Clean tax cuts: a new idea with conservative roots

BLOG POST

Media Contact: Patrick Kiker

By Steven Nadel, Executive Director

Congress is likely to tackle federal tax reform in 2017 and may consider new ideas. One proposal it should seriously consider is clean tax cuts—the application of supply-side tax rate cuts to investments that reduce the emissions of harmful pollutants. Cutting tax rates on income gained from clean investments such as energy efficiency improvements could incentivize investors to tap large amounts of private capital.

The Grace Richardson Fund (GRF), an organization with conservative roots and an interest in addressing climate change and other environmental issues, is promoting the clean tax cut concept. Their view is that conservatives tend to see traditional tax incentives as wasteful, but are interested in tax cuts. They believe that reducing taxes on income from clean investments could increase these investments substantially and help clean the environment.

GRF worked with the Sabin Center at Columbia University and the Rocky Mountain Institute on a charrette to explore and refine the clean tax cut concept. The resulting report spells out the concept in more detail. GRF then decided to sponsor a series of charrette workshops on specific areas where the federal government could offer clean tax cuts and asked ACEEE to host a workshop on clean tax cuts for commercial real estate. In March 2017 we held a charrette workshop with commercial real estate experts, and today we are releasing a white paper on what we found…

To read the report, visit:http://aceee.org/white-paper/clean-tax-cutsÂ

To continue reading the blog post, visit: http://aceee.org/blog/2017/06/clean-tax-cuts-new-idea-conservative