Taking from oil and giving to green
The Senate Finance Committee today is scheduled to vote on legislation that would rev up research into green energy at the expense of the oil industry. Rachel Dornhelm reports.
U.S. Capitol Building (Chip Somodevilla (c) Getty Images)
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Scott Jagow: Oil prices were a big story yesterday. They climbed to their highest level in nine months. I guess oil companies like hearing that, but they won't like hearing this: Today, the Senate Finance Committee votes on a bill that would take money away from the oil industry and give it to green energy. Rachel Dornhelm reports.
Rachel Dornhelm: The 10-year tax package shifts about $14 billion from oil and gas companies into the coffers of clean energy firms.
It would in part do away with domestic production subsidies the oil and gas industry won in recent years. Economist Sara Banazak with the American Petroleum Institute says the industry pays a 38 percent income tax without the proposed changes.
Sara Banazak: They basically represent punitive taxes on the oil and gas industry at a time when I don't think we should be penalizing any source of energy.
But environmental lobbyist Anna Aurilio says the transferred funds would stretch out tax relief for green energy firms, which need a reliable break to get off the ground.
Anna Aurilio: Having a production tax credit for clean renewable energy that lasts five years, we think will be a big boost.
Aurilio says wind and solar energy firms could be the biggest winners.
I'm Rachel Dornhelm for Marketplace.
