As reported on The Charlotte Business Journal‘s website by Susan Stabley:
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League has filed a petition with the N.C. Utilities Commission challenging ReVenture Park’s waste-to-energy plant project.ReVenture has asked utility commissioners to designate “refuse-derived fuel” as a renewable energy resource. That’s connected to a bill state legislators approved last year that gave any utility that buys the power from the ReVenture plant triple renewable-energy credits for electricity produced from its first 20 megawatts of capacity. The state is already requiring utilities to produce up to 12.5% of the energy they sell from renewable sources by 2021. The triple credits reduce how much a utility will have to spend to meet that requirement.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League wants to block ReVenture’s request. It argues that the definition of renewable should mean that “a source of energy must renew or recharge itself, such as wind and solar power.”
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2011.
Taxes should be used only for raising the revenue that the government needs to function.
Extra taxes and tax breaks should not be used to influence behavior.
If that simple idea was the law, people would not have to hire other people to wade through thousands of pages of tax law to prepare their tax return.