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JEFFERSON CITY, MO -- With President
Obama scheduled tomorrow to tour an ethanol plant in Macon, Missouri, the
National Biodiesel Board (NBB) – located less than 100 miles to the
south – pleaded for the White House to help Congress finish the job
on the lapsed biodiesel tax incentive and put industry employees back to
work.
“We are pleased the President continues to demonstrate
his support for the biofuels industry,” said Joe Jobe, National
Biodiesel Board CEO, from the group’s headquarters in Jefferson
City. “But we also need him to remind Congress that their inaction
to reinstate the biodiesel tax incentive could cost the country tens of
thousands of jobs. They must act now before America loses its only commercially
available Advanced Biofuel.”
Congress failed to reinstate the biodiesel tax incentive for
2010 before it expired at the end of last year. As a result, domestic
biodiesel production has plummeted, employees at biodiesel manufacturing
plants have been laid off and in some cases, plants have ceased
operations all together.
“All the industry needs is a little help from
Washington to keep American made biodiesel competitive with foreign
oil,” Jobe said. “Biodiesel dramatically reduces carbon
pollution, lessens our dependence on foreign oil and employs thousands in
green jobs across the country. But without reinstatement of the tax
incentive, the industry is barely surviving.”
NBB has not been alone in the push to reinstate the tax
incentive. Earlier this month, representatives of fuel marketers and
retailers joined agricultural organizations and the NBB to demand
immediate action from Congressional leaders.
“The lapse of the biodiesel tax incentive and the
resulting decline in customer demand is undermining the ability of fuel
retailers and marketers to offer Advanced Biofuels like biodiesel to the
public,” they wrote in a letter to the U.S. House and Senate
leadership. “The longer the biodiesel tax incentive is allowed to
lapse, the more difficult it will be to restore consumer confidence in
the availability of this worthwhile fuel.”
Obama is reportedly planning to visit Poet Biorefining in
Macon as part of his “White House to Main Street Tour”
through Missouri, Iowa and Illinois. Following the Democratic Convention
in 2008, Obama and Joe Biden made one of their first trips as nominees to
Pennsylvania Biodiesel near Pittsburgh.
“Now we hope he will take a trip up Pennsylvania
Avenue to encourage Congress to put Americans in the biodiesel industry
back to work by immediately reinstating the tax incentive,” Jobe
said.
Both the House and Senate have passed bills to retroactively
extend the biodiesel tax incentive. However, the two chambers must
still reconcile the differences between the two versions of the bill
before it can be sent to the President to be signed into law.
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The NBB is the
national trade association of the biodiesel industry and is the
coordinating body for biodiesel research and development in the U.S.
NBB’s membership is comprised of biodiesel producers; state,
national, and international feedstock and feedstock processor
organizations; fuel marketers and distributors; and technology providers.
Additional
information about biodiesel can be found at http://www.biodiesel.org
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