The U.S. Senate approved a massive tax package Tuesday that included a one-year extension of a Production Tax Credit for wind power producers - and also allows 20 million taxpayers to avoid paying the alternative minimum tax.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and wind power producers in Kansas strongly supported the tax credit and so did Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. The vote was 93-2.

“Gov. Sebelius is pleased with the Senate's action on this critical issue and looks forward to the same outcome in the House,” said Nicole Corcoran, Sebelius’ press secretary.

Sarah Little, spokesperson for Sen. Pat Roberts, said the Senate bill called for a one-year extension of the current tax credit, which was scheduled to expire in December.

The credit provides a 1.9-cent credit to wind energy producers for every kilowatt-hour produced.

What fate awaits the wind tax credit in the House is still a mystery.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., warned his House counterparts that any changes to the Senate-backed bill made by the House would kill the overall package, which also includes the alternative minimum tax provision.

It appeared Wednesday as if the House were preparing to ignore Reid’s warning. Some House members have indicated that they support a version of the bill in which other tax breaks, on hedge fund managers and corporations doing business overseas, would be eliminated to help underwrite the bill’s pricetag of $100 billion.

The House, which hopes to adjourn this week to allow members to return to their districts to campaign, also will likely have to consider a $700 billion bank bailout plan before adjournment.

In the meantime, Sebelius announced earlier this week that she had signed the Pickens Pledge, part of a crusade by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens to encourage Congress to reduce U.S. consumption of foreign oil by 30 percent in 10 years.

The plan also calls for increased domestic drilling, converting cars to run on natural gas (which the U.S. has in abundance), and development of alternative energy such as wind and solar.

“Right now our nation borrows money from China to buy oil from Saudi Arabia and then literally burns it up,” Sebelius said in a press release. “This process undermines our national security, deepens our debt and harms our environment; it’s time we put an end to our reliance on foreign oil.”

Pickens argues that building wind power facilities from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20 percent of U.S. electricity, at a cost of around $1 trillion. A transmission system to transport that energy would cost an additional $200 billion.

“That’s a lot of money, but it’s a one-time cost,” Pickens contends in a summary of the plan. “And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it’s a bargain.”

Pickens may need to find more than one bargain soon. His investments in energy have failed miserably, according to a report in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, which reports "the funds have lost around $1 billion this year, a figure that includes $270 million of personal losses" for the "former geologist who earned billions by building an oil company and investing in energy."

As Pickens told the Journal, "It's my toughest run in 10 years."

If investors had doubts about Pickens, traditional power suppliers have some doubts about the prospects of wind energy.

Although the Sunflower Electric Power Corp. is neutral on the Pickens Plan, Spokesperson Cindy Hertel said the non-profit firm derives more than 10 percent of the electricity it sells from wind power. But, she said, "wind is still an intermittent resource.”

“We’ve already met the governor’s goal of having 10 percent of our resource portfolio from wind, and we also were the first utility in Kansas to commit to the 25-25 plan, which commits us to 25 percent by 2025,” Hertel said.

“We’re not against wind or other renewables, we feel that we should use all different kinds of resources to meet our customers’ demand, but we also recognize that wind power has some drawbacks.”

She pointed out, for example, that two wind farms from which Sunflower buys electricity only produce power a little over 30 percent of the time.

Because of the intermittent nature of wind, Hertel said wind farms require “back-up” from more traditional power sources, like gas or coal-fired plants.

In addition, it’s expensive to develop and transmit wind power, which necessitates the kind of tax breaks the Senate approved yesterday. The tax breaks would not have applied to Sunflower, because it is a user-owned, not-for-profit company.

“We’re all about reliability and affordability,” Hertel said.

The Week in Review