Slashdot Mirror
Obama Wants To Fund Clean Energy Research With Oil & Gas Funds
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama Administration has put forth a proposal to collect $2 billion over the next 10 years from revenues generated by oil and gas development to fund scientific research into clean energy technologies. The administration hopes the research would help 'protect American families from spikes in gas prices and allow us to run our cars and trucks on electricity or homegrown fuels.' In a speech at Argonne National Laboratory, Obama said the private sector couldn't afford such research, which puts the onus on government to keep it going. Of course, it'll still be difficult to get everyone on board: 'The notion of funding alternative energy research with fossil fuel revenues has been endorsed in different forms by Republican politicians, including Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowsi. But the president still faces an uphill battle passing any major energy law, given how politicized programs to promote clean energy have become in the wake of high-profile failures of government-backed companies.'"
The plan to collect $2 billion from oil and gas revenues is a tax. These companies don't get subsidies for being oil companies. They get tax credits for R&D investment, like any other company in the US. Politicians call these subsidies, like some call tax cuts spending, when a lowering of a tax rate is not an expenditure.
When a politician states that they want to eliminate the subsidies to oil companies, they are talking about not giving them tax credits for R&D, like any other company. As I mentioned in my first post, this R&D is largely in alternative and clean energy research. Removing the tax credits for these energy companies is counter to the professed intention of supporting alternative energy.
-- Len
Actually the number of companies folding under this program was even lower than congress thought... about 11% Maybe we have different interpretations of "maths" but a little more than 1/10 companies receiving clean energy loans and tax breaks isn't "many" to me. Fact Check talked about this several times during the campaign last year.
How many? You named three. And how many "green energy" companies got federal funding?
There were 27,226 federal awards listed in the stimulus bill for energy/environment. You've named three that failed. The three companies you mentioned were part of a specific group of those awards under the control of the Department of Energy that were meant just for new technologies. There were 28 such funding deals. Of those, four went under. Others in the successful group include a very successful battery company that's not far from where I live, which now supplies batteries automakers, including Japanese and Korean companies that build cars in the US. Batteries that are also exported. Other successes include companies that are building the smart grid and even a company whose technology is being used in the natural gas industry (you know, the fracking folks you love so much).
Though the stimulus bill authorized $90 billion for green projects, about $80 billion was spent, and most of that on infrastructure. The group of 28 Dept of Energy awards totaled $34billion. It might be worth noting here that a study published this week estimates the cost of the Iraq War at $6trillion.
You gotta look beyond just the right-wing talking points.
[Source for the stimulus energy figures: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/politics/fact-check-green-energy
Source for the cost of the Iraq War: "Costs of War" project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/5584/20130315/cost-iraq-war-6-trillion-dollar-costofwar.htm ]
You are welcome on my lawn.
We have been giving welfare checks to oil companies since Rockefeller owned the government. Having that money shifted to clean energy might actually decrease the deficit. U.S. Oil companies still spend more money over seas than they do in North and South America combined. Ironically BP spends more in the Americas then U.S. based ones do; but, we take their money instead of the other way round.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
These are electric cars run by a computer. Knowing how to make the battery explode by software just might come in handy for someone who would like to leave a car thief with a very unpleasant experience.
Kidding around aside, please don't diss the batteries too much. I've blown up a few lithium batteries myself. Tow were intentional. I wanted to get an idea of just what it would take to make them lose their temper. Two were unintentional. But I did learn a lot from that. I was just happy I had the foresight to have used an old toaster oven for my battery pack test chamber. Lithium battery fires are nasty. Nothing I could do more than take the toaster oven out to the parking lot and let it exhaust itself.
One learns from their mistakes. There are several things I am not going to do again. Ever.
My neighbor's car caught fire a couple of years ago. He was lucky enough to catch it in the act and pushed it out to the middle of the street. The problem turned out to be the fuel injection system, which somehow did not shut down with the rest of the car. But being fuel injection is old technology, it did not make the news.
Fisker's exploding battery did.
I hate to diss technologies because of a misunderstanding of how to use them. There was a helluva lot of airplane accidents before we got that one pretty well nailed down.
Lithium batteries are dangerous. Very dangerous. So is gasoline.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]