With President Obama lying down the challenge of energy independence Tuesday night using the tragic BP spill as a call for action, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is taking up that challenge by cosponsoring legislation “enabling substantial wind power development in Nebraska that could create jobs and provide Nebraskans with more electricity generated from renewable energy.

“Much like ethanol several decades ago, Nebraska has a tremendous potential to become a national leader in renewable energy generated from wind,” said Nelson. “While Nebraska ranks 4^th for potential wind energy development, we currently rank 24^th in actual energy generated by wind. The legislation I’m cosponsoring could help Nebraska rural electric co-ops and our public power districts obtain needed financing to help build new renewable energy projects.”

 Nelson said these projects would, in turn, create good jobs for Nebraskans, boost state revenues and tap into at least “one very abundant source of energy that is literally just blowing away today.”

“It’s not too strong to say we have a rare opportunity for a win-win-win with wind,” he said.

 Nelson is cosponsoring an amendment to the Tax Extenders bill under debate in the Senate offered by Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and George Lemieux of Florida. According to Nelson, the legislation would expand the Section 1603 program in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the stimulus bill. The section created a program enabling investor-owned utilities to receive a grant worth 30 percent of a renewable project’s cost of construction. 

Currently, Nelson said the provision expires on December, 31, 2010 and is only available to investor-owned utilities. The amendment would make the program available to Consumer Owned Utilities such as Nebraska Public Power District, Omaha Public Power District and Nebraska Rural Electric through December 31, 2012.

“OPPD greatly appreciates Senator Nelson’s support and co-sponsorship of the Cantwell-Lemieux Amendment to extend and expand the ‘Section 1603’ Clean Energy Treasury Grant Program to include public power utilities,” said Gary Gates, president and CEO of Omaha Public Power District. 

 Gates said passage and enactment of this amendment would provide public power with access to renewable incentives that in the past have only been available to investor owned utilities which should result in expanded development of renewable energy projects by public power. 

“Ron Asche, president and CEO of Nebraksa Public Power also appreciates Nelson’s efforts supporting renewable energy incentives for Public Power which are comparable to the incentives for private developers.

 Jay Holmquist, general manager of the Nebraska Rural Electric Association, said Nelson’s ongoing efforts to give rural electric systems the comparable flexibility to fully develop renewable generation allows them the  ability to utilize a tax grant for large-scale projects whose capital costs currently make many renewable projects unfeasible at this time. 

 Nationally, a number of other public power utilities and rural electric cooperatives also could qualify for grants under amendment, Nelson said. 

Nebraska’s non-profit public power utilities-supplying electricity to at least 1.3 million of the state’s roughly 1.8 million residents—do not have comparable incentives for renewable energy development that investor-owned utilities have with the federal Production Tax Credit that has allowed them to invest greater amounts in renewable energy. 

He said the amendment would establish parity in federal incentives for Nebraskans who receive 100 percent of their electricity from non-profit utilities.

“Extending the federal assistance could give them incentives needed to pursue more renewable energy projects such as wind but also solar, geothermal and biomass,” Nelson said. 

Nelson said the  provision would be paid for by closing a tax loophole that exists today for big oil companies. According to Nelson, the amendment says that oil companies with annual revenues of more than $100 million can no longer count their contributions to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund as a business expense that they can use to reduce their 35 percent corporate tax rate. While not affecting production of oil and gas by small and independent producers, the provision recognizes that the majority of the companies using the write-off are major energy producers.

 The amendment is supported by The Business Council for Sustainable Energy, American Wind Energy Association, Geothermal Energy Association, National Hydropower Association, Solar Energy Industries Association, Large Public Power Council, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and others.

Are the millions of dollars being invested by the federal government into growing the nation’s ethanol industry nothing more than a huge taxpayer ripoff?

That’s the conclusion of a new a new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

“Sadly, the degree of energy independence derived from the American taxpayer’s massive investment in corn ethanol could have been accomplished for free by proper tire inflation and using the right grade of motor oil, driving sensibly, or better enforcement of speed limits,” said Craig Cox, EWG senior vice-president and co-author of the report. Cox manages EWG’s agriculture programs from the organization’s Ames, Iowa office

Cox said the US Environmental Protection Agency is mulling over whether to allow a 50 percent increase in the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline, and Congress is being lobbied to extend the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), currently set to expire on Dec. 31, 2010.

But according to the EWG study, British Petroleum (BP) and other major oil companies appear to be the “main beneficiaries of these taxpayer-funded ethanol incentives.” He said EWG has asked the Internal Revenue Service to disclose who has been getting those incentives, but the IRS has refused.

