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A War Over Solar Power Is Raging Within the GOP
mdsolar sends this quote from an article about the politics of solar energy:
"Clean energy technology has always been an easy punching bag for conservatives. Propelled by growing strain of global warming denial within their party, Republicans in Congress have proposed to slash funding for renewable energy programs in half this year, and mocked the idea of a green economy as “groovy” liberal propaganda. Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets or gamble taxpayer dollars on renewable-energy loans to companies like Solyndra, the Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees. The assumption has always been that, without heavy government subsidies, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power would never be able to compete with fossil fuels. But something funny has happened to renewables that major power companies and their Republican allies didn't see coming. Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US, according to the renewable energy research group Greentech Media. The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Once considered a boutique energy source, solar power has become a cost-competitive alternative for many consumers, costing an average $143 per megawatt-hour, down from $236 in the beginning of 2011. Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers. And as more people turn to rooftop solar as a way to reduce energy costs—90,000 businesses and homeowners installed panels last year, up 46 percent from 2011—the issue is pitting pro-utilities Republicans against this fledgling movement of libertarian-minded activists who see independent power generation as an individual right. In other words, the fight over solar power is raging within the GOP itself."
If solar is doing so great then why does it need subsidies? Thats what the GOP doesn't like, not that such a thing exists, but that the government creates distortions in the economy by picking winners before the race starts. Old school republicans and libertarians both distaste government intervention. Solar will eventually become cost effective without subsidies, lets wait for that to happen.
Too long. So long
Solar is not even close to being competitive except in those states where there is a racket - power companies are forced to buy "renewable" energy, and so pay house holds "credit" for being able to pretend they delivered the energy those houses used. If solar ever becomes *really* competitive, then it won't need government subsidies.
Now subsidies for research in the area of making solar better is something different. But I checked into the cost of solar a couple of months ago and without this racket it isn't even close.
Sooner or later, being anti-science and pro-capitalist is bound to catch up with you.
How could there be GOP figures busily lobbying in favor of state taxation and repression of individuals in the interests of incumbent corporations?
I've been assured, with a level of seriousness that only they can muster, by any number of internet randroids, that the right is the side of personal freedom and autonomy, and the left is the path of collectivist fascism and agenda-21! How could this be?
These climate changers just don't give up! Break out the tinfoil hats LOL
perhaps they could stop subsidizing fossil fuels and ethanol as well.
"Clean energy" that has promise has market potential and will fund itself. People who are in love with solar panels should buy their own damn solar panels with their own cash, not my tax dollars. Quite simple.
Paragraphs make text readable. You giant paragraph is completely unreadable. Please write in such a way that people can even have an opportunity to read you.
Thanks,
The Internet
The GOP allowed solar -production- to be kicked over to China. First, the solar companies were complaining about Chinese intrusion attempts, then China started dumping panels on our shores for cheaper than it cost US makers to buy the rare earths.
However, the split is going along two lines of two GOP platforms. Dislike for government versus respect for Big Oil/Big Coal. Solar allows people to be fairly independent [1].
Solar also scales well. One can have a one watt panel to keep a vent fan spinning on a RV's roof, or a multi-megawatt array powering a city like Austin.
Solar is also fairly easy to deploy. Got a clear line of sight to the south? Might as well slap a few panels up, add a grid-tie inverter, and have a lower power bill, or if in a more rural area, have the power feed into a battery bank for complete off-grid use, or even a combination of both with some outlets in a house on utility powers, others feeding from the batteries. Same thing if one has a carport. Might as well have the flat roof do something.
As for price, solar panel prices have gotten to a point where it becomes a "why not?" as opposed to a "why bother?" This is especially true in the RV industry.
[1]: Almost. Good luck having a modern building in the southern US without air conditioning unless one is content to deal with high humidity.
...where much of the government is Republican but a lot of the power on the grid comes from solar farms?
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Those who have profit incentive from burning oil and gas will put a lot of money into dis-crediting alternatives.
Just to point it out... Just because a few very vocal groups in the GOP are claiming to be libertarian, that does not mean that libertarians are GOP. The interests of the two groups do not align very well, so a conflict such as this is only to be expected.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Let's be calm about this, they may be on to something wonderful. Let's cancel all programs related to tax dollars propping up all energy producers. That's all perks,bonuses,benefits,subsidies,tax breaks,rebates and other related billion dollar crumbs. To any and all energy producers. And their pals. Yes,that includes farm too Grain to fuel and potatoes to booze( maybe not that one) Just stop it all now. Let's see who's really getting all of the perks. What happened, it just got real quiet? Today, I am an equal opportunity hater. Farm subsidies
Solar power is a source of energy that does not affect the climate the way burning fossil fuels does, which is what it has "to do with global warming."
The problem really is that residential users want their bills reduced for the same amount of power they generate. It doesn't matter to them that this power is generated during non-peak hours and that the energy companies still need to maintain infrastructure to provide power to them during not sunny times. This will force utilities to break up their charges into actual power production and infrastructure maintenance which means tons of extra work in getting government approvals for the rates they charge costumers.
In order to jump start some industries, a large customer (such as the government) could be such a customer. In being such, it should purchase a service or product for which there is a need. For example, if it is to be Solar Energy, buy or lease a product. Whichever company or companies can supply this product will get the customer. This customer can drive some early demand, and the 'market' can then compete for this market. But the government should not support one customer or company (e.g. Solyndra), with hopes of making some product.
Ideally, the government should be neutral on the source of the service required. If it want to buy a certain amount of Energy, then all customers from whatever source (wind, water, coal, oil, sunshine) should all be able to compete for this.
However, I do recognize that to start some industries, a big project supported by the government, may need to boost the initiation of this. Like NASA helped spark scientific innovation in the quest to go to the moon, We may have benefits as a nation to be the first customer in line to spark some Solar innovation (but we should be company blind, and also specific technology-blind in our choices).
Even better. Make a contest with a big reward. Contests work. First privately launched space ship contest (worked), first human powered aircraft (worked)----make a contest for solar energy product producing 'x' amount of energy for under 'y' cost...
These ideas would be consisted with Economic competition, and should work well within the 'Right's ' agenda, while furthering the 'left's' goals as well.
Solar power has nothing to do with global warming. But solar power is inevitable, despite government meddling.
Eh, anything to use less coal helps on the environment.
It has nothing to do with picking winners and losers.
It never did.
It's always been about entrenched interests maintaining the status quo.
Interestingly, the entrenched interests in this case aren't gas/oil companies,
they already started diversifying years ago, it's the power utilities who are resistant to the change.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Guys, this is just a hack piece. If you want to bash the Republicans, pick a topic, keep hidden the real issues, one of which borcharc pointed out above, write it in such a way that the Republicans are demonized, and submit it to places like Slashdot.
Example: We tax the oil companies less on a number of expenses. Taking less from them does not equate to giving money directly to them. However, if you label a lower tax so that it reads like we are giving them money, then it can be used to both demonize them, and also to justify actually giving money directly to renewable energy efforts.
But this article is not really about subsidies, taxes, oil or renewable energy. It is a political article. In today's world we all must learn to recognize such articles for what they really are.
How many new coal plants were built last year?
Solar accounts for 0.17% of our electric production in this country, tripling it won't make any difference.
The numbers are not on solar's side. Electric production from fossil fuels is up more than 30% in the past 20 years, it isn't being replace by solar, demand is growing faster than solar panels are being installed.
I agree that pollution is bad, I agree that releasing tons of CO2 is probably bad (we don't know for sure, but I don't want to find out the hard way, better to play it safe and not burn it all)
My primary complaint is that people who talk about renewables simply are working from emotion and not from numbers and math. The math is not on renewables side, I'm sorry to say.
A billion people in the world are going to get access to AC and clean water over the next 50 years. It matters not what the USA and Europe do, our populations will be overwhelmed by China and India's use of coal in that time.
We need large scale power sources. Right now, the options are coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.
The sooner environmentalists get off the solar kick and focus on reality, the sooner we can replace fossil fuels with something else. (Which in this case is nuclear, since it is the only option left)
The GOP is getting like George Castanza. We should do the opposite of whatever they think.
But the GOP is against funding solar power because they don't believe in global warming.
Well, that what they say, but it's really because the oil and coal companies have them in their pocket.
It has nothing to do with picking winners and losers. It never did.
It's always been about entrenched interests maintaining the status quo. Interestingly, the entrenched interests in this case aren't gas/oil companies, they already started diversifying years ago, it's the power utilities who are resistant to the change.
oh i'm aware. sometimes i forget sarcasm doesn't translate well on the interwebs :P
in my estimation, we should be pushing for research and investment in alternative fuel and energy tech. the U.S. should be at the forefront, creating new industries and manufacturing jobs in the process. of course, the current status quo and current companies have a problem with losing their "privileged" status, and their political proxies foist it off as "picking winners and losers".
As long as it's two senators per state, nobody is likely to fuck with representatives from even lightly populated corn-heavy states...
Is there any source to support the claim, "Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers."
I like that the market is starting to work to promote solar, and I think soon it will pick up on other "green" energy things. Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
That being said...I hope the govt also doesn't jump in (either party) and start trying to regulate to death the fledgling solar industry or other green energy companies.
