Of course, AWEA's newfound heft still doesn't match up to other energy interest groups inside the Beltway.
In early March, AWEA will deploy reps from its membership up to the Hill for a lobbying day.
Outside the ballroom, AWEA was one of a handful of organizations sponsoring booths.
But fortunately for AWEA, it's not a tough time to be a trade association touting the virtues of wind power.
From a headcount of 15 five years ago, AWEA's staff has grown to 50, including 12 folks devoted to advocacy and communications.
We can't say how things will break for AWEA, but it's a safe bet that the power industry faces business and regulatory upheaval.
North and South Carolina have at least 30 wind-related manufacturing plants, according to AWEA data, including a major turbine factory in Greenville, S.C.
Greg Wetstone, a lobbyist for the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), is optimistic that the renewable standard will pass, but he acknowledges it won't be easy.
Efforts from AWEA, the Sierra Club and other well-funded groups have garnered fantastic returns for green activists, but unfortunately, average Americans are stuck with the bill.
Helped along by increases in wind power usage, AWEA has added 109 organizations to its membership roster thus far this year, bringing the total up to 1, 200.
Another 34 plants are located in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee, where the AWEA says 1, 200 to 3, 000 jobs are directly or indirectly supported by the wind industry.
Last month the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), with the help of a bipartisan trio of governors in states that benefit heavily from the subsidy, held an event endorsing the tax credit.
"It's a tough time these days to get legislation through, " says Wetstone, a former Hill staffer who, prior to joining American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), spent 10 directing advocacy efforts for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In their talking points will be AWEA's other top two priorities: establishment of national requirements on power generation from renewable sources and ensuring that wind power has prominent role in the emerging area of global warming legislation.
As Congress grapples with the production tax credit issue, AWEA is drawing on its every advantage, hitting up editorial boards and reporters, advertising in Washington publications, and orchestrating thousands of emails from member companies to congressional offices.
Of course at the same time there are a bunch of other utilities, like AEP, along with independent power producers like NRG Energy and renewable advocates like the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), who want badly to get the grid up and running.
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But that estimate, often invoked by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), is corroborated by a recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) on the job creation impacts of the grant program that explicitly excludes jobs associated with the Bush-era projects.
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