As a result of the tax credit, the EWG report said it cost taxpayers $4.8 billion in 2009 to replace 7.2 billion gallons of gasoline with 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol. Between 2005 and 2009, the report said taxpayers spent more than $17 billion on tax credits for ethanol production and use. Without a change in federal law, the report said the US government will be “on the hook for another $5.4 billion this year.”

If the ethanol industry succeeds in getting Congress to extend the credit, the report said taxpayers will be out “another $31 billion between 2011 and 2015, for a cumulative total of nearly $54 billion by 2015.”

“It is clear that continuing taxpayer’s lavish support for corn ethanol will not deliver the clean energy independence our country needs to ensure prosperity and security,” Cox said.

In response to the EWG report, the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), Growth Energy, the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), and the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) have “countered the tired claims of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that American ethanol is not a sound investment.”

According to the ethanol groups, criticizing the tax incentive provided for the use of ethanol is a “misleading exercise if proper context is not provided.”

The ethanol supporting coalition points to a recent International Energy Agency report that concluded the world spent $550 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels in 2008 alone. The approximately $4.5 billion spent to increase America’s use of domestically- produced ethanol in 2008 is a bargain by comparison, the group said.

Equally misleading, the group said,  is a discussion of tax incentives without appropriately attributing increases in economic activity resulting from those incentives.

They said that n 2009 alone, U.S. ethanol production helped nearly 400,000 Americans keep their jobs or find a new one, added more than $15 billion to federal, state and local government tax revenues, and displaced more than 360 million barrels of imported oil.

“It is disappointing that some in the environmental community continue to have an irrational and unsophisticated notion of how to reduce fossil fuel use,” said Brian Jennings, Executive Vice President of the American Coalition for Ethanol. “Some say the solution is to get rid of corn-based ethanol today, in hopes that some other potentially promising, but not yet commercialized fuel will be available tomorrow. The result would be more pain at the pump and more pollution for the planet. Ethanol is the only commercially available alternative to gasoline today, and removing it from our nation’s fuel supply would mean more oil use – and we ought to learn from the painful and ongoing lesson in the Gulf of Mexico that more oil is simply not a sustainable path.”

“It is unfortunate that groups purporting to represent the environment are still criticizing the only alternative fuel – domestic ethanol – that reduces our dependence on foreign oil,” said Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy

”Family farmers in the U.S. have provided us with five record crops since 2005, and we’re growing 20 percent more corn per acre than any other nation,” said NCGA President Darrin Ihnen. “For American corn farmers, the ethanol industry provides the opportunity to add value added to our commodity while expanding the role of U.S. agriculture in our movement toward greater energy self-reliance. It needs and deserves the support it’s getting in Washington.”

“America’s investment in domestic renewable fuels is only just beginning to pay dividends,” said RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen. “Current technologies are directly replacing oil-based fuels in American gas tanks and creating tens of thousands of jobs. New technologies are coming online that will expand ethanol’s economic benefit while continuing to improve the industry’s environmental footprint and energy security contribution. The environmental community remains shortsighted in its dismissal of ethanol, particularly as the devastating impacts of our oil addiction are currently on full display.”

The ethanol supporters point to a recent article in the scientific journal Biotechnology Letters,  that found ethanol production alone has seen a 28 percent reduction in energy use, a 32 percent reduction in water use, and a 5.3 percent increase in ethanol yields all in less than a decade. Conversely, deep water drilling and tar sands extraction continue to drive oil’s carbon footprint even higher.

“No other options exists today that can match ethanol’s ability to reduce oil use in American vehicles,” the groups stated. “Rather than erecting roadblocks, we would welcome the constructive input of the environmental community to expand our use of renewable fuels and reduce our need for oil. That starts by allowing the use of 15 percent ethanol blends.”

A public hotline has been established for Nebraskans to call with questions about the flooding emergency around the state.

The NEMA Public Information Hotline can be reached at 888-656-6045, and will be staffed by National Guard troops at the Joint Information Center in Lincoln with assistance by Public Information Officers.  The hours of the hotline are 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily until further notice.

The National Weather Service indicates that the Platte River is cresting now, and that there are surges all along the river.  The river’s level should continue to slowly fall after the crest.  The river is approximately a foot above flood stage at this time.

The NEMA emergency effort is currently concentrating on three key areas in their state response:  health and safety issues; recovery operations, and; drinking water and sewage problems.  So far, NEMA assessment teams have worked in Madison, Morrill, Dawson, Nance, Wheeler, Garden, Valley and Greeley counties, or have met with those counties’ emergency managers.  Distances and road conditions are making it a challenge to travel in the affected areas.  They are currently en-route to other locations, but downed communication systems are posing a problem in the north-central part of the state.

Currently Stanton and Kenesaw are the only towns having public water supply problems.  Stanton’s problem is due to a water main break, and Kenesaw’s issue is electrical in nature.  Drinking water sampling is being done but no reports back yet.  The water may have some discoloration but this is NOT an indication of contamination and the water is okay to drink.

North Loup drinking water has been tested and is okay to drink.
 
Highway 77 is now open near Winslow. Current road condition reports can be found on the Nebraska Department of Roads website at www.dor.state.ne.us.
 
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assessment teams have arrived and will begin to assess damage around the state. These assessments will be needed for FEMA to provide public assistance.

Agriculture is vital to Nebraska’s economy. But the state’s agricultural industry produces far more than what is consumed by our 1.7 million plus population. In other words, exports and trade is vital for the state’s agricultural industry to grow.

While question marks remain about what constitutes free and fair trade among countries, the U.S. must be engaged in negotiations that define and promote free and fair trade. Or, as Ashleigh Brilliant puts it, “If you can’t go around it, over it, or through it, you had better negotiate with it.”

A big component of Nebraska’s agricultural industry is livestock production. What’s critical to Nebraska’s success in the livestock industry is that the state has the necessary infrastructure to grow, process and transportation the yields of Nebraska’s livestock bounty.

Again, we produce more meat than what we can consume so it has to be exported not only to the rest of the country, but the world.

A new report from the American Meat Institute found that passage and implementation of the three Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)  currently pending would represent an additional $2.3 billion in meat and poultry exports and the potential creation of  29,524 new jobs. Those result can be found in AMI’s  white paper which was released June 15.

  “It is clear that the road to both robust job and economic growth lies in expanding America’s export markets,” said J. Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of the American Meat Institute (AMI). 

Boyle said that the trade expansion deals between the U.S. and South Korea, Panama and Colombia have been awaiting Congressional approval for years and the U.S. is losing market share as a result. 

“While the U.S. is waiting to enact these FTAs, our competitors are moving forward,” said Boyle.

The report said passage of the agreements could increase U.S. exports of beef by $1.4 billion, pork by $772 million and poultry by $102 million.  The jobs resulting from this growth, both in the commodity groups and downstream, would include an estimated 18,000 jobs in the beef industry, 10,300 jobs in the pork industry and 1,200 jobs in the poultry industry. Trade numbers are based on projections from the respective commodity groups. 

Job creation data is based on employment multiplier projections from USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and industry groups which estimate:

* For every $1 billion in beef exports, 12,700 jobs are created.

* For every $1 billion in pork exports, 13,333 jobs are created.

*For every $1 billion in poultry exports, 11,853 jobs are created.

 In 2009, the value of exported meat, poultry and related products totaled $11.7 billion, up from $9.4 billion in 2007. 

According to ERS, U.S. meat exports are predicted to rise over the next decade, from 5.9 million metric tons in 2009 to nearly 7.1 million metric tons in 2019.

 “However, if we are going to realize this potential, we need to pass these trade agreements and move forward on expanding our export markets as well as exploring new trade opportunities,” said Boyle.

 According to the report:

* The U.S. meat and poultry industry contributes about $832 billion in total to the U.S. economy, nearly 6 percent of the GDP. 

*The industry directly employs 1.8 million people, paying $45.5 billion in wages and benefits. 

*An estimated 524,000 people have jobs in production and packing, importing operations, sales, packaging and direct distribution of meat and poultry products. 

*Wholesaling directly employs an estimated 63,000 individuals in every state in the country, and 1,227,600 retail jobs depend on the sale of meat and poultry products to the public.

  “With meat and poultry consumption rising in many nations around the world as a result of economic development and population growth, we have millions of increasingly affluent, potential customers,” said Boyle.  “But,  if the United States is not there to fill their plates, other major exporting nations will.”

In related news, meatingplace.com reported Tuesday that the value of U.S. beef and pork exports in April rose by 27 percent and 7 percent, respectively, over the same month last year. The information was compiled by the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Beef and beef variety meat export value also was 10 percent higher than numbers recorded in April 2003, prior to market restrictions resulting from a U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. And pork/pork variety value reached its highest level since November 2008, USMEF noted.

April beef plus beef variety meat exports totaled 82,827 metric tons (182.6 million pounds) valued at $311.3 million, pushing the cumulative 2010 total to 307,949 metric tons (678.9 million pounds) valued at $1.1 billion. April pork/pork variety meat exports totaled 156,211 metric tons (344.4 million pounds) valued at $400.95 million, bringing the January-April total to 625,004 metric tons (1.38 billion pounds) valued at $1.51 billion.

Muscle-cut performances were especially strong in April. Beef muscle-cut value ($268 million) rose 37 percent year on year, while pork muscle-cut value ($345 million) was up 11 percent.