Govt should be there just enough to allow the market to roll, but also stay out of the way once it starts rolling.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Congress (especially GOP members) don't seem to understand that we have no choice but to pick losers and winners. Their reluctance to fund research into alternative energy sources just ensures that the United States will lose. By the time they finally realize we have no choice but to get on board, we will have to pay China, Germany ..... to use the technology because it will have already been developed and made practical (and profitable) by them.
i.e. it has as much to do with global warming as not stabbing you has to do with murder.
The only reason you subsidize renewable energy generation such as solar is to make it currently viable whereas otherwise it would not.
The only reason you make renewable energy generation currently viable is to jump start development.
The only reason you jump start development is if you want to be the one producing the technology or buying the technology.
There is also the matter that on a grand scale, infrastructure takes awhile to build, it isn't something you can just do overnight.
Anyway so long as the idea isn't that things like solar is going to solve all your energy issues because it will not. It is part of a generation mix. You can however increase its effectiveness and the percent used overall to help mitigate other energy related issues.
There is certainly a lot of political agenda polemic when it comes to energy, and this article is no different.
As Slashdot is theoretically geared toward engineers, having a hard look at the numbers involved is not an optional consideration. See here for Germany's story:
http://www.quora.com/Alternative-Energy/Should-other-nations-follow-Germanys-lead-on-promoting-solar-power-1?srid=ue54&share=1
Solar is great for micro/local-level offsets in particularly sunny places, and it's good if you want to build a compound for the zombie apocalypse. As a key component of energy policy for the United States, it is not and has never been practical compared to wind or nuclear power.
Politicians in every party love being able to pick winners and losers. It's one of the perks of the jobs. People imagine solar as warm, fuzzy, and mother Earth friendly. If that were the case, Germany wouldn't have a bigger carbon footprint now than it did before it had the world's largest nameplate capacity of solar power production.
If you're concerned about global warming from burning fossil fuels, the only choice at the moment that satisfies all the requirements of most first world country's energy policy is nuclear. Nothing else comes close.
Many states can use the cheap solar hot water systems, costing $3-5k professionally installed, less than half that if you're not scared of plumbing. It's not all about generating electricity, spinning meters backwards or off-grid storage.
Some countries around the Mediterranean have laws that all buildings have to have solar systems to heat domestic water. They're different designs from ours, looking somewhat clunky and like the old USSR hodgepodge satellites, but they're effective.
Here in FL, every other cookie cutter house has a pool solar system, but very few have domestic hot water panels, even though they're cheaper and take up far less roof space, and save having to have the 50 gallon tank powered all day every day. I find this very bizarre.
Our house (2 adults, 2 kids) hot water is purely heated from the sun bar the 10-14 days of the year when I have to switch on the power to the tank due to extended cloud coverage. We also have pool panels, but to get the benefit of extending the pool usage period, we have to have the pool pump running a lot longer, which uses a fair amount of power.
Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets ...
Okay. Step 1: Cancel all subsidies / tax breaks and tax loopholes for the Oil Companies. Sure they're *only* about $2-4 billion / year, but it's a start. (Note: Reason.com - slogan "Free Minds and Free Markets - thinks these are okay).
Just noting from the Think Progress article:
Last year, the five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — earned $118 billion profit at a time when consumers paid record-high gas prices. This haul follows after a year the companies earned a record $137 billion profit.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If you don't think the pro-utilities crowd will win this, you don't understand the Republican party much. Of course, it will be spun as a victory for libertarianism, and of course, it might get enough Democratic votes to cover various behinds, but in the end the money will win this.
But any war that involves the Sun, I predict the Sun wins.
It's always been about entrenched interests maintaining the status quo. Interestingly, the entrenched interests in this case aren't gas/oil companies, they already started diversifying years ago, it's the power utilities who are resistant to the change.
As I understand it, that's the nature of Conservativism - that you are there to conserve the status quo.
You are right, and meanwhile China is pushing solar power all the way and if the US does not move fast China will be the winner (again) and the US will be the loser.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
If you don't think the government should be interfering in the free market, then stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. If an oil company can't make a profit at the current price of oil then let it die.
If there are subsidies above what companies normally get in tax breaks, why would someone against subsidies for solar companies not *also* want to end them for other energy companies? I'd be all for it.
Instead you seem to think, hey theres something wrong over here, so lets add more wrong on top of this other thing that I like.
This is how government spending grows wildly out of control, this mindset of "they got theirs so I get mine".
Stop, just stop.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes. It really doesn't matter what the GOP wants, or whether they are funding it, or whether people think we should use solar because it means that we burn less fossil fuel. Solar gets cheaper and cheaper every year, regardless of government funding. Soon, perhaps around 2017 to 2020, new solar installations will become a massive tidal wave that will bring terawatts of power online, because every single new solar plant will be profitable to install. No government subsidy or political view required.
As I said, it will be inevitable, and very little of it will have been influenced by the global warming debate. Businesses and consumers will install solar because it will be *profitable*.
Why do I get the feeling that we in the US are going to be left in the dust.
China is the world's largest solar panel maker. Its companies, stung by a slowdown in the once-lucrative European market, are moving into Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia, where demand for solar power is rising fast.
The rest of the World sees the writing the on the wall and they are doing something - even the Third World.
As these countries progress forward and develop those energy sources, that will have a long term effect on lowering the cost of "Green"" energy - and less demand on fossil fuels possibly extending their economic life. But one day, those fossil fuels will lose their economic advantage and we, the US, will be behind the curve yet again. This current oil and gas surplus we have will not last forever and unfortunately our short term thinking will bite us in the ass, yet again - like importing Solar, Wind, maybe even nuclear, etc ... technology.
It's ironic that you're posting this on the Internet which was invented by government funding.
This isn't about invention of the fundamental underpinnings. Plowsharing is a grand tradition.
This is about development and deployment in the public sector. Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded. It occurred when the government got out of the way and let commercial interests play with the new toy. (THAT's what Gore rightly claims substantial credit for.) Scaling it up and the burst of innovation in using it was done with private money in a largely free marketplace, not government subsidies.
In fact, government subsidies HURT this development-deployment phase. The picked winners have no incentive to innovate - they're paid to work on what is already there. The non-picked have no incentive to innovate, or even enter the market - they start at a big competitive disadvantage, and if the did succeed they can expect the government's cronies to get still more subsidies (unless, like Solyndra, they collapse so fast the pumping is ineffictive).
Solyndra failed because they spent the government money like water, ending up with a product that was slightly MORE expensive than the non-subsidized competition - when moving potential customers to a new variant of an existing technology requires a substantial improvement in price-performance - and about a factor of ten to obsolete the previous mainstream approach.
What's driving the current burst of innovation and deployment is the loss of government subsidies around the world. Now the playing field is closer to level. More companies are playing with private investment. The products must compete with existing grid systems, so innovation is occurring and price/performance is improving to where they ARE competitive in progressively more situations.
Indeed, panels are now available at less than a dollar per watt, which is about the point where solar starts beating grid costs in most places where there's enough sun, rather than just remote places or small loads where it's cheaper than running miles of new lines.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But something funny has happened to renewables that major power companies and their Republican allies didn't see coming. Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US, according to the renewable energy research group Greentech Media. The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011.
Why is this story so full of anti-republican spin, when the facts so exactly vindicate the conservative and republican view?
The huge government subsidies proved to be a total flop.
Private industry found the best solar and best wind solutions and put them into production.
The Conservatives were right all along. After the government plans collapse, with 500 million dollar loses, the hands off approach delivers a workable solution.
Several companies are also working full steam (pun intended) ahead on Mini and Micro-Nuclear that can be build for 100 million (less than a small shopping mall).
It appears this whole story is somehow about spewing hate more than shedding any light on the sustainable power developments.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
tags in there somewhere?
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Its not a zero-sum game, ya know. China "winning" comes mostly at the cost of their rampant ecological disaster and corrupt mid-level government. They push solar because the air is literally toxic.
Did you even read the article you linked to? Most of those subsidies take the form of things like allowing corporations to deduct expenses from their taxes (much like any other business). One of the supposed subsidies to the oil and gas industry cited in the report is government heating assistance for the poor.
Reality check:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf
http://www.entergy-arkansas.com/content/news/docs/AR_Nuclear_One_Land_Use.pdf
Solar uses huge amounts of land-per-MWh-- between 3 and 10, depending on who you ask, what technology, and how you measure; it also generally ignores the whole "peak solar output is very different than average", or the whole "this only works in places with a lot of room and a lot of sun". This isnt the solution youre looking for; want to save the environment, stop fighting nuclear.
Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets or gamble taxpayer dollars on renewable-energy loans to companies like Solyndra
Are they wrong? Harping on solar over and over when its pretty clear that the efficiency, price, and land usage just arent there isnt going to fix the issue. Solar is a good supplemental tech, but its not going to save the world, and dumping $500 million into one company that goes bankrupt really does deserve criticism. If the amount had been like $10 million, maybe we wouldnt be having this discussion.
The assumption has always been that, without heavy government subsidies, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power would never be able to compete with fossil fuels
That presents a long term problem, doesnt it? Fundamentally one of the issues is that you cant fight supply and demand-- not successfully. If fuel is significantly cheaper than solar, the government isnt going to be able to pay off the difference indefinitely; and if solar IS cheaper in the long haul, people will jump on board (which is why they do).
But the idea that solar companies cant succeed without government help is ridiculous anyways. Didnt Elon Musk help found a solar firm (solarcity) about thats going strong, apparently with no government help? I found out about this while looking him up for the tesla articles, and I was a little surprised-- heres a firm thats been around for quite a while, is doing very well, and apparently had no help from the government! They did try to get a fed loan guarantee, and it fell through, and they went to a bank (BoA?) and got their loan. I guess that doesnt really help the narrative that "poor solar firms cant compete without government help", which perhaps is why such stories arent reported more widely.
