RENEWABLE “PORK”

On Monday, the House rejected the financial rescue package by 228 to 205 votes.  On Friday, it passed it, by 263 to 171. What changed? The Dow had its largest single-day drop. Popular opinion reversed. And the bill itself changed. It had picked up $150 billion in what some critics labeled “pork.”

Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense said of the tacked-on portfolio: “Many of these provisions are tax provisions that benefit narrow interests that have been waiting to hop on a legislative train that was leaving Washington.”

True, the bill includes a bizarre tax credit for wooden arrows, worth $200,000, and a very un-eco-friendly seven-year tax rebate for owners of motocross race tracks, worth $100 million, among other less-than-noble and certainly unnecessary provisions.

But there are a few that are crucial to our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, certainly not a “narrow” interest:

One-year extension of tax credits for the production of power from wind, solar, and refined coal facilities, and other renewable sources, as well as tax credits for a new category, “marine renewable.” The “Environment News Service” reports that “the extensions will be partly paid for by a change in the tax code for the oil and gas industry.” This portion of the bill includes $800 million for clean energy bonds for renewable energy generating facilities.

On his cellphone from outside the House chamber yesterday afternoon, Peter Mandelstam, the founder and president of BlueWater Wind and a long-time advocate for wind power, said, “We shouldn’t have to be back before Congress every two to three years asking for these extensions. Those of us in the business are committing capital for projects that will be completed in 2012, when the legislation is only through 2009.”

Not surprisingly, King Coal is given precedence.  $1.4 billion will go to refined coal facilities over 10 years, with priority given to those with smaller carbon footprints.  These facilities produce what its proponents, like Evergreen Energy’s President and CEO Kevin R. Collins, call “cleaner coal.”  Faithful readers know how I feel about that.  But I’m willing to accept the lesser evil, and $800 million is appeasement enough, although the 2009 expiration date for some of the provisions is frustrating.

$10 million to allow employers to provide benefits to employees who commute to work on their bicycles (similar to the benefits some employers provide to those who commute in their cars or on public transportation). This will include provisions for the “purchase and repair of a bicycle, bicycle improvements, and bicycle storage.”

Referring to the provisions for tax credits for renewable energy facilities, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said:

This was a part of our energy bill last year; it did not survive the Senate. It now has become a part of this legislation. And it is paid for. We fought hard to include these critical tax cuts … because they are central to job creation.

It’s a shame it took this crisis and this bill to get them through Congress, and a shame that people like Mandelstam will have to be back in DC next year, lobbying Congress, instead of building wind farms.