RES Polyflow testifies before House of Representatives committee

A representative of RES Polyflow, a Chagrin Falls, Ohio-based plastics-to-fuel company and founding member of the Washington-based American Chemistry Council’s (ACC’s) Plastics-to-Fuel and Petrochemistry Alliance, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means in support of broadening energy tax credits to include fuels derived from nonrecycled plastics via pyrolysis technology if those credits are extended.

Pyrolysis manufacturers use an oxygen-free process to convert postconsumer nonrecycled plastics into fuels such as diesel and gasoline, industrial products such as waxes and feedstocks for the manufacturing of new plastics and chemicals.

Qualifying for the Alternative Fuel Credit and Alternative Fuel Mixture Credit would provide buyers and sellers of pyrolysis-generated fuels a 50-cents-per-gallon credit against excise taxes. This would enhance the value of pyrolysis-generated fuels in the marketplace by making them more attractive to fuel blenders and retailers, ACC says.

“We are a fledgling industry that is creating alternative fuels while providing a solution for valuable postuse plastics that would otherwise be buried in a landfill,” Mike Dungan, director of sales and marketing for RES Polyflow, says. “Qualifying for these tax credits and achieving parity with other alternative fuels is critical so our industry does not continue to operate at a competitive disadvantage.”

A study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, last year found that using ultra-low sulfur diesel derived from postconsumer nonrecycled plastics reduced greenhouse gas emissions up to 14 percent, fresh water consumption up to 58 percent and fossil energy use up to 96 percent compared to traditional sourcing.

“Smart, targeted federal tax policy can help jump start this industry, so we can produce high-value fuels from low-value postuse materials and further conserve environmental resources,” Dungan says.