Earthtrack In the Media

Identifying the real costs of competing energy technologies is complicated by the wide range of subsidies and tax breaks involved. As a result, U.S.

Subsidies for biofuels in the United States have reached levels unimagined when support for an "infant industry" began in the late 1970s.

One way to correct market failures is tax shifting -- raising taxes on activities that harm the environment so that

"President Obama has followed up on his support for 'a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,' laid out Jan.

"The billions of dollars that go into a nuclear power plant could be spent better in other ways, including making homes more energy-efficient, said Doug Koplow, president of Earth Track Incorporated, a Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm."

"Environmental groups Earth Track and Friends of the Earth just put out a study quantifying biofuels subsidies through 2022, as the U.S. plans to massively increase production of biofuels. The upshot? The cost to taxpayers would be about $420 billion over that period, or an average of about $28 billion a year."

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 30 (IPS) – Why do U.S. oil companies — some of the most profitable corporations on the planet — receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government?

"Absolutely not," says Doug Koplow of the Cambridge, Mass.-based group Earth Track. He pointed to the fact that biofuel plantations often require the destruction of rainforests, causing greater net carbon emissions and destroying animal habitats. “You can say we’re growing crops for biofuels from pre-existing farmland, but then the offsetting food production begins to cut into natural habitat," he added.

December 6, 2007.  "Cheap No more: Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a lo