Earthtrack in the Media

Somewhere in Germany, a trucker is thanking you. A biofuel executive is cursing you. You probably don’’t know it, but you paid $1 for each gallon of the Brazilian biodiesel fuel blend the trucker is using. The fuel-maker is upset because your generous contribution is driving down the price at which he can sell his product.

For their elation and disgust, for your impoverishment, and probably for some harm to the environment as well, you can blame the United States Congress. This all results from yet another misguided attempt to manipulate economic behavior through the tax code...

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 30 (IPS) – Why do U.S. oil companies — some of the most profitable corporations on the planet — receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government?

And, in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?

“Those are very good questions,” said Doug Koplow of Earth Track, Inc., an independent energy information research organisation in Boston, Massachusetts.

"Environmental groups Earth Track and Friends of the Earth just put out a study quantifying biofuels subsidies through 2022, as the U.S. plans to massively increase production of biofuels. The upshot? The cost to taxpayers would be about $420 billion over that period, or an average of about $28 billion a year."

"The billions of dollars that go into a nuclear power plant could be spent better in other ways, including making homes more energy-efficient, said Doug Koplow, president of Earth Track Incorporated, a Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm."

Detailed review of nuclear economics and constraints by Amory Lovins. Among the many detailed points made, the article also mentions our work:

"For illustration, Figure 3 optionally adds back windpower’s PTC but not the pre-2005 subsidies received by central stations, especially nuclear power. Those nuclear subsidies are complex, diverse and disputed but the most authoritative independent US expert, Doug Koplow, estimates ~$0.0079-0.0422/kWh, increased by another ~$0.034-0.040/kWh in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for at least the next 6GWe ordered."

The review of plant economics and subsidies (and therefore the references to Earth Track's work on nuclear subsidies) was included in the first part of this article. Part 1 is accessible here; the second part, addressing reliability and energy security issues can be found here. 

Excerpt from Part 1 below:

 Despite an explosion of private investment in the U.S. liquid biofuels industry, taxpayers are contributing around seven billion dollars a year in subsidies which could be better used for other energy- and environment-saving technologies, according to a major new report released here Wednesday.

Article mentions the biofuels subsidy study done by Earth Track for IISD's Global Subsidies Initiative.

This article provides a detailed and interesting history of the origins of US ethanol subsidies and ethanol promotion. It should be read in full. We were happy that our work on ethanol subsidies was useful in the write-up as well: