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November
13, 2001
The
Honorable Tom Daschle
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
The
Honorable Trent Lott
Minority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear
Leaders Daschle and Lott:
The
Sustainable Energy Coalition is an alliance of more than 30
business, environmental, consumer, and energy policy organizations.
We believe that clean energy technologies
should
play an important role in national energy policy. Accordingly,
when the Senate engages in energy policy debate, we strongly urge
you to support the enactment of tax incentives for investments in
energy efficiency and renewable energy. President Bush has
noted that "it's important for our national security to have a good
energy policy," and we certainly agree. Now, more than ever, the
benefits of energy efficiency and renewable energy should be opened
up to American businesses and consumers.
Clean
energy technologies have a critically important role to play in
enhancing the energy security of the nation by promoting fuel
diversity, harnessing safe and abundant domestic resources, and
expanding the use of small-scale, dispersed, and passively-safe
technologies – all of which can be built and operated without
imposing new security burdens on the nation's energy
infrastructure.
Existing
tax incentives are weighted toward centralized infrastructure and
traditional fossil and nuclear fuels. In our view, the Senate should
redress this imbalance and act to improve the nation's energy
security with tax incentives that will accelerate both public and
private investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. This session, a number of
bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that contain
strong energy efficiency and renewable energy tax incentives and
enjoy broad bipartisan support. A strong Senate energy bill should
include well-crafted tax incentives for
·
Distributed forms of clean power generation, including
biomass, geothermal, solar and wind energy systems and
energy-efficient fuel cells;
·
Extra energy-efficient new homes and commercial
buildings;
·
Renewable energy generation for biomass, geothermal,
incremental hydro, solar and wind energy resources;
·
Extra energy-efficient new appliances and heating, cooling,
and hot water equipment;
·
Highly efficient vehicles, including hybrid and electric
vehicles that greatly reduce airborne emissions;
·
Biomass-based alternative fuels and their related fueling
infrastructure;
·
Combined heat and power systems, capable of doubling the
useful work performed by a given amount of fuel; and
·
Small Producers Tax Credit, making the credit available to
farmer cooperatives.
We
urge you to include these critical incentives that will quickly
enable more widespread use of clean, safe and secure technologies
for improving America's energy efficiency and accelerating our use
of domestic renewable forms of energy.
Sincerely,
Alaska
Wilderness League
American
Bioenergy Association
American
Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
American
Public Power Association
American
Solar Energy Society
American
Wind Energy Association
Biorefiner
Bob
Lawrence & Associates
Cascade
Associates
Clean
Fuels Development Coalition
Communications
Consortium Media Center
Environmental
and Energy Study Institute
Geothermal
Energy Association
National
Environmental Trust
National
Hydropower Association
New
Uses Council
Renewable
Fuels Association
Safe
Energy Communication Council
Solar
Energy Industries Association
The
Stella Group, Ltd.
Union
of Concerned Scientists
cc:
The
Hon. Max Baucus
The Hon. Charles E. Grassley
The Hon. Jeff Bingaman
The Hon. Frank
Murkowski
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