Oil was helped out by overcapacity in the rail system brought about by federal stimulus in the railroad industry. Every successful enterprise depends on services either provided by our intervened in by the government. To this day big oil is helped out by significant tax treatments and cheap lease rights as well as the HUGE intervention of the US military is global supply (Iraq alone is around 2.5 trillion in subsidy for the two wars).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
While this article is trying to paint a certain picture that may or may not be accurate the real reason solar has been able to take off in the last few years is solar efficiency. It just wasn't economically viable when solar could only get single digit efficiency yields. newer manufacturing and technology is starting to see ~20% efficiency and some promising results have seen up to ~40%. That means less panels to achieve the same result so it costs less to deploy.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Anything that empowers poor people making $120K or less a year must be stopped. Solar power at home? how unamerican!
The GOP hates americans, they hate Poor people even more.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
(who, curiously, seems to have no power whatsoever anymore)...I can promise that we don't give a rats behind if Solar wins or loses on the open market. Cheap energy is a win that we want, and the US needs. Nuclear, Solar, and Wind are all on the table, if they compete with fossils, then fine.
The GOP is basically entirely consistent in its policy on the subject: the problem they're fighting is the impact on the economics of the proposition of the combination of 1) regulating into nonexistence the things the left doesn't like, and 2) giving out massive money to the "in crowd" of toadies as payback for political support, with no substantial merits other than that.
Compared to the massive quantities of money paid into taxes from the sale of fossil fuels, the subsidies are pocket change: they are designed to help to get fuel to inconvenient areas of the country, offsetting the cost without a massive price increase - are you people really against this? This is the sort of thing that was bipartisan at one point, but then you start putting it under the rubric of "subsidizing big business" and it becomes partisan, an evil war-for-oil conspiracy of the already rich. Whereas the already rich could just stop sending fuel to the middle of Nevada, and let the people there walk everywhere, uphill in both direction.
The regulations they are fighting against are those that inhibit growth in total domestic energy production, for dubious gains. AGW is a bullshit theory if the A part of it ends up being in the noise. If people on the left were serious about it, instead of using it as a wedge issue, then they'd be funding more engineering and research on how to better assuage impact and macro-engineer climate, rather than pumping the billions into "raising awareness" and lobbying. Since they aren't really serious, they don't do the expected things, they use it as a tool for increased political leverage.
Beyond that, the left caused the mortgage industry collapse by regulating banks into underwriting loans that they knew - from statistics - could never be paid back, causing a housing bubble. These got packaged as 'mortgage backed securities' and pension funds &c bought them by the bushel as safe investments. The option of letting pension funds go bankrupt was untenable, so we had to authorize the bailout.
The last time the House and Senate were under Democratic control, incidentally the last time we had an actual budget scored and passed into law, the growth curves were set so high than we've gone into debt 5 times over in the 8 years. This is screwing up our economy and our currency. In petrodollars (we should call them 'energydollars'), we're coming out massively behind, and this has actual impact on people's lives. The actual impact is to make people more and more dependent on more and more government. More and more under the control of that special, pretend-educated class, the "best and brightest" who also end up being hypocritical and degenerate, that's basically odious in principle to many of us.
Energy - from whatever source - that is really (and not pretend) cheap, used with a modicum of efficiency, is the thing that makes poor people more well-off, dependent people less dependent, and well-off people rich. The GOP believes in supporting all of those things.
If enough people start putting in solar arrays and going off grid and or feeding back to the grid it will undermine the electric operators.
Delivered electricity costs might very well go way up for traditional customers. Distribution is a high fixed overhead. Either you sell enough generation or your really screw a certain groups of customers with high fixed minimum charges.
Don't misunderstand I am opposed to doing anything to discourage people from going off grid, installing solar or selling back to the grid. I am also against doing anything specific to encourage it. Government should just stay out.
But consider this their could come a day when having reliable electricity available at your home means paying very high monthly fees to be connected to a grid with fewer and few customers, or being able to invest and maintain an solar array and some kind of storage bank, be it kinetic, capacitance, or chemical batteries. That might create some haves and have nots out of what has become a pretty universal condition presently.
The next thing you know some prick like Obama is going to be arguing for an individual grid connection mandate; because its only affordable if we all participate.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'm a conservative and I could give a flying fuck about the GOP. I don't know if solar power is the answer but it may be a part of the answer and as long as it can pay it's own way it deserves a chance. It almost has to be better than coal. The GOP claims to be conservative but they're really just like the fucking DEMS, all about money.
Lets stop subsidies for ALL energy, including the oil companies that line your election accounts with cash.
... but it's abundantly clear that the GOP is not seriously opposed to government intervention in energy markets.
You make a big mistake when you think of the GOP as a uniform monolith. It's composed of about five major factions, and much of its recent behavior comes from the Neocons' iron grip on the party machinery (and the others' attempts to dislodge it).
Of particular interest is the Liberty Movement faction - with a primarily libertarian and/or constitutionalist ideology, but far better tactical savvy than the Libertarian Party's people. They're gaining power rapidly. On this issue they're bovernment-hands-off: Don't subsidize: It actually retards development and deployment. Don't interfere for entrenched interests: Ditto. They also want the people energy-independent, and thus better able to resist external control (both foreign and institutional).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So this is a charity event? We let China win so that they can breathe more easily...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Did you miss that part where utilities where lobbying politicians to punish people who switch over to solar? is that not just them playing at winners and losers as well? if utilities (or petro companies) can't compete against solar then they deserve to fade away and not be propped up by the Government.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Seriously, fuck off.
If solar is doing so great then why does it need subsidies?
Because it is still a developing technology. Doing great does not mean it has no further to go or that it does not need help. Without subsidies it is difficult in the short run to justify investments in energy that cannot return a profit as long as cheap fossil fuels are available. Given that it is clean energy it is clearly in the interest of society at large to invest in and accelerate the development of the technology to make it cost competitive as quickly as possible. Furthermore subsidies for technology development frequently more than pay for themselves in economic growth in the long run. (see NASA and NIH for examples)
Solar will eventually become cost effective without subsidies, lets wait for that to happen.
It is not at all clear that it will become cost competitive in a useful time frame without subsidies. Without subsidies many of the investments would never get made because a positive return would be impossible. Furthermore the longer we wait the more pollution is released. The clock is not our friend here.
Solar needs lots of space to produce large amounts of power, sure. But we have lots of wasted space in our urban and suburban centers. Every rooftop that doesn't have solar panels is a target for panels. In a single family home, not only do you generate electricity, the panels shade the structure and keep it cooler in the summer months.
Germany is hardly what anyone would call a bastion of sunshine, but they seem to be making quite a go of solar.
As for the subsidies for solar and other renewables: only fair. The US subsidizes oil with tax breaks, incentives and let's not even get started on the military adventures we've been on to control/protect our oil interests in the middle-east.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
To me we need clean affordable energy whether Global Warming is real or not. We need cheap energy to keep our economy going and we need our children's children to be able to drink clean water and breathe clean air.
What we really need is a President who will tackle energy with the same kind of committment that JFK gave us for the space program. As a country we invested mightily in the program and the process of getting that man on the moon created huge technical advantages for our nation. As a viable program it all went to crap after we reached that goal but we had already made the gains in technology that propelled us for the next few decades.
A similar effort that yielded clean affordable energy would also yield lots of new technologies. We need that and a coordinated effort by the Federal Government is probably the quickest way to get there. That being said, it cannot just exist as a way to reward the President's supporters and just end up as money stuffed into pockets like Solyndra.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Look at the space program, a giant expenditure of taxpayer resources on what appeared to be a largely symbolic scientific research program. But the technologies that resulted and benefited the US economy are so big it's difficult to quantify them.
I'd argue that a mission to Mars or the asteroid belt would have an equally dramatic impact on the US economy and the rest of the world. But that's a side topic. Ignoring space, renewable energy has the potential to be incredibly useful, and disruptive. Solar panels, wind farms, tidal generators, etc... etc... need to be constructed from the same metals and plastics and silicon as any other kind of machinery, so it's no utopian technology. But once it's set up, the maintenance costs should be a fraction of what we spend on coal, gas, and oil.
But the GOP is against funding solar power because they don't believe in global warming.
Well, that what they say, but it's really because the oil and coal companies have them in their pocket.
So does that mean democrats are against fiscal responsibility, because their largest donators are from insurance companies, and bank.
Om, nomnomnom...
Um, no. Large industrial solar can use land space, but the land can also be used for other things - grazing land, fields for plants that require shade, etc.
Most home solar is done on roofs and walls, and these are PRIVATE buildings.
Why are you stopping us from making clean energy from OUR LAND instead of supporting terrorists by using oil and corn ethanol?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Climate change deniers deserve each and every tornado they get.
Don't be so mean and spiteful! It's just God showing his love by testing the faith of his most enthusiastic supporters.
Serious question for you then: Should it have to pay its own way NOW when fossil fuels are still cheaper? Or should we wait until fossil fuels become harder to come by and the prices go up and we get economic impacts as a result and only then invest in replacement power sources because they will be able to pay their own way then? In my opinion avoidance of the disruption inherent in waiting is worth some investment now.
