for this contrast is the lack of certainty about federal policy, particularly the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) and investment tax credit (ITC) that help project developers finance wind projects.

Throughout 2012, the wind industry did not know if the tax credits would be extended, so business came to a halt - thus resulting in the small amount of new wind power installed last year.

When the PTC was extended at the beginning of 2013, the industry quickly rebounded, signing a record number of agreements to sell wind power, and starting construction on projects in at least 20 states.

We are once again without policy certainty.  Congress did not act on tax legislation in 2013, and so the PTC was allowed to expire for the fifth time in its history on January 1, 2014.

I urge you to write to your federal legislators today.  Show them both the disappointing year that the wind industry had in 2013, and the exciting year that is coming up in 2014.  Ask them to support extensions of the PTC and ITC, so that businesses in the wind industry can have the certainty they need to develop clean, homegrown, affordable power.