Winners and Losers (Editorial)

A couple of green industries in Arkansas — wind and biodiesel — have taken hits in the past few years, as this issue of Arkansas Business makes clear.

Some of those hits were a result of the push-pull of market forces. For example, improved technology in oil and gas production has helped drive down the price of gasoline and other fuels, and lower gasoline prices spell less demand for biodiesel. Lower energy costs are generally good for business and consumers, but not so good for companies like the Hornbeck brothers’ Arkansas SoyEnergy Group, a biodiesel producer founded in DeWitt in 2007 but now shuttered.

But other hits to the wind energy and biodiesel business in Arkansas are the result of inconsistent government policy. “There was work being done at the state level, legislatively, and some federal work with tax credits, but one of the issues that we ran into at our facility was that the tax credit is a year-to-year process, and there was no consistency for the consumer or those bioplants,” Troy Hornbeck told Arkansas Business’ Austin DuVall.

And Congress’ failure to extend federal tax credits has devastated the state’s fledgling wind industry. The devastation is so great that the Arkansas Economic Development Commission no longer devotes efforts to trying to attract the industry. A spokesman for the American Wind Energy Association told Assistant Editor Sean Beherec that the lack of federal “policy stability” created “uncertainties” for manufacturers.

Businesses, like most people, dread uncertainty, but seeing how uncertainty is one of the only certain things in life, businesses, like most people, learn to adapt. Those that don’t, die. That’s the nature of life and the nature of a market economy. Government, however, should avoid adding to that uncertainty.