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The Environment in Focus

"Black Liquor" Loophole Consumes Almost Half of Clean Energy Subsidies

By Tom Pelton
Published February 18, 2014 at 2:12 PM EST

Clean energy advocates are urging the Maryland General Assembly to close a loophole in the state's renewable energy law, which allows paper mills to burn a wood waste called "black liquor" to collect millions of dollars in subsidies from electricity rate payers.

In 2013, 45 percent of the renewable fuel credits claimed under the state's 10-year-old Renewable Portfolio Standard went not to support wind or solar power -- but to paper factories burning this high-pollution fuel.

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Tom Pelton
Tom Pelton, a national award-winning environmental journalist, has hosted "The Environment in Focus" since 2007. He also works as director of communications for the Environmental Integrity Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to holding polluters and governments accountable to protect public health. From 1997 until 2008, he was a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, where he was twice named one of the best environmental reporters in America by the Society of Environmental Journalists.
See stories by Tom Pelton