Solar uses huge amounts of land-per-MWh
Solar can use space that's not being used for anything else, like rooftops.
this only works in places with a lot of room and a lot of sun
My friends have an off-grid house. Solar panels that feed a battery bank, plus a gasoline-powered generator as a backup. They very rarely run the generator, mostly in the winter. This is in central NY, which definitely doesn't get a lot of sun. Their heat comes from a wood stove. So they meet most of their energy needs with non-fossil sources. It's really not as hard as you think.
You're rather cherry-picking your data. Solyndra made a big bet: that the raw cost of the silicon in solar power would be important, and that a remarkably cool manufacturing technique to use a lot less would have a ton of value. As it turns out, that's not how the industry went: silicon costs dropped faster than anticipated, and the manufacturing costs of the Solyndra didn't.
We weren't "picking winners and losers" here: we enabled a big bet. Big bets don't always work.
And the internet was absolutely funded for years by the public purse to develop all of the major technologies and to make the same set of "big bets" about the valuable and non-valuable aspects of internet communication. Private people only became interested because of that investment.
And part of the investment was the "picking a winner". The key to the internet is that it worked across multiple vendors. If we hadn't have done that, there would be an ATT network, an IBM network, a Unisys network, and so on. The government chose a winner (cross platform) and a loser (per-company networks).
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Solyndra was never about making anything viable. Run the numbers like I did. It's impossible to buy/spend that much money month after month. The equipment was purchased. The building was bought. The employees were paid. Now it's just general R&D money to keep buying supplies, yet the amount of money funneled(key word) through Solyndra doesn't add up. It amounts to paying off your friends with money that isn't yours, the rest gets funneled back to the campaign. It's just plain dirty. Run the numbers. It's fucking sick the way corrupt people will game the system.
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
Seriously?
A quick Google tells me that the oil industry has been receiving subsidies since essentially day one, by being allowed to write off the full cost of drilling new wells. Even to this day the oil industry in the US gets $4 billion per year in subsidies one way or another.
=Smidge=
I don't mind tax incentives for homeowners to install Solar. It helps people and can help drive costs of solar installations down by bringing volume up. This crazy kind of thing they did with Solyndra I don't think we need.
China and the EU are in an on-and-off trade war over photovoltaics. China is heavily subsidising production there in order to churn the panels out so cheap, European manufacturers cannot match them - thus effectively securing a production monopoly which can later be leveraged. Taking a loss now to secure a strategic advantage. The EU is not happy with this.
"Their heat comes from a wood stove."
Just wait till the EPA comes after them.
If you want to assert that oil companies are subsidized, you must first offer some valid and specific criticism of this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/01/02/oil-gas-tax-provisions-are-not-subsidies-for-big-oil
So far, nobody has been able to tell me where David Blackmon got his facts wrong.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
As a key component of energy policy for the United States, it is not and has never been practical compared to wind or nuclear power.
This statement would carry a lot more weight if you cited anything resembling a study, statistic or fact. As stated, it's nothing more than an unsupported opinion.
If you're concerned about global warming from burning fossil fuels, the only choice at the moment that satisfies all the requirements of most first world country's energy policy is nuclear. Nothing else comes close.
Here is another unsupported but ardently expressed opinion.
It'd cost a lot more, too. The moon landing was hard enough, and in space terms that's little more than a trip around the block. No long-term sustainable life support, radiation shielding only enough for a short trip, the ship itsself was absolutely tiny. A trip to mars would need so much more than that, the only realistic way to even built the interplanetary ship would be to assemble it in orbit. It would be one of the most expensive scientific projects, if not the most expensive, ever undertaken.
How about just take away the billions of subsidies/tax relief/tax refunds/etc from the oil & gas companies and give them to the solar energy companies?
$10b goes a long way towards making something 'cheaper'.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Your eloquent little outburst fails to say what's wrong with being "all about money", when the topic of this whole thread is whether or not government (=taxpayers) should subsidize private solar installations. It is all about money.
Not including the occasional war fought to secure access to supplies.
I think the idea is to invest in a technology so that eventually it becomes cheaper. Nuclear would have never gotten off the ground without government investment, the startup costs were too high. So it's possible that planned, carefully considered large scale investment in solar or some other form of renewable energy will pay off. I'm not opposed in principal.
The problem with nuclear is fuel, startup costs, spent fuel storage, and publicity. If Congress could authorize and fund a nuclear power plant today and have gobs of power output in 18 months, nuclear would be everywhere. Instead, you start paying the costs up front and you're likely to be long out of office before the investment pays off. That kind of long term thinking doesn't interact well with politics or publicly traded companies.
This country has been "20 years away from usable fusion power" for 60 years. I think an Apollo-program style investment in fusion power is the logical next step.
If solar was so great then everybody would be doing it and the gov't bully would hate it and would be passing as many laws as possible to stop us from using it and demand that we use the method. The fact that know one uses it and gov't loves it says it all.
You forget to mention one very important detail: Germany is stopping its nuclear plants. As it can't build renewable energy fast enough, part of this is currently offset by increasing use of coal energy. That most definitely has an impact on Germany's carbon footprint.
The logical thing (as with every technology) would be that its time will come when the value of said technology exceeds the cost. Could be that fossil fuel gets more expensive, could be that manufacturing costs for solar go down...or efficiency rises sharply at the same cost.
The problem (as noted in the summary) is not with government investing in research, it's with government backing production. If you want efficient, cost effective non-carbon-based power sources, then you need demand and competition, not lack of demand and competition avoidance.
Either climate change or energy prices are going to continue to push the "expensive" needle for hydrocarbon-based fuel higher and higher without stopping, which will help make solar/hydro/nuclear more attractive, which will in turn lead to more production and economies of scale.
The best thing the government can do is to throw around research dollars and get the fuck out of the way.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
"subsidies" are not the same thing as "tax relief".
"best thing the government can do is to throw around research dollars"
Or maybe the best thing government can do is save its taxpayers' money, pay down the debt, and act fiscally prudent for a change.
1) Wrong. Solyndra went bust because...well, just read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/five-myths-about-the-solyndra-collapse/2011/09/14/gIQAfkyvRK_blog.html
2) Classical economics introduces the topic of externalities and public goods. Government is an efficient institution for removing negative externalities and providing public goods.
3) Last point, related to the first, in the US, we over-consume and under-invest. The government should do *more* not less, to "choose winners and losers" because the private sector is a mess. Last, subsidies are different from investment. Investment is good for growth, innovation, and so on, regardless of its origin.
Are you referring to that bullshit story that was posted here a few days ago, that made it sound like the EPA police would be going into people's homes and ripping out their stoves?
The US directly subsidized the oil companies in the budget, but on top of that the US military has to defend all oil tanker routes and secure oilfields. If you included the costs of securing operations, transport pathways, and the cost of maintaining all those overseas military bases, solar would be much cheaper than oil.
Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded.
Yup. At no point was the telecommunications industry given billions of dollars in loan guarantees, grants, low-cost or even free use of public lands/eminent domain claims, and tax write-offs to build out the national internet infrastructure. That never happened and it most certainly isn't STILL happening. Telecoms are a free-market utopia and a testament to how great private industry is in the absence of government intervention.
=Smidge=
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
The oil industry receives AT LEAST $10 Billion per year in US subsidies. If you think the government shouldn't be "picking winners and losers" then you should support reform of these.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
I do agree with your sentiment...."The best thing the government can do if insisting on directly promoting development of technology", I guess I should have said.
Whether that is, in and of itself, a means to positive fiscal ends (increased tax revenues, govt energy savings, etc, etc) is way too long of a discussion.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded.
Are you for serious? This is so damnably wrong I couldn't even wait to reply long enough to log in! Seriously. the Telco and Cable companies bringing you this commercial Internet, this bastion of free enterprise you are talking about, is about as heavily subsidized as an industry can get? Who do you think paid for all those cool telephone and cable lines? Why do you think they are stuck with Universal Access rules? Because WE THE PEOPLE paid for them from our taxes.
And for the record, I'm a card-carrying, voting Libertarian. I'm all about free enterprise. It's for that reason that it bothers me to see you so very wrong about what you ascribe to it. Also, as a Libertarian, I also recognize that without some centralize cooperation, there are things we wouldn't have right now, like the Internet and Solar Power that is finally starting to get competitive.
And maybe encourage saving energy more strongly. One thing that struck me when I was on business in Phoenix, Arizona, is how energy inefficient everything was. I would take warm showers in my air conditioned apartment, while it was 40C outside. The water was no doubt heating with electricity or gas. Why not use solar water heaters? And why are the offices air conditioned so much? What a huge waste of energy. The apartment was equipped with a washing machine and a dryer. Do people in the desert really use a dryer? You can just hang your clothes out for an hour and everything will be bone dry. Why were people driving huge trucks just to go to work? There is HUGE potential for reducing energy consumption, which I suspect is the lowest hanging fruit.
Kinda hard to buy votes from green lobby and help out your friends in the green industry if they follow your advice.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Of course it bloody has. Government subsidies it. For gods-sake. This happened in Spain too. Everyone and their mother had a solar farm. The subsidy was so good that it was actually economically sensible to run your solar cells with diesel powered lighting systems during the night.
There is no folly a government will not involve itself in.
Everyone, including the OP, mentions Solyndra as this big failure of the solar industry, but nobody discusses why it failed. Their business model was based on selling non-silicon based panels at a time when the price of silicon panels was skyrocketing. Then, as you mention, the Chinese government hands billions of dollars to their silicon based solar panel manufacturers, and their prices subsequently plummeted.
