Speed bumps on the road to a greener, more renewable future

The concept sounded good: Find a way to incentivize the production, harvest and delivery of non-food biomass crops to displace fossil-based feedstocks in the supply chain and move our nation toward energy independence. After all, farmers and ranchers in many parts of the country aren't used producing biomass such as algae, switchgrass, vines, trees, and other wood waste materials for renewable energy production. Alas, a new payment program was born that just might just do the trick: the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). However, BCAP gained ground so quickly that some industry observers and members of Congress thought it had grown out of control like a woody vine on steroids. “If we don't kill it now,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) warned USDA Under Secretary Jim Miller during a recent hearing, “it will have its own lobbying group, it has a constituency growing.” Kingston, the Subcommittee's Ranking Republican, expressed concerns that the incentive payments for delivering biomass for bioenergy production, means “paying people to do what they did all along” at least in “papermill country.” He also expressed surprise that USDA is defending BCAP. “The projected 10-year cost of this is $2.6 billion,” Kingston said. “We need to kill it.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, chimed in, telling Miller the program's cost has soared to “30 times more expensive than the original CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scoring for this program.”...more

I guess the DC Deep Thinkers don't understand the market provides all the incentives that are needed and it doesn't need any help from politicians.