Obama Awards Nearly $2 Billion For Solar Power

crimeandpunishment writes "President Obama says it's time to heat up solar power, and he's willing to spend a big chunk of federal money to do it. Saturday the president announced the government is giving nearly $2 billion to companies that are building new solar plants in Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. The president says this will create thousands of jobs and increase our use of renewable energy."

Comments

Is that a lot? I'm not sure.

[stomv]

What is the total cost of install and operation for 50 years for the solar project? What is it for a nuclear plant? A coal fired plant? The solar power plant likely has a higher construction and installation cost, but it likely has a lower operating cost.

I don't know the answers to the questions I'm raising -- but I do think that simply asking "That's $20,000 per home?" isn't the question which yields the most useful answer.

P.S. It's a loan guarantee. $1.45B is the upper limit on how much it will cost the taxpayers. The lower limit is $0.

What a mistake

[WindBourne]

The 2 billion SHOULD HAVE GONE TO GEO-THERMAL AND SOLAR THERMAL. Look, one of the smartest things that Obama can do is to increase AE, as well as push for electric cars. That is good. The problem is that AE, in wind and solar PV, already has massive backing. OTH, Solar Thermal has some real potential. In particular, collectors should be added to thermal systems. That would allow these to be used 100% for dropping the use of coal/natural gas. OTH, when building a new solar thermal plant, half to 2/3 of the collectors are used for during none sun times. But that adds a lot of expense to solar thermal.

Likewise, Geothermal has minor amounts of funds. Yet, we are on the edge really getting it cheap. Why? Potter drilling and Foro Energy. Both are working on spallation approaches to drilling (hydro and laser). In addition, there is a REAL simple and relatively inexpensive way to get to geo-thermal. Basically create tax breaks, or even subsidies, to continue drilling down on dry wells. Many wells are exploratory and will be dry wells. These are typically at around 8-10K feet. But, we offer up breaks/subsidies to continue down to hot areas so that the well is not a total bust for the drilling company. Most of the Geo-thermal area is around 12-16K. That is expensive if you are starting from the surface. But if you are starting from a well at 5-10K, then it is relatively cheap. And from the drilling companies POV, they would very much like to make money in places that they drill. If they can not have oil/natural gas, they will be excited to have 10-50 MW geo-thermal power.

Jobs created?

[Krahar]

I'm always puzzled at this notion that if you allocate money to some project, and as a result that project hires somebody to do a job, then you've created a job. I suppose it is true if we compare what you've done to keeping that money in a mattress. However, if you put it in a bank then the bank is going to invest the money which will move that money into the hands of someone who is doing something with it. That "doing something" is likely going to entail hiring someone at some point. So it mostly doesn't matter how you allocate money: it's mostly always going to create jobs. The government is taking money from people through taxes, thereby preventing those people who originally held the money from putting that money somewhere where it could create jobs - like putting it in the bank, investing it or perhaps just buying sodas. So the government doesn't directly create jobs by allocating money to a project, since jobs would have been there anyway by not collecting that money through taxes in the first place.

Now the economy is not a zero sum game, so it may still sometimes be a good idea to have the government redistribute money to projects that will benefit the country or humankind in the long term, e.g. where those projects wouldn't obtain funding otherwise because the benefits of the project are external and won't be enjoyed directly by the person undertaking the project. Perhaps this project will do that, and perhaps in benefiting us all it will even indirectly create many more jobs than those that are directly necessary for carrying out the project. What I'm puzzled by is just the idea that the direct employees of the project represent "jobs created" when a similar number of jobs would likely exist anyway if the project never existed. I guess the most you can say is that jobs have been created in one state/town/place by removing a similar number of jobs from other states/towns/places, and that is a benefit to the place that is receiving those jobs. So a politician presenting such a project will want to focus on the benefit of jobs created in one place and downplay the harm of removing those jobs elsewhere.

Re:Can somebody say

[copponex]

If it were the answer, it would already be happening. That 2 billion just created a solar energy bubble.

You are naive. What incentive does any major energy company have to abandoning the oil resources they have already invested billions in? Imagine it's any other company. Hell, imagine if Microsoft decided to invest all of their money in clean, reusable, open source code and make windows apps perfectly compatible with the Linux kernel. Would their windows sales go up or down?

Now imagine BP knowing that any breakthrough in clean energy technology enormously devalues their leased rights to oil fields and capital investments in equipment. In fact, if the breakthrough was big enough, BP would then be sitting on a pile of lawsuits waiting to happen. Are you, as BP, going to gently hold the hands of companies plotting your demise, or buy up clean energy companies, bury the technology, and spread FUD about climate change?

Yeah. Now you're thinking like a real CEO. Fuck the world: I want money.

Re:Can somebody say

[dgatwood]

Solar power is economical. Costs for solar are close to the costs for nuclear. We don't have more solar power is because coal is cheap, not because solar is expensive. At some point, you just have to bite the bullet.