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House Passes Tax Bill Containing PTC Extension

On June 17, the House Corporate Tax bill (H.R. 4520), which contains an extension of the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), passed the full House of Representatives by a vote of 251-178. The bill is also known as the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 or the Foreign Sales Corporation – Export Trade Incentives (FSC-ETI) bill. The Senate passed its version of corporate tax legislation (S. 1637) on May 11. "We have cleared two hurdles on PTC passage in the last four days," said AWEA legislative director Jaime Steve. "On Monday the corporate tax bill containing the PTC moved successfully through the House Ways & Means Committee. On Thursday that bill was approved by the full House of Representatives. Now it is on to the House-Senate conference committee stage where we will continue urging Congress to act as quickly as possible to get the wind industry back to work." While the bill now moves to the conference committee (the negotiating stage at which differences are hammered out between the two bills), this process is expected by many to be difficult and potentially protracted, Steve said, due to the large number of significant policy differences between the bills. Key participants […]

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Shell Oil Chief Admits CO2 Output Rate Is Very Worrying

The Chairman of one of the world's biggest oil companies has said that he is 'really very worried for the planet' due to the amount of carbon dioxide that is being pumped out. Ron Oxburgh, Chairman of Shell Oil has gone further than many of his peers in one of the world's most polluting industries, by voicing his fears over climate change. "No one can be comfortable at the prospect of continuing to pump out the amounts of carbon dioxide that we are at present," he told The Guardian newspaper. "People are going to go on allowing this atmospheric carbon dioxide to build up, with consequences that we really can't predict, but are probably not good." He likened his position on global warming to that of Tony Blair's Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King, who said global warming was a bigger threat than terrorism. He pointed to carbon sequestration as the best method to help combat climate change. "Sequestration is difficult," he said. "But if we don't have sequestration I see very little hope for the world."

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