"Green aviation" exception in GOP budget bill is a "big, beautiful" bipartisan boondoggle

GOP bill would roll back all clean energy incentives that Democrats enacted under President Biden .

But it would make a lavish exception for one supposedly green form of energy that isn’t green at all: farm-grown jet fuels.

Using crops like corn and soybeans to produce fuel instead of food spurs farmers to tear down more forests and plow up more grasslands to create new farmland.

Peter Bergen : The CORSIA model put enough emphasis on “indirect land-use change” to make crop-based aviation fuels ineligible for tax credits.

The farm-friendly GREET model downplayed ILUC enough to give corn and soybeans a chance to look sustainable.

Bergen says Biden climate czar John Podesta led a boringly named Sustainable Aviation Fuel Lifecycle Analysis Interagency Working Group .

The ban on even evaluating indirect land-use change could create problems for airlines that want to sell carbon credits for using alternative fuels.

It's not clear how much buyers like Microsoft and Meta really care about scientific credibility.

The biofuels lobby tends to get its way in Washington .

The Biden administration issued an “emergency waiver” to get more ethanol blended into gasoline last summer .