If the US and the EU decide to leave their renewable energy sector to the whims of the free market, while allowing China to subsidizes the hell out of it- we might as well just hand the entire industry over to them.
They are the same thing.
The comment didn't say they were. They just rolled all of the taxpayer-funded incentives up in the same blanket.
The problem with applying your conservative principles in this case is that the impacts from global warming will be upon us long before coal is no longer economically viable. Those making money from coal do not care about the consequences, since they're making big bucks while taking a small personal risk, whereas their profits have a negative impact on us all. If coal burning had no negative impact, I would agree, but since it does, it needs to be monitored and an alternative needs to be found
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
OK, why do companies making billions in profit need "tax relief"?
It's completely fair to ask those who introduce significant inherent instability into the grid to pay for equipment that balances it out. It's not a punishment. Spikey power feedback into the grid caused by solar is inherently very difficult for traditional electrical grid to handle.
But you need what they did with solyndra, or otherwise you end up buying all your panels from china, and losing out on the economic benefits. We need a domestic supplier of solar panels if we hope to encourage adoption. It just seems more and more clear to me that we just jumped the gun on solyndra, not that the choice itself was a bad one.
Umm, what about the Keystone XL Pipeline... That single project is receiving between 1 and 1.8 BILLION dollars in subsidies.
For reference ALL renewable received $5.93 billion.. over a 15 year period...
Plus the real benefit that oil, coal and natural gas receive are liability protection from spills, poisoning etc plus eminent domain lad purchases for pipelines etc.
These issues are not represented in the typical accounting of subsidies and easily doubles the value.
I remember reading that is all benefits were removed from oil than the price of gas would be between 12-15 dollars a gallon!
All you are doing is proving the point that politicians, ALL politicians, need to stay out of it and not pick winners and losers.
Also not including the cost of health care associated with pollution.
=Smidge=
Successful enterprises depend on government intervention now because there is no longer any other option available due to the depth of current government intervention.
There were successful enterprises before government intervention on their behalf. Otherwise we'd still be living in caves.
Slashdot is geared towards the type of people who share "I F**king Love Science Posts," not engineers.
Your notion is completely ridiculous. After all, it's not like EPA has a SWAT team.
Oh wait, it does.
It's not the EPA that does that, it's usually local enforcement. And yes, it does happen, just not at the behest of the EPA.
Are you saying the raw cost of silicon isn't important? It's the single largest cost in the production of solar panels.
I would be fine with this permission except the fact that we subsidize the big oil companies. If we aren't going to subsidize green energy, then we should not be subsidizing any form of energy creation.
Don't forget about slave labor.
Everyone needs tax relief.
At least they call themselves "Liberals". We have plenty of parties that focus on social and environmental topics. There's no need for our 'Liberals' to be much concerned with these problems.
I could write an essay about what they've achieved in the last decades, about what I think was wrong, but I don't think that this is the right place.
can you tell me about any subsidies or tax loopholes that are unique to the oil industry? I've never heard of one. I have heard of things like accelerated depreciation on capital spending that all companies get to use, including solar power related companies.
I'm seriously wondering about this, because this kind of stupidity is said all the time by people with an agenda and I've never heard of a single piece of the federal tax code that favors oil companies uniquely (or even semi-uniquely).
Their heat comes from a wood stove. So they meet most of their energy needs with non-fossil sources. It's really not as hard as you think.
For a few individuals, sure. But can everyone sustainably do that? I am skeptical that there would be enough trees for that.
Whatever the Kochs want.
Id be fine with getting rid of any and all such subsidies, and considering dems had control of both houses and the executive from 2008-2010, and maintained both the senate and the executive for the last 3 years, its a little much to pin this on republicans.
But the idea that other energy sources would have trouble competing with solar right now is just nuts. Cost-wise, things dont look that good for solar-- depending on what measure you look at, its anywhere from 50% to 5000% more expensive than other technology like nuclear or natural gas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#US_Department_of_Energy_estimates
The utilities are doing just fine, and would be without subsidies; aside from not having to worry about mirror orientation, cloud cover, energy storage, and land leases, their fixed and operational costs tend to be lower, and their capacity factor is higher.
Slashdot is supposed to be a technology site, but sometimes an idea pops up that has no real-world merit and slashdotters become convinced that its the best thing since sliced bread, no matter what the facts and statistics are. Solar just isnt there yet: Get over it.
Unless we're talking about solar power.... Oops.
Best solution to your problem: Stop allowing politicians to pick winners and losers, period.
Every rooftop that doesn't have solar panels is a target for panels. In a single family home, not only do you generate electricity, the panels shade the structure and keep it cooler in the summer months.
I totally agree, and I am utterly lost as to how thats relevant to the discussion. If you're arguing that we should provide tax incentives for doing so, I would say "maybe, but why: if it makes financial sense, people will do it anyways". If youre arguing that the businesses themselves need government assistance, I would say "rubbish", because there are plenty of solar companies out there doing just fine.
Decides to whack me $5 per month to connect my solar array to the grid, I cut the grid off completely and buy a nice little energy storage unit.
but it's abundantly clear that the GOP is not seriously opposed to government intervention in energy markets.
This member of the GOP -- and all the others I know -- are seriously opposed to government intervention in energy markets.
If they were, they would be fighting against oil and ethanol subsidies
I fight against ethanol subsidies. And when I heard in the media that oil companies are subsidized, I went looking for oil subsidies, in order to fight them. But I didn't find any.
would propose winding down the national petroleum reserve (used to manipulate prices)
President Obama has released oil from the reserve to hold down prices, during a time when it would have been particularly politically damaging for oil prices to continue rising. But that was a misuse of the reserve. Its official name is the "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" and it's an invaluable enabling asset for the DoD, whose need for oil would skyrocket at the exact time supplies cannot be assured: during a major conflict.
and would never actively fight against particular forms of energy (as described in summary and TFA).
TFA and the summary are full of it, right from the very first sentence, "Clean energy technology has always been an easy punching bag for conservatives." Wrong. When a new power plant is built, conservatives want to use the energy source that will deliver the highest return on investment, because that in turn will cause the most economic growth and create the most jobs. Conservatives like me will be thrilled if and when the day arrives that solar plants deliver a higher return on investment than older energy sources.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Wait, how's that? You base this on broad stroke statements from the power companies?
"reduce the reliability of every appliance and electronics gadget in your home,"
Come on? From what I understand of solar electrical systems, they are run through either a UPS or battery bank to help smooth out any "spikes". Appliances may be better off under this system compared to the spikes that can occur when riding bareback with the utilities. The PCs also seem to not want to pay a "fair price" for energy created while at the same time trying to charge more for what they make...wtf?
What I read is the the PCs, the utilities are trying to hold onto an failing power/business model that is going through change. if more people can hook up and provide local power, thus reducing the demand on power companies then as a whole, we win. Their job in the future is to focus on managing the network that ties systems together and not so much on power generation.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
My very conservatice parents installed panels on their home in Ohio. And now it is my Father's favorite pet project to talk about. He can check the past and present performance of the individual cells within each panel from his computer and he loves to do so. When I was there last Christmas he was gleefully pointing out that the panels were still putting out some power even when there was four inches of snow on the ground.
I know somebody who thought the best thing he could do was save money. So he reroofed his own house.
It blew off.
Ooops.
Research is cheap. Most of the discretionary budget is cheap. The real money is in the 2/3's of the budget that is mandatory. And guess what will blow the doors off the budget in the coming years? Yup, the Blue Haired and the AARP.
Research at least creates job either in the near term or the far term. What the U.S. spends on research is pixie dust compared to the mandatory budget.
It was never about global warming why, solar is kicking nuclear ass in the free market!
There are many stupid ways we fiddle while Rome burns, but the pro/con solar energy thing is one of the stupidest. The GOP is supposed to be pro-business. But apparently only when the business is hydrocarbon-based. They're supposed to be pro-efficiency, but they deliberately set obstacles in place. They're only pro-energy if it comes from a Party-approved source.
There was never any reason that industry had to be measured by the effluents it produced. We just couldn't do any better at the time. It's one thing to be conservative. It's another to be obstinately ossified.
Oil came into its own via monopolies. After the government broke up the oil companies, they already had time to drive down their cost and build oil into the fabric of the U.S. economy.
Propelled by growing strain of global warming denial within their party, Republicans in Congress have proposed to slash funding for renewable energy programs in half this year, and mocked the idea of a green economy as “groovy” liberal propaganda.
..... The assumption has always been that, without heavy government subsidies, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power would never be able to compete with fossil fuels.
Actually its covered under the economist Bastiat's Broken Window Princicple. Essentially, the green economy was explained to create jobs and increase GDP. Since its actually just creating inefficient rebalancing of the economy its hurting the economy more than the most efficient distribution of labor.
Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets
True, that is the policy of libertarians and the reason libertarians believe in this is because the people most affected by inefficient and expensive renewable energy are the poor. Whenever the costs of implementing expensive energy are put onto the power companies the cost is deferred to the users, mandated or not, this affects the poor with higher energy costs more than any other group.
The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Once considered a boutique energy source, solar power has become a cost-competitive alternative for many consumers, costing an average $143 per megawatt-hour, down from $236 in the beginning of 2011.
