Green Energy Sector Gets Boost From Senate

The Senate proposal also includes production-tax credits for renewable-energy power plants that are already producing electricity. The legislation extends the production-tax break by one year for wind and by two years for solar, biomass and hydropower.

The bill would allow for $800 million worth of bonds to pay for power plants using wind, biomass, geothermal, garbage and other sources. It also would set aside $1.5 billion in tax credits for carbon capture-and-storage projects.

Consumers would receive a $2,500 to $7,500 rebate for buying plug-in electric cars and trucks.

Consumers who want to install solar panels on their properties would benefit from the bill, which extends investment-tax credits for eight years and eliminates today's $2,000 cap on the credits. It would also allow homeowners installing small-wind equipment and geothermal heat pumps to take advantage of the credits, but the amounts would be capped at $4,000 for wind and $2,000 for the heat pumps.

The tax credits would be paid for by several means, including delaying tax deductions for domestic oil and gas productions by American companies and boosting reporting requirements for stock sales by brokers.

The $7,500 tax credit for plug-in hybrids gave cheer to Felix Kramer, co-founder of CalCars.org, which promotes plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.

"This will have an enormous impact," he said. Given his estimates that automakers could make current hybrids into plug-in hybrids for an additional $3,000 to $5,000, the tax credits "could conceivably entirely remove the cost increment that carmakers say is the cause of their reluctance" to build plug-in hybrids.

Editor's note: Today, the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Index (TAN Quote), an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the performance of 25 publicly-traded companies in the solar industry, was recently trading up around 7%.

Of this solar ETF's individual stock holdings, the five largest that are traded in the U.S. are First Solar (FSLR Quote), Suntech Power (STP Quote), SunPower (SPWR Quote), JA Solar (JASO Quote) and LDK Solar (LDK Quote) -- all of which have been moving up today.