GreenPowerGas

In news out of Oregon, it appears that the state’s biggest solar energy project, now about 25 percent on its way to completion, will be negatively impacted by House Bill 2472, which proposes reducing or restricting the state’s Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC), offered by the Oregon Department of Energy.

As initially drafted, the BETC provides 50 percent of eligible project costs for high-efficiency combined heat and power generation, renewable energy resource generation, and renewable energy resource equipment manufacturing facilities, credited over five years at 10 percent per year.

The BETC also provides a pass-through option which allows a project owner to transfer 35 percent of the credit to a partner for a lump-sum cash payment. Project owners may be public entities, non-profits, or businesses facing a tax liability, for example.

Now, HB 2472 proposes to cap the total amount of money the state can issue under the BETC in a given year, and Daniel Eisenbeis of the League of Oregon Cities is not happy. Nor is Northwest Renewable Project’s spokesperson Suzanne Leta Liou, who sees the bill as leading to fewer renewable energy projects in the state, and about 1,700 fewer jobs.

Another unintended consequence of 2472 will be to increase greenhouse gas emissions, or GHGs, since the BETC as originally operated actually reduced GHG emissions during 2007 and 2008 to half the emissions normally produced at the state’s Boardman coal-fired power plant.

The Boardman plant, located in Morrow County near Kennewick, a few miles south of the Washington State border, is the state’s only major coal plant and also the largest stationary source of GHGs. Operated by Portland General Electric (PGE), it has been a thorn in the side of environmentalists for the last three decades. Opened in 1977, it continues to evade emission’s restrictions, and now PGE wants ratepayers to spend $500 million to “fix” a plant that will likely be shut down, in the face of global warming, in a matter of years.

What, then, is the Oregon legislature thinking by introducing HB 2472? Some say the bill is being driven by the state’s financial woes. Oregon is the nation’s largest producer of lumber used in the building trades, and with the crash of the housing bubble in 2008, the building industry has been in freefall.

But 2472 isn’t the only environmental measure losing ground in Oregon. Senate Bill 80, cap-and-trade, and HB 2940 (weakening the 2007 renewable energy standard) are both “anti-green” measures, and both are favored handily to win in the current economic climate.

As of June 15, HB 2472 was still in committee, but, if it passes, the one million-kilowatt Multnomah County solar project will likely also go down in flames, as backers pull out for lack of BETC incentives.

One million kilowatts down the drain, yet the Boardman plant continues operating. It’s enough to make an enviro cry, and that’s just what Leslie Carlson over at BlueOregon is doing.

As Carlson notes, with billions going to subsidize Big Oil over the past three decades, it seems a shame we can’t “Spend a little money through BETC to promote energy that doesn’t require soldiers or catastrophic climate change.”

Amen, Leslie. Budget cuts may be blowback from the current recession, but cutting clean, completely renewable solar energy hardly seems the place to start.