Rep. Bartlett hits House on renewables — and I don’t mean Gregory House
I love House. Not the House of Representatives, but the TV show.
Seems like everybody loves to see people with seemingly inexplicable symptoms saved from sure death. No doubt that explains the fascination with the Lieberman-Warner Bill. But people — I’ve been trying to be gentle about this — it’s dead. Sure, like Amber on the season finale — [Spoiler Alert] — L-W can be briefly revived so we can say goodbye to it forever, but that is really just a soap opera gimmick. And she died anyway.
We don’t need to say goodbye to L-W, we need to focus all our effort on those important bills that are still clinging to life, bills that haven’t already signed a contract to appear on another TV show next season — like the investment tax credit that is crucial to keeping the momentum going on core technologies that can avert catastrophic climate change (see Barlett op-ed here and PG&E op-ed here). To L-W supporters, I can only offer this eulogy:
Okay, that wasn’t really a eulogy. But the point is, the wind and solar tax credits must be saved. As Bartlett (R!-MD) wrote:
Maintaining consistent federal incentives for renewable energy policy will free up American businesses and workers to do what they do better than anyone in the world: innovate. That will result in American rather than German, Japanese or Chinese ownership of intellectual property and emissions-free electricity. More domestic production of energy will also reduce reliance upon foreign energy sources. House members could compromise and support H.R. 5984, which has already been approved 88-8 by the Senate. Shouldn’t that be a no-brainer?
As PG&E’s Chairman, CEO and President wrote:
Failure by Congress to renew the credits could cost the United States more than 100,000 jobs and billions of dollars annually in new investments. These losses would be felt across the country, in states such as California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington….
The expiration of production tax credits in 2004, for example, caused a 77 percent drop in installed wind capacity that year relative to 2003. Last year, with credits in place, the wind industry enjoyed its best year ever. Developers installed more than 5,000 megawatts of new generating capacity, more than twice the previous record.
But the Washington Post reports that bankers are now telling solar companies to hold off on new projects that won’t be completed this year, due to uncertainty over the fate of tax credits. More than 20,000 solar-related jobs in California alone are at risk, according to industry studies.
The tremendous spurt of innovation and development we have seen in the renewable energy sector could be squelched just when the national economy, buffeted by the housing collapse and record oil prices, needs all the support it can get.
So let’s stop trying to save the dead parrot and focus on the damn tax credits. Where is the Gregory House of the U.S. House?
May 21st, 2008 at 2:40 am
house is british, python’s british, your biggest hero’s a toyota, and you’re telling us we have to wait for brand-USA power generation? oy! the EU’s busy figuring out how to recycle industrial solar PV while we’re tiddly-winking. sorry: domestic IP is not a high priority. if we don’t buy the best we can get we’ll be sorrier than a boatload of political economists trying to build a domestic boat-repair industry in response to a call to abandon ship.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:20 am
Hello Joe,
have you already read the critique of your article “Peak Oil? Consider it solved.” on Energybulletin by Dave Cohen? - http://www.energybulletin.net/42120.html
if so, have you responded to it?
Best,
May 21st, 2008 at 7:41 am
There is definitely a double-standard with regards to solar and nuclear.
Direct cash subsidies for solar and wind: okay.
Loan guarantees for nuclear construction: not okay.
Government mandates for the use of wind and solar: good.
Government mandates for use of nuclear: bad. (not that I’ve heard of any)
Uneconomic use of wind and especially solar–”nevermind the cost!”–totally fine (especially if the gov’t has to pay for it).
Nuclear economics: bad, bad, bad, because no matter what number you show me, I decide that you have to guard the waste for ten thousand years and that makes it too expensive! Oh and you can’t process the waste to fix the ten-thousand year problem either. Oh, and you have to pay for the hole in the mountain for me to put the waste in and then for all the litigation for me to fight it…
Large corporate ownership of wind farms, wind turbines, solar panels, etc.: completely acceptable.
Local ownership of a 10 MWe nuclear battery that lasts for 30 years and replaces expensive and polluting diesel in a small Alaskan community: bad, bad, bad.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:46 am
Kirk: Pity poor nuclear, with its 20% market share, nearly $100 billion in subsidies, and government-limited liability.
Subsidies and mandates are for rapidly emerging technologies, especially those with noneconomic benefits, to allow them to compete with mature technologies in marketplace that doesn’t value the noneconomic benefits.
Nuclear has 20% of the electricity market and has for years. It as received several times the level of subsidies of renewables. Wind has only just achieved 1% of US electricity. Solar is, what, 2/10 of 1%?
I’d be happy to pass a law saying no more subsidies or mandates of any kind once an electricity source hits 5% of the market. Would you?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:24 am
I’d be happy to pass a law saying no more subsidies or mandates of any kind once an electricity source hits 5% of the market. Would you?
Would that be nameplate or production? Because if it’s the former, wind would probably already be there.
Look at subsidies per kWh and the difference will become apparent between nuclear subsidies and solar/wind. Nuclear actually makes a lot of electricity, unlike wind/solar.
Yeah I could go for that. Solar PV will never get there, so it will be subsidies forever.