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December 4, 2014
On December 1, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on its Clean Power Plan, a draft regulation to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants. In November, EESI welcomed the EPA’s recent release of the Framework for Assessing Biogenic CO2 Emissions from Stationary Sources, which recognizes the important role that using “waste-derived feedstocks” as well as “forest-derived industrial by-products” can play in the low-carbon economy, as they “are likely to have minimal or no net atmospheric contributions of biogenic CO2 emissions, or even reduce such impacts, when compared with an alternate fate of disposal.” However, EESI cautioned that while the Framework is a step in the right direction, more needs to be done to achieve the significant greenhouse gas reductions that implementing the full suite of biomass energy sources would make possible. Unlike other renewable energy sources, waste materials can pose significant environmental problems if not sustainably dealt with – but if utilized they can provide significant benefits on several levels.
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House Passes Tax Extenders Bill Through 2014 – Senate Likely to Follow
On December 3, the House passed a tax extenders package (H.R. 5771), which extends about 50 different tax cuts to businesses and individual taxpayers. It is expected that the Senate will pass the bill before recess. Unlike the EXPIRE act passed in April of this year by the Senate Finance Committee, which would have extended the tax credits until the end of 2015, the House bill merely extends the expired provisions to the end of 2014. Renewable energy industry advocates stated that while re-instating the tax credits is welcome, simply extending them to the end of the year offers little certainty going forward for various clean energy production tax credits (PTC).
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