Maybe math is hard but this is still more expensive than coal or natural gas (which market forces are decreasing the cost of sans government interference) and consumers are going to have to pay for the difference. And where does this money go? To Non-American solar array producers instead of jobs in natural gas or coal in the United States, further reducing employment and skilled labor jobs for the poor or lower middle class.
Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers.
Ok this is the statement that forced me to comment because it is so false and manipulative. The only way Public Utilities could curb solar companies is to ask them to compete equally in the market with other forms of energy. They are not moving to ban solar imports as this makes it sound, Republicans are simply trying to give consumers the lowest cost of basic energy. Consumers can decide for themselves if they want to purchase their own solar arrays for their homes. Additionally, its generally the rich who qualify for solar array subsidies on their homes and electric car credits at the expense of the middle class and the poor to fund rich people's energy savings.
And as more people turn to rooftop solar as a way to reduce energy costs—90,000 businesses and homeowners installed panels last year, up 46 percent from 2011—the issue is pitting pro-utilities Republicans against this fledgling movement of libertarian-minded activists who see independent power generation as an individual right. In other words, the fight over solar power is raging within the GOP itself."
Otherwise known as Republicans who are under the sway of Environmental lobbyists at the expense of the poor or Libertarians who want the free market to compete for the lowest cost energy for consumers. I agree a natural monopoly occurs with something like a utlity company and therefore some government regulation and oversight is neccesary. But the government oversight committees should be working in the best interest of their customers, the taxpayers, to provide the lowest cost energy to them. They are not supposed to be activists raising the cost of energy for the poor to further lobbyists and the rich's goals of providing cheap energy to the rich on the back of the poor.
Be careful of statements of subsidies to fossil fuel makers. Some of that is regular overseas tax credit that applies to all in order to avoid double taxation. Other is not paying tax on income diverted to sick and disabled miners. Others are tax breaks they get on making things less polluting, so pro-environmental.
And all those billions of dollars that go to keep the houses of low-income people heated? That's not counted as "welfare," but as an oil industry subsidy.
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Why are you stopping us from making clean energy from OUR LAND instead of supporting terrorists by using oil and corn ethanol?
Im doing no such thing; the question is whether the government needs to subsidize solar, which I see no reason for. If it makes financial or environmental sense to install panels on your roof, wonderful, do so; we had one on my house when I was growing up.
And why are you bringing corn ethanol into this, as if Ive somehow expressed support for it? Isnt that a stereotypically democrat issue, to push corn ethanol as a green alternative to petro?
to put it on a *level playing field* with the oil industry maybe?
to the TFA first: the war in the GOP isn't over 'solar power' it's over **which rich people pull their strings**...the GOP is a bought/sold a-moral quasi-anarchist rhetoric machine...they dont care about the *actual* policy b/c their policy is to *privatize everything in perpetuity*...so no...this 'war' in the GOP is over which rich dudes will dictate their policies to them.
oil oligarchs have been running their playbook for *centuries*...that's not an exaggeration...look at the history of all major oil companies and they are tied to Monarchies (usually Anglo-Saxon or Islamic)
electric/solar energy has been profitable and usable for 100 years...the first electric cars were made in the 1900s!!!
the US government gives ****HUGE TAX BREAKS**** to oil companies...
it's about time we let some competition in the ring...of course it would be better to just end oil company subsidies and tax breaks and guaranteed contracts...but that's not going to get any GOP'er re-elected
disclaimer: i'm a left-leaning libertarian, and I anticipate some respondents might retort: 'all politicians are sell-outs'....That concept is a false dichotomy...all *people* make comprimises...the democrats have systematically and philosophically made better policy choices and are a *functioning party*...not perfect, but saying they are just as bad as the GOP is trolling and will not get a response from me ;)
Thank you Dave Raggett
So far, I'm not able to see what these so called subsides are...unless you mean tax write offs, something which any smart company (even me as a company of 1) takes advantage of if they're at all fiscally capable or can hire a cpa.....to me, taking advantage of a tax write off isn't a subsidy.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Its disgusting how this topic goes from "fact vs fact" to "fossil vs non-fossil", and everyone ends up shoehorned into one category or the other. Im advocating Nuclear, which is definately "non-fossil", but im against subsidizing solar, because it makes zero financial or common sense.
Please dont assume (as so many posters have) that being against solar subsidies automatically means im pro-big oil, or pro-oil subsidies, or pro-corn ethanol, or anything else; I never said any of that.
Estimated cost of Chernobyl disaster: 200-500 billion $
Estimated cost of Fukushima disaster: 300-500 billion $
Number of nuclear power plants worldwide: 435
Average age : ca 30 years
Catastrophic nuclear accident rate pear year and reactor: 2 accidents / (435 reactors*30 years average age) = 0.00015
Cost of insurance against catashtrophic nuclear accident pear year: 400 billion $ * 0.00015 = 45 million $ per year.
Average insurance cost per kWh: 45 million $ / 12.2 billion kWh = 0.3 cents per kWh
I started this BOTE callculation to show how heavely subsidized the nuclear industry is. But the results is quite different. For only 0.3 cents per kWh teh nuclear industry could fully pay a reactor meltdown every 15 years.
"Win" what? "Lose" what? What the fuck are you talking about?
The startup costs for nuclear are largely high BECAUSE of government.
So it's possible that planned, carefully considered large scale investment in solar or some other form of renewable energy will pay off.
Investing in every possible alternative technology in the hope that one sticks sounds like a massive waste of money. Thats how its supposed to work: good technology takes off, the bad stuff fails and disappears. You get problems when you start screwing with that, like bad technology that is forever on government life support.
Really? The CO2 in the atmosphere is acidifying the oceans. You recall the oceans? The base of the food chain? Big bodies of water? Maybe you've heard of them.
So at what point will the CO2 magically disappear and our oceans revert to their normal acidity?
Now don't be picking winners and losers. If the human and animal pop. are losers, it's okay because government wasn't involved.
... growing strain of global warming denial ...
Denial? It's easy to deny when is hasn't f&^%&^ warmed in almost 17 years! What's CO2 supposed to do? Warm the planet! What has CO2 been doing for the last 17 years? Increasing! What has the planet not done in the last 17 years? Warmed!
The models are all wrong.
BTW, man only contributes about 5%, just 5%, of the world-wide CO2 released into the atmosphere. How much of a difference would it make, according to the models, if man's contribution was 0%? Almost nothing.
This is an interesting point I haven't heard before (granted, I don't look much into this stuff). I'm conservative and generally against most tax breaks/subsidies, but your post has me reconsidering. I think a big sticking point for me would be how the government decides who gets funding. Ideally, it should be merit-based (obviously), but I just don't trust anyone in Congress or the White House to do things properly in this area. If all we get are failures due to bad choices, then the market's going to China anyway, and we've lost a lot of money in the meantime.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Not only the Oil Companies, but Hedge Fund Managers, and Ag loans to multi-billion dollar businesses. Why do they need it? These things are really pork barrel Entitlements.
I'm getting the impression that the U.S. economy is pretty well spent.
To be fair, that's not what the topic of the whole thread is about. The GOP resistance to the solar indistry goes deeper than government subsidies. It goes way down into the trenches with local regulators and neighborhood associations doing the dirty work trying to bury would-be installers under mounds of bureaucratic paperwork and restrictions (not that I'm a big fan of deregulation, but some of the crap that is being pulled is clearly not for saftey purposes.)
Someone had to do it.
Consider the following statements:
I could care less about food poisoning - I refrigerate my ham
I could not care less about food poisoning - I keep my ham in the cupboard for weeks at a time before eating.
There is a difference.
You might want to look a little more into your assertion that oil came into its own without a ton of federal help. And in case you want to specifically focus on the real no kidding "birth" of the petroleum revolution that is fine. But make no mistake oil has and still does get a TON of federal help. I think a lot of people would be fine cutting alternative energy subsidies if only the petroleum ones were cut as well.
The problem as I understand it though is that the US petroleum industry "needs" all that help in order to compete with the rest of the world. I can't say for sure if that assessment of "need" is really valid, but non-US petroleum production and refining does get some non-trivial level of government support and so it would harm the US if they did not do the same in order to compete.
So given that, you have to ask the question, "how can a nascent industry like solar/wind/storage/any other renewable" have a chance to compete in a market where the entrenched incumbent has the advantage of both a lock on the market and government support?" Easy answer, it cannot.
As to picking winners and losers, that only applies where the government is specifically choosing a technology/company to the exclusion of others. I'm pretty sure that has only happened in one case; Ethanol and specifically corn-based Ethanol. Barring that, or in case we have been a little too specific, then the easy solution is you fund basic research,the kind that is high risk-long lead and not suitable for most commercial ventures, and you create pots of money that can be applied for (loans, grants, whatever) by anyone looking to demonstrate commercial-sized production.
Everything below here is more a response to other posts above yours, so if my comments don't apply to you, please don't take offense :)
Everyone likes to point to Solyndra and say, "SEE!!! That is what is wrong with renewable energy and picking winners and losers!!!" No, that is just what happens when you decide to spend money to find the right solution out of many. Some fail, some succeed, and some fail only to be picked up by smarter/better/better-timed people to finally succeed. And while Solyndra itself might also be an example of bad politics (I think the final post-mortem showed it actually wasn't), it is also proof that politics should be kept out of that sort of thing. The government should not feel the need to find a poster child for what amounts to good general policy of a country investing in its energy future.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Really.
isn't a decentralised private owned source of electricity where you don't have to pay taxes for and may even earn some cash the ideal for these "freedom loving" guys?
