Word: synfuel
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From 2003 through 2005, TIME estimates, the synfuel industry raked in $9 billion in tax credits. That means the lucky few collectively cut their tax bills by that amount, which would be enough to cover a year's worth of federal taxes for 20 million Americans who make less than $20,000 a year and pay income taxes. How important is the tax credit to synfuel producers? In its latest annual report, Headwaters Inc., a Utah-based purveyor of synfuel processes and substances, says flatly, "Headwaters does not believe that production of synthetic fuel will be profitable absent...
...course, just that. Congress's idea of a synthetic-fuel industry is unlike any other business model: it doesn't make a profit and never will. The cost of treating the coal makes synfuel more expensive than conventional coal. Thus this new generation of synfuel plants makes no economic sense. Their only allure is the tax credit. To be sure, those who benefit from the tax credit dispute the notion that it is a windfall. They claim that it has increased the supply of low-cost coal, lowered electricity prices, improved the efficiency of coal-fired generators and been environmentally...
Beyond the drain on the treasury, the credit has destabilized coal markets because synfuel producers periodically undercut conventional coal producers in this country and abroad, which they can afford to do because of their tax credits. Coal associations in Canada and Australia have complained that the tax credit is nothing less than a government subsidy interfering with the free market...
...preserve the break, the synfuel industry is lobbying intensely in Washington. The industry's Council for Energy Independence, whose members include Headwaters, GE Capital, Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities, investment firms and coal companies, has been meeting with officials from Congress and the IRS. Says Kies, a former chief of staff of Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation, who heads the effort: "There is a lot of energy being put forth on behalf of taxpayers to force the IRS to back off of this...
What does a real synfuel operation look like, the kind that can change a country's energy fortunes? The answer can be found 700 miles north of Montana near a onetime frontier outpost in Alberta called Fort McMurray. At Syncrude Canada's North Mine, a huge open pit nearly two miles across and 250 ft. deep, giant shovels scoop out a petroleum-soaked deposit called oil sand that is beginning a long journey from here into the gas tanks of American cars. The region contains enough of the crude mixture to produce an estimated 175 billion bbl. of oil, eight...