PTC Impact on Wind Energy Demand in 2013: Update from Christopher Blansett, Senior Equity Analyst for Alternative Energy and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Sectors at J.P. Morgan Chase

67 WALL STREET, New York - January 10, 2013 - The Wall Street Transcript has just updated its Investing in Energy Report. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Investing in Wind Energy - North American Shale Development - Oil and Gas - E&P - Value Investing

Companies include: Broadwind Energy, Inc. (BWEN) and many others.

In the following excerpt from the Investing in Energy Strategies Report, an expert analyst discusses the impact of the fiscal cliff resolution on wind energy and other alternative energy stocks:

TWST: Last time we spoke, this past July, you did not expect the wind subsidies to be extended. Now that they have been, how has your view on the wind sector changed?

Mr. Blansett: It's definitely going to drive some increased installations in 2013; however, it's difficult to determine at this time how much. Going into the end of last year with the expectation that PTC was not going to be extended, we estimated demand would fall to between two and three gigawatts in 2013. Maybe now 2013 installations will go up to as much as four gigawatts, so we are estimating a year with three to four gigawatts of wind installations, but one of the things that's making this difficult to determine is that there was a very large push by all the wind developers to get projects done by the end of 2012, and obviously they had to make that decision to get it done then. If they didn't, then the economics of their systems would have been negatively impacted.

So we are now sitting in an installation lull, where the PTC has been extended for another year, but most of the major wind developers are effectively taking a break. And more importantly, they really slowed or in many cases stopped their longer-term wind project development pipeline to focus on near-term projects, so they now have to step back in and figure out what projects they can get done by the end of 2013 that maybe they normally wouldn't have moved forward with. So we probably should expect a little bit more demand this year, but it's a little early on to determine what that's going to be. So that being said, we are probably going to see demand pick up meaningfully in the second half of the year.

At the end of this year...

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