“This is slapdash industrial policy at its worst that will perpetuate Pennsylvania’s addiction to fossil fuels,” Patrick McDonnell, president of the environmental group PennFuture and a former cabinet secretary under Wolf, said in a statement. 24, kicking off a furious wave of lobbying aimed at Wolf and the legislature in the days before the bill’s passage.Įnvironmental groups roundly criticized the package as a waste of money that could instead be spent on “proven and inexpensive clean energy technologies” like solar and wind production. Spotlight PA first publicly reported details of the deal on Oct. “While it took a while to come together, I’m glad that it finally did,” state House Speaker Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster) said after the deal cleared the chamber in a late-night vote. There was little public debate and no public hearings.ĭespite its hasty passage, top Republican lawmakers said the bill’s language was negotiated for months, and that some of the proposals came out of the state’s spring budget talks. Less than six hours later, both the state House and Senate passed the legislation. The package was publicly introduced as an amendment to a bill just after 3 p.m. The legislation also includes $15 million annually over eight years for a milk processing project, $10 million annually over 5 years for biomedical research, and $10 million annually over 5 years for semiconductor production. The latter credit, passed in 2020 and set to expire in 2050, was designed to encourage the use of methane to manufacture other products, such as fertilizer or gasoline. The package will provide $50 million a year in tax breaks to a company that agrees to produce hydrogen for 20 years and increase an existing methane tax credit by $30 million to $56.5 million annually. Ninety cents out of each dollar offered will be used to encourage the use of natural gas, including $1 billion in tax incentives to attract a new “hydrogen hub” to Pennsylvania. Tom Wolf has signed a $2 billion tax credit package for the hydrogen production, milk processing, and biomedical research industries into law, capping months of quiet negotiations between the Democrat and top Republicans in the General Assembly. Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media.
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