I thought libertarianism was about that... but it seems that they are pro-private as long as the "private" part is a huge megacorporation even if it means paying top dollar for a service... but if there is something that is private but small... then it's a filthy liberal manbearpig thing only made for sissies and treehuggers !!! Wit hthe only exception of guns, of course.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid. As a consumer, the other options you mention are things I can't do. Sure, solar is more expensive per KWH, but at least it's doable for lots of homeowners.
Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday. Thus, making the claim the Republicans (even with a minority in the Senate) can be held somewhat responsible for lack of progress in the area seems reasonable.
The Internet has no garbage collection
Okay, there's lots to not like about the oil industry, but how can drilling new wells conceivably not be a legitimate expense for a business that takes its product out of wells?
"tax relief" is not a "taxpayer-funded incentive". Only -if- other government decides to keep expenditures remain unchanged, would other taxpayers have to make up the difference.
Contrast to a "subsidy", which is by definition funding that's taxpayer-funded and transferred to the beneficiary.
The GOP allowed solar -production- to be kicked over to China
If the GOP had successfully blocked the subsidies to companies like Solyndra, you might have a point. And we'd sure be better off if the GOP had successfully blocked the subsidies to Solyndra. But the GOP failed to do that.
Fact is, low labor costs allow China to manufacture just about everything cheaply. We should be surprised if solar equipment were somehow an exception to that rule. It has nothing to do with what the GOP did or didn't fail to do.
Take heart in one thing: free trade is a great equalizer of all things (and unlike socialism, it equalizes by elevating lower classes, not by lowering upper classes). Over the long run, it even tends to equalize labor costs. Apple's recent decision to open a manufacturing plant in Arizona is an early manifestation of that truth.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
because corn ethanol is subsidized heavily and even mandated.
see, you do like government cheese, you just PRETEND you don't.
Now wipe the cheese crumbs off your whiskers, mouse.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
China is not a world leader in wind power technology. America still has a lot of untapped wind in the midwest. Giant wind turbines integrate with the electric grid better than zillions of roof top solar collectors. I think some in America have decided that wind is the renewable technology to use, solar be damned.
It's funny that the government shouldn't pick winners and losers in energy markets, and yet Conservatives are so willing to spend trillions invading and defending foreign countries under the guise of "protecting national interests". Shouldn't that be protecting fossil fuel interests? If fossil fuels are so volatile, why are Conservatives willing to use military force to stabilize those sources instead of letting them compete fairly against less volatile energy sources?
If renewables had gotten as much direct and indirect funding as fossil fuels got way back when this military interventionist agendas started decades ago, renewables would already be cost competitive, and fossil fuels prices would have stabilized due to economic competition instead of necessitating military intervention. We'd probably be much better off in terms of emissions too. Nothing good comes from proactive military intervention in the long-term.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
> write off the full cost of drilling new wells
Exactly. It is morally wrong that businesses can count the full cost of an expense as an expense on their taxes to offset profits. Just because, to give a specific example, it costs billions to drill new wells and buy equipment doesn't mean that those robber barons shouldn't have to pay taxes on the billions they spent. By letting them not pay taxes on expenses, we are encouraging them to not cut expenses. That's why things are so expensive. It's typical CONservative accounting.
The word "encourage" implies social engineering. No, I don't want to be manipulated by the government into doing anything. Instead, let's stop encouraging the burning of fossil fuels by internalizing their externalities into the price of electricity and gasoline. Then people would naturally seek out cleaner forms of energy without any government "encouragement" necessary.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Those getting fat off the status quo certainly realize they are shifting the costs associated with fossil fuels to everyone else in the world in a Tragedy of the Commons type of manner. This is exactly why the fossil fuel industry is so keen on denying global warming -- if people start to think that industry should bear the true costs of its products, rather than let that industry shift those costs to humanity for free (another form of privatizing profits and socializing losses) -- then there is going to be a hit on their bottom line when it becomes clear that fossil fuels are not in fact cheaper than other sources of power when all costs are factored in. To keep their position, the fossil fuel industry must pretend there are no consequences to pollution, and convince as many people of that as possible.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Err, yes, nice.
But Angela Merkel doesn't seem to think the same.
Take it this way mate: It's either you start thinking on implementing an efficient green economy or you will have to learn German and Chinese ;)
This easy.
Big Oil? Well, our local Shell and BP are big players in the renewable game too. And recall that Germany is still Germany.
Or thinking better about it... I think I will support you teabaggers: At the end of the day it's cash for us ;) We just need to be quicker than the Chinese.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Yes, a healthy portion of the subsidies could be considered tax breaks and write-offs. Part of the argument is that these tax breaks should not be in place for such a profitable industry in the first place. Our dear friend Wikipedia distills a few research reports that indicate a large percentage of subsidies also went towards credits for "non-conventional fuel generation" which I expect is mostly ehtanol and biodiesel, as well as direct compensation for exploration costs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
Too bad that nuclear fails on the biggest requirement of all, price.
So we should let Iran and Israel both have nukes and let them duke it out in the Middle East? Why not? We're pretty much energy independent now.
The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid. As a consumer, the other options you mention are things I can't do. Sure, solar is more expensive per KWH, but at least it's doable for lots of homeowners.
Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday. Thus, making the claim the Republicans (even with a minority in the Senate) can be held somewhat responsible for lack of progress in the area seems reasonable.
They still have veto power on legislation, just not low-level court appointments.
And the more China becomes dependent on solar power, the more demand there will be for clear skies and no desert sandstorms. So the manufacturing that creates all that pollution will have to go elsewhere.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Didnt Elon Musk help found a solar firm (solarcity) about thats going strong, apparently with no government help
No.
Everyone who buys from SolarCity gets a government subsidy to help with their purchase. There are federal subsidies, and local subsidies. Most solar companies will help you navigate the subsidies for free, because doing so is such a huge boost to their sales.
Before the solar subsidies, the market for solar panels was very limited. It was largely tToys, novelties, road signs, emergency radios, and 3rd-world countries. The technology has helped open up the field, but not enough that SolarCity could survive without them.
"Solar gets cheaper and cheaper every year, regardless of government funding." I don't think regardless means what you think it means. ;)
The same way Velcro got cheaper regardless of government funding? Because Velcro always existed in mass on the market.
Or how vaccines get cheaper regardless of government funding? Everyone knows the smart money waits until you really really really need something before you pay a research lab to invent the thing you actually needed yesterday.>/p>
Thank goodness for those hippie scientists getting tax dollars, eventually becoming our very professional NREL, so that you (Joe Taxpayer) can install panels on your ranch style home for under $3/W today.
1 Dachshund + 1 Dachshunds = A Paradox.
Not if your solar panels are not based on silicon which was what Solyndra was trying to do with its panels.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I can show a good counterexample from 1602, and before that most enterprises were either small affairs or part of a city/state so I'm not sure where this idea of free enterprise without the intervention of the state comes from, it's a myth.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It'll go to Africa next.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Your understanding of electric grid is nonexistent however. Most of solar connection allow for feeding excess energy back into the grid. Most of the grids across the globe are not designed for this sort of action in large amounts. Instead they are designed for few large producers feeding power, sent through high voltage DC lines, transformed to AC 110/220/whatever you get in your region at your local transformer station. When solar was a curiosity, transformer stations and grid in entirety could handle it. On a large scale however, you'll need to build up a far more complex grid with complex logic on transformer station level - one of the main reasons why German energiewiende project is so damn costly. To get wind and solar to be functional on large scale, they need to effectively rebuild much of their grid to cope with inherent instability caused by it.
This is the same problem. The more small power generators that cause production spikes into the grind there are, the more unstable the grid becomes during those switching moments. The UPS you're talking about is effectively designed to smooth out the spike load on the appliances in the household. The grid however is about large scale spikes from solar producing/not producing, as entire area worth of solar and wing tends to work in sync. This causes very spikey energy production behavior, requiring complex grid logic and solid amount of hot reserve power to prevent brownouts and in worst case grid collapses if it hits large enough area at once.
This is a very real problem, and one that at least germans are working very aggressively on right now. And it's very costly one to address properly, as it requires a significant rework of entire grid once certain threshold is crossed.
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
You have got to be kidding me.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Is one way the utilities will accept this.
Get up!
I'm a "for everything" plan. Not picking winners and losers but rather, providing the means to having cheap plentiful Energy, so that we can build and make things (requires energy) and move it to where it is needed, quickly. Efficiency comes when things are scarce OR when there is much competition.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Wow. I love your link... thanks for showing that the fossil fuel industry does not get a single subsidy. Seriously. Everything listed from pages 6 through 13 is a tax break.
And let's look at the things this wonderful environmentalist think tank listed as "Grants":
1) LIHEAP ($6,358): The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Government funding to keep poor people warm.
2) Strategic Petroleum Reserve ($6,183) : This is the Federal government keeping oil around in case of an emergency.
3) Black Lung Disability Trust Fund ($1,035) : Federal money to pay benefits to sick miners.
4) Highway Trust Fund ($500) : The Highway Trust Fund supports highway, road, and other transportation projects throughout the country. It is funded largely by the Transportation Fuel Excise Tax on road fuels.
5) Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve ($50): similar to the SPR in #2 above, but concentrated in the Northeast where home heating oil is a common fuel.
6) Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves ($28) : "As the payments do not benefit a fuel source, but rather were used to settle a dispute, they do not constitute a subsidy to fossil fuels."
