(02/18/10) When Congress approved production tax credits for renewable energy, not every industry got the same treatment. Biomass power is not getting the subsidies that other alternative energy sources get. Lester Graham reports.
Transcript: Lester Graham, February 12, 2010
Biomass power - produced from organic waste such as wood chips, grass or stuff that would otherwise just be thrown away - got half the tax credit that wind and solar did. And, instead of the tax credit lasting ten years like the other renewable energy sectors, biomass power got five years.
Bob Cleaves is the president of the Biomass Power Association. He says that tax credit for biomass is now gone.
"And our industry, frankly, is in crisis at the moment because Congress has let expire existing production tax credits we were only given five years for and if those are not brought back to life, then I'm afraid we're not going to be growing the baseline, we're going to be losing the baseline."
Cleaves says without the tax credit, some states will be at a disadvantage in meeting the federal government's requirments for more electricity to come from renewable energy.
For The Environment Report, I'm Lester Graham.
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