Senate tax measure helps President Trump pivot away from clean energy and back to fossil fuels

By KEITH SCHNEIDER at the LA Times

http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-tax-solar-wind-20171202-story.html

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The Trump administration’s campaign for “American energy dominance,” which focuses on elevating the nation’s fossil fuel production, received a potential big boost from Republican senators early Saturday.

The tax measure they approved proposes to open the Arctic to oil and gas development, weaken investment incentives for solar and wind production, and end a big tax credit for new electric vehicles.

Taken together, the Senate tax provisions are clearly allied with the Trump administration’s goal to shift American energy development back to black fuels and reverse Obama-era programs to encourage cleaner technologies to generate electricity and move people and goods.

Arguably the most significant Senate tax provision is meant to tilt a 40-year-old conflict between the oil industry and conservationists toward opening a 1.5-million-acre stretch of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration. The struggle over the so-called 1002 Area, one of the longest running and most intensely debated in U.S. environmental history, has commanded the attention of every president since Jimmy Carter.

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