Calling any of these a subsidy if a sad joke. In short, there is NO SUBDSIDY OF FOSSIL FUELS by the US Government.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
+1 this. Net metering is in the noise right now, widespread adoption will really wreak havoc on the current grid organization. Folks need to read up on all this, maybe even dig out their old basic electricity texts. Oh, schools don't really teach that...
Besides Solyndra, the renewable energy companies that got DOE backed loans have done very well.
Where does 5000% come from? I can see in the linked figures how 50% figures in.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
yes. offshore drilling rights, to name an obvious one.
All this idealized free market reverence is misplaced. Even the free-est markets are not free.
Every time there is a lot of money at stake and there are some extra-large entities involved (very large corporations and governments come to mind, but I'm sure you can think of others) those large entities try to push the system by manipulating the meta-market so the rules work in their interest. The more money or power the entity has the more it is able to game the system in its favor. When government is working well it is gaming the system based on the interest of its constituents (the people, the long view, individual freedom, fairness) but the other big entities can also influence the government in many ways to game the system to their liking.
Corporations today are almost completely beholden to stockholders and a quarterly report based view of the world. Modern democracy-based governments are designed to take their directions from the people, but none is perfect.
Every time the rules change, either because of disruptive technology, scarcities, changes in government, or whatever, someone is going to be on the losing end of it. The big entities will fight any change that makes them the loser. If it is a change that can't be controlled then they will try to change the rules so they can't lose.
There is some ebb and flow here. The big actors don't always know what the best thing for them will be, but they will be out there pushing things around in a direction that someone thinks is in their favor. There will be bizarre structures left in place by strange interactions between some big actors and some (perhaps different) big actors will fight to keep that bizarre structure in place and it can get pretty Byzantine.
This is the nature of the world. Economics and politics are always intertwined. Whether it's the government or a giant corporation someone is picking winners and losers and influencing the "market" in ways contrary to what a "free" market might be.
Anyway I hope there are some big actors that can take the long view and try to make things generally safer, and more stable while also being aware it is a 900 pound gorilla. Promoting alternatives to fossil fuels seems like a good idea.
Its not a zero-sum game, ya know. China "winning" comes mostly at the cost of their rampant ecological disaster and corrupt mid-level government. They push solar because the air is literally toxic.
Please keep in mind that same statement could verey well be made about America in the near future. So, will we be wise enough to learn from their mistakes or will we foolishly repeat them? I'm hoping for the former while fully expecting the latter.
Err, yes, nice.
But Angela Merkel doesn't seem to think the same.
Take it this way mate: It's either you start thinking on implementing an efficient green economy or you will have to learn German and Chinese ;)
This easy.
Big Oil? Well, our local Shell and BP are big players in the renewable game too. And recall that Germany is still Germany.
Or thinking better about it... I think I will support you teabaggers: At the end of the day it's cash for us ;) We just need to be quicker than the Chinese.
I have no idea why you consider it a foregone conclusion that the United States will be forced into upending its energy economy to support solar.
But lets take your hypothesis that Germany and the Chinese force every other irrelevant country into solar energy, since you stated the Chinese and Germany are big solar players and you had no initial consideration that other renewable energies exist.That means the United States is the only country left demanding, and using cheap fossil fuels. That's great news for the U.S. because lowered demand for fossil fuels will reduce the cost and further increase the United States GDP relative to all the other countries forced to use less efficient solar. Re-purposing Malthus' theory that our increased GDP now will grow our economy and allow us to more easily research other renewables should we ever be forced to need them in the future. This will give us an additional edge compared to the stagnant economies forced into less efficient energy.
Are you calling for the ending of the oil subsidies then? That certainly helps make fossil fuels cheaper doesn't it?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Because some believe everyone has the right to spend their resources the way they want, even inefficiently (I disagree with this viewpoint).
The way you fix this, of course, are market incentives. You raise the gas tax to promote fuel efficient vehicles. You raise the cost of fossil fuel produced electricity to promote renewable energy installations.
Rule 1 of economics: Incentives Matter
Those economic benefits appear to be simply taking money from some, and giving it to others - and then having the money just disappear from the economy (when those who received go out of business). There's not much economic benefit visible right now...
This statement would carry a lot more weight if you cited anything resembling a study, statistic or fact
You mean like 'I live near a nuclear plant that I don't like, so nuclear is bad?'
Ryan Carlyle has all the relevant facts regarding solar and nuclear in the post I linked - such as the cost per kilowatt-hour people are paying in Germany, the (somewhat better) cost per kilowatt hour you could get for solar power elsewhere, and the fact that people are being driven from their homes in Germany because of energiwende. You might also check out Daniel Yergin's book, 'The Quest,' as it is a good summary of the energy sector's history and the potential for growth in each component.
There are a lot of aging, crappy nuclear plants because politicians chicken out the minute people like you embrace FUD. Except for France, where by some minor miracle in the 1980s they did not; and now France is one of the top exporters of electricity in the world and electricity is one of France's top exports in any category. France and Denmark's nuke plants are where Germany goes to buy its electricity at night.
I appreciate that pretending to be interested in statistics and studies is very fashionable. I don't own any stock in oil companies and where I live, solar is not a bad idea - for rich folks. But the math on this one isn't even close. The portion of residential electric bills that the German government subsidies is greater than the entire wholesale cost of electricity produced from other sources. It isn't just some temporary growing pains: the German energy sector is a disaster, and it is a disaster because politicians figured out how to embrace and encourage pseudo-scientific minds that think reading the title of a study counts as research. There is not a single country in the world that successfully and economically relies on solar power as a major source of power, and there will not be within our lifetimes. The sun just ain't hot enough for long enough.
It is really funny to watch all these idiotic liberals everywhere have their heads explode when Republicans refuse to support solar power mandates or corporate welfare for "green" companies, and then have them support individual freedom to buy (or refuse to buy) solar panels to install on their own property.
It's obvious, straightforward, and right. But liberals don't understand the concept of freedom, only of telling people what to do. They ask "if Republicans support solar power, why don't they mandate it. If they support fossil fuel power, why would they allow solar?"
Simple, really.
It's called freedom. That's the thing that liberals never understand.
Everyone, including the OP, mentions Solyndra as this big failure of the solar industry, but nobody discusses why it failed. Their business model was based on selling non-silicon based panels at a time when the price of silicon panels was skyrocketing. Then, as you mention, the Chinese government hands billions of dollars to their silicon based solar panel manufacturers, and their prices subsequently plummeted.
If the US and the EU decide to leave their renewable energy sector to the whims of the free market, while allowing China to subsidizes the hell out of it- we might as well just hand the entire industry over to them.
A better approach is to NOT give money to companies, but use tariffs to make the price of Chinese-sourced panels reflect their actual, unsubsidized costs. That's what tariffs are for. This approach Offers 3 benefits:
1. China's cheap panels are no longer cheap - their Governmental payouts to buy the market are eliminated.
2. The Federal Government actually gets a few dollars via the original funding method (tariffs).
3. The "best man wins" concept of the Free Market can still work since companies must compete not to see who is handed a pile of cash from DC, but on quality and pricing of product relative to other players.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Here in Georgia, Georgia Power has been very hostile to anything but coal, nuclear and as reluctantly been replacing coal plants in non-attainment zones (areas that violate the clear air act) with gas powered plants. They have been quoted as saying the sun doesn't shine enough in Georgia or that the wind doesn't blow hard enough off the eastern coast line in the Atlantic ocean. That said, what is most amazing is that Georgia Power it attempting to get a rule passed that states they are the sole provider for all sun derived power for the state of Georgia. Yes, that is correct. If you want to buy solar power from a 3rd party you can not do so in Georgia because only Georgia Power can provide your company solar power. You can put the panels up yourself but you can't enter into an agreement with a 3rd party to install and maintain the panels for you as a monthly business expense. Apparently in Georgia, Georgia Power owns the sun.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2013/10/21/2756402/georgia-public-service-commission.html
http://gareport.com/blog/2013/03/27/hb-657-georgias-solar-monopoly-bill/
http://www.gasolarutilities.com/index.php/news/130-solar-becomes-battleground-for-georgia-electricity-regulation
And it is not veto power either. It is filibuster power which can prevent legislation from advancing but is often defeated by simply negotiating things. This stops one party in yhe majority from ignoring the other party entirely.
and I don't want my tax dollars subsidizing your gasoline!
No, you do not need tax relief when your profits are many many billions of dollars. The corporation would not be that profitable with out relying on the publicly provided infrastructure, they can certainly pay their fair share of it.
Hell, as a single middle class person I believe a third of my paycheck goes to one government entity or another, and that is before I even see the money. You don't hear me begging for tax relief. I rely on the publicly provided infrastructure I am 100% ok with paying my fair share. As far as I am concerened they should be paying a third of those profits in taxes, JUST LIKE ME.
Remember ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, and number one on that list is to pay your fair share.
You seem to be floating the proposition that the government must be the investor. Private industry could make the investment, but why not? You could say private investors are short sighted and aren't patient enough to wait for returns, but the reality is probably that the returns aren't likely to be worth the future cost of money. Keep in mind why many of the up-and coming solar power enterprises failed. It was because of low-cost imports made on-shore enterprises unprofitable (even in the long term their businesses appeared structurally untenable which is why they weren't able to attract private capital and had to use govt backed loan guarentees).***
So what do we do? Currently, in effect, we seem to be subsidizing the