Thinking Inside the (Green) Box: Targeted Tax Incentives for Small Green Businesses
Editors Note: This is a guest contribution from the Lieutenant Governor of California, John Garamendi.
As a lifelong Central Valley rancher, I know all too well that our food supply and energy demands are interconnected. When California faced record high gas prices last summer, my small ranch felt the impact when we received bills for transportation costs.
Our state’s seemingly yearly succession of droughts, a phenomenon predicted by current understandings of climate change, have forced me to cut back on production, impacting my family, my employees, and the local community.
Those of us who work on the land are often the first to recognize that global economic and ecological shifts have an impact on the local level, and yet, it is often on the local level where we can have the greatest global impact.
The Commission for Economic Development, which I chair, released its annual report this week, offering economic development strategies for California lawmakers as they pursue policies that can best help promote new employment in California. After extensive meetings with commission members and stakeholders, and after a thorough examination of the final report, I am convinced that California should consider the creation of targeted tax incentives for small green businesses that can deliver on the creation of new green collar employment opportunities for Californians.
The need to offer incentives to start-up and small green businesses is clear. President Barack Obama’s stimulus package calls for doubling our nation’s renewable energy capacity in three years.
Surely, those with vision will encourage all kinds of new companies that support conservation, new means of energy production and transport, and other innovative but green products. This applies to the entire world as well as to the USA and each state and municipality.
While I’m not totally against green incentives I think we need to be wary of the potential for greenwashing these incentives might bring. A lot of ideas are being pitched as green and a lot of money is being given to businesses who simply are using “green” as a ploy to get more money.
While I’m not totally against green incentives I think we need to be wary of the potential for greenwashing these incentives might bring. A lot of ideas are being pitched as green and a lot of money is being given to businesses who simply are using “green” as a ploy to get more money.
Sorry, forgot to add great post! Can’t wait to see your next post!
John Garamendi: why not make the Berkeley First program a statewide program?
Municipal tax assessment financing easily solves the only thing stopping most of us from going solar;- asking a bank for the loan.
Since solar pays for itself in most homes within ten years, and since people would have had to pay that $100 or so for for that electricity anyway, there’s little risk of the loan going bad.
I think incentives are a great idea. We need to encourage new businesses for economic and employment growth but do not want to incur more waste or spur an irrationally exhuberant economy. Green is the only way to go.