A coalition of environmental groups is calling on Congress to let the blending tax credit for ethanol expire at the end of the year.
The Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit
(VEETC), which has totaled nearly $21 billion over the past five years, goes to oil
companies for mixing ethanol into their gasoline. The tax credit is in
addition to existing laws that require the blending of ethanol into gas.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth and Clean Air Task Force have taken out an advertisement in Congress Daily criticizing VEETC and
calling for lawmakers to allow it to expire at the end of 2010.
If
renewed, an additional $31 billion in tax credits will flow to oil
company coffers between 2011-2015.
“We’re paying Big Oil billions in taxpayer dollars simply to obey the law,” said Brendan Bell of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The subsidy is redundant, and it blocks investments in cleaner, advanced biofuels.”
The groups propose shifting investment to clean energy sources that cut
global warming pollution, create new jobs, and do not contribute to the
environmental impacts of industrial agriculture.
“Paying Big Oil to blend dirty corn ethanol into dirty gasoline is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Kate McMahon, Energy Policy Campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “Extending VEETC would only pump even more taxpayer dollars into the coffers of oil companies like BP. VEETC is just one more scheme by dirty fuels to siphon taxpayer dollars away from real solutions.”
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