Bingaman And Teague Call For Algae-Based Fuel Incentive
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman said a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report suggests that American taxpayers might be over-subsidizing corn-based biofuels, even while failing to provide any tax credit for algae-based fuels, which hold great promise for the nation’s environment and energy security, and for Southern New Mexico’s economy.
Current law provides a 45-cents-per-gallon credit to producers of corn-based ethanol. This year alone the tax credit – called Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit or VEETC — will cost taxpayers $7.6 billion. That high price tag makes the VEETC by far the tax code’s largest subsidy for renewable energy. And that is on top of the $41.2 billion in current dollars that U.S. taxpayers have already spent since 1980 on tax-based subsidies for ethanol.
The CBO report, prepared at Bingaman’s request, shows that based on carbon emissions avoided, taxpayers are providing a far higher subsidy for corn-based ethanol than for “advanced” biofuels – fuels that are made from renewable biological resources such as plants. Rather than to reflexively extend VEETC when it expires on December 31, Bingaman said the issue should be closely studied as Congress considers changes to energy tax incentives in the coming weeks.
