America’s dependence on fossil fuels poses severe challenges for our economy, our environment and our national security. For the transportation sector alone, we import over 3.3 billion barrels of oil annually, which forces us to send over $1 billion every day to oil-rich regimes around the world. Many of those regimes use their oil riches to threaten our national security, while others buy up American businesses, worsening our trade deficit and weakening the U.S. dollar. At the same time, the rise in carbon emissions poses a grave threat to our way of life. Although America is blessed with an abundance of coal — the bedrock of our electric power industry — our ability to use it in a carbon-constrained world depends on new, advanced coal technologies and the viability of large-scale carbon sequestration. Natural gas and nuclear power, although less carbon-intensive, have their own significant drawbacks. Finally, we face troubling economic times, and rising energy prices are a big part of our growing anxiety.

As bleak as these challenges seem, I share the determination to overcome them, as do a majority of my colleagues. Driven by the gravity of these perils and the promise of nothing less than the transformation of our energy economy, a clean energy revolution is budding in America. Renewable electricity standards in 28 states and the District of Columbia coupled with vital federal tax incentives have spurred investment in renewable energy technologies, with incredible recent growth in the production of electric power from solar and wind energy in particular.

In my state of Colorado, our 2004 ballot initiative to promote renewable energy production was so successful that the state legislature doubled the standards in 2007. We’ve seen Colorado’s wind energy capacity quadruple to 1,000 megawatts in four years, and over the next 12 years renewable energy projects in Colorado are expected to provide $400 million in local property tax revenue.

These industries are on the cusp of developing new technologies and production capabilities, which — given economies of scale — promise to make clean electricity cost competitive with electricity produced from coal. But shortsighted partisan wrangling is threatening to stunt this progress. Because of repeated filibusters and veto threats, this Congress has been unable to provide the long-term tax certainty essential to securing large-scale capital investment in clean, renewable energy technologies in virtually every state in the union.

The Senate will soon have another chance to enact legislation that would provide long-term extensions of the renewable energy tax incentives that are crucial for the continued development of clean renewable energy technologies. Two of the most important incentives are the production tax credit and investment tax credit for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. A recent analysis by Navigant Consulting reveals that failure to extend the solar and wind tax incentives alone could result in the withdrawal of nearly $19 billion in capital investment and the loss of more than 116,000 jobs in 2009. In my state of Colorado, we stand to lose more than 10,000 jobs in the wind sector alone. While several of these incentives will expire at the end of this year, this looming deadline is already stalling clean energy projects of all sizes.

Those who have opposed moving forward with this essential legislation should know better than to let these incentives lapse, because our fitful on-again, off-again energy tax policies have wreaked havoc on investment decisions over the past decade. Any college business major will tell you that uncertainty is anathema to investors, and the recent history of the wind energy production tax credit (PTC) is a textbook lesson on the subject. Congress allowed the PTC to expire at the end of 1999, 2001, and again in 2003.  According to the American Wind Energy Association, in the years following each of those expirations, new installed wind capacity dropped by 93, 73, and 77 percent, respectively, compared to the previous year. The economics are simple: When investment is withdrawn, projects are canceled, and jobs are lost.

And it is not just wind and solar energy that deserve our attention. The package of clean energy tax incentives reported out of the Senate Finance Committee last year will promote significant new investment in advanced low-carbon technologies to revolutionize our coal industry, including ultra-supercritical and integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) coal plants with carbon capture and storage. The package also contains incentives for a wide array of clean energy technologies, including cellulosic biofuels, biodiesel, and plug-in electric vehicles, which have the potential to free us from our dependence on foreign oil, as well as fuel cells, geothermal, biomass, and hydropower energy. The package also includes extensions of vital tax credits for energy efficiency in homes and commercial buildings and energy-efficient appliances.

We must re-double our efforts to find common ground and support our nascent low-carbon energy industries. Doing so would be one of the surest things the Congress can do to boost our economy, create new good-paying jobs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

The question is simple: will we move beyond partisan posturing and provide the long-term tax certainty that is necessary to ensure our clean energy future? Particularly now, when our economy is in trouble and unemployment is rising, it would make absolutely no sense to pull the plug on energy tax policies that encourage investment in these growing industries — industries that will be the foundation of our country’s 21st century new energy economy.

Salazar is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.