¦ECONOMY
PHOTO: EMILY JANE DAVIS, ECOSYSTEM WORKFORCE PROGRAM
W
hen Cassandra Moseley, Max Nielsen-Pincus and the rest of the team at the University of Oregon’s Ecosystem Workforce Program (EWP) first started their research into the impact of the state’s biomass producer and collector (BPC) tax credit, they had no preconceived notions about whether the tax credit was good or bad. They were interested in forest restoration and intrigued by the job creation possibility of a policy linked to biomass. And they planned on letting Oregon’s policymakers decide whether a tax credit that awards $10 for every green ton of biomass delivered to a bioenergy facility is worth the money. But that was before the team, which also included members of Oregon’s Department of Energy, finished its work. Now, after biomass prices and regression analyses simulating a world without the BPC tax credit, the results are in. And they show that policymakers have an easy choice to make.
HITTING THE TARGET: The BPC tax credit created biomass handling jobs in an otherwise slow 2010 economy.
20 BIOMASS POWER & THERMAL | MARCH 2012