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Guest Commentary April 19, 2002
Green Energy Can Meet Great Expectations
The Honorable Chuck Grassley
Since September 11, it's obvious how important it is to enhance our energy independence. Energy security is a top priority. We can't afford our dangerous reliance on foreign sources of oil with unstable regimes in the Middle East.
Energy shortages in the 1970s launched a 30-year debate on U.S. energy independence. Progress still lags. The Middle East accounts for up to 65 percent of the known petroleum reserves worldwide. The United States consumes one-quarter of the world's energy production, yet supplies only five percent. Immediate steps must be taken to diversify U.S. energy sources, particularly the development of alternative, renewable sources of energy. ...
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Investing in renewable forms of clean-burning energy is good for the environment, good for national security, good for job creation, good for economic development, good for U.S. taxpayers and good for Rural America.
The Senate is now debating comprehensive legislation to address America's long-term energy needs. A bipartisan package of energy tax incentives which I helped steer through the Finance Committee will be considered as part of the energy bill. My green-energy tax package focuses on the development of wind energy, biomass, ethanol and biodiesel. ...
Consider wind energy. It's reliable, renewable, inexhaustible, environmentally safe and homegrown. The traditional power source from years ago has emerged as a new-generation means of producing electrical power. Technological advances have greatly reduced the cost of building high-tech windmills. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the sale of wind energy to local utilities over the past five years has increased 40 percent per year. And forecasts call for wind-generated power to triple in the next five years. With Iowa leading the way, a dozen states in the central part of the United States have the potential to use wind to produce four times the amount of power the nation consumes.
My green-energy amendment features an extension of the original federal tax credits I pushed through 10 years ago that helped launch the then-fledgling wind energy industry and promote the production of electricity with biomass, a clean-burning, renewable energy source that includes Iowa-grown switch grass. My amendment also expands eligibility to include saw dust, tree trimmings, agricultural byproducts and untreated construction debris. ...
In addition, the stage has been set for passage of legislation that would triple the size of our ethanol markets. We now have bipartisan support for inclusion in the energy bill of a Renewable Fuels Standard that will require the use of five billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. This will create a much larger market than that of the oxygenate requirement. ...
Livestock farmers across the state sit on an untapped energy resource that I'd like to see used for generating electricity. Turning swine and bovine waste into electrical power would be an environmentally friendly way to recycle and increase farm income. My legislation includes a new production tax credit for electricity generated from hog and cattle waste.
The federal tax code can promote the supply and demand for green energy. Environmentally friendly, renewable sources of energy will enhance homeland energy security and help transition the United States from its over-dependence on foreign oil to alternative, domestic resources. It makes a lot more sense to invest in America's farmers and boost the economy in Rural America than it does to blindly continue our reliance on finite sources of energy overseas. Farmers in the 21st century can help pioneer the United States to greater energy independence and supply consumers with more earth-friendly alternatives that will meet expectations for affordable, reliable sources of energy.
Chuck Grassley, a Republican, is a U.S. Senator from Iowa. The above commentary has been adapted from a weekly column Sen. Grassley issued, March 15, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
