Biden Giving Tax Credits for Wood Pellets Is a Terrible Idea
Calling tiny chunks of trees “biomass” doesn’t make them any more green when burned for fuel, and they certainly don’t deserve clean-energy subsidies.
Nope, still not green.
Photographer: Ivo Panasyuk/AFP/Getty Images
When our early ancestors discovered the many benefits of chucking logs in a fire, the concept of “clean energy” would likely have been much harder to explain to them than the concept of “rizz.” And yet many modern humans insist this paleolithic practice is as green and renewable as solar or wind.
It has a fancier name now: biomass, which is often PowerPoint talk for “little chunks of wood.” It’s a big energy source in the EU and the UK, and there’s a chance it could soon become even bigger in the US. The Biden administration is considering whether to give power plants, fuel makers and other biomass users clean-energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, starting next year. It could be an industry boon worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.