The lessons Iowa has learned in making ethanol and biodiesel could serve the state well in an effort to make bio-based chemicals. This article from the Des Moines Register says, though, a new report indicates a state tax credit is needed to help the Hawkeye state take a slice of the country’s $250 billion chemical market with greener replacements.
“If you are not there at the nucleation, you can be left at the sideline and not be part of it,” Brent Shanks, one of the report’s authors, said during a news conference Thursday.
Shanks and two other Iowa State University professors wrote the report. The Iowa Biotechnology Association and the Cultivation Corridor, a regional effort to bring more bioscience companies to central Iowa, commissioned it…
The biotech association, Cultivation Corridor and other business groups, are pushing for a state tax incentive meant to spur the production of bio-based chemicals.
They have argued that Iowa needs to take advantage of its position before other states catch on. Many also were disappointed similar legislation did not receive enough support to pass last year.
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad called for a revenue-neutral bio-renewable tax credit in his Condition of the State address this week.
The article goes on to say Iowa’s massive ethanol, biodiesel and other bio-processing infrastructure gives the state an advantage over other states to start growing a bio-based chemical production industry. Proponents of the tax incentive point out that similar tax incentives in biodiesel and ethanol helped those industries grow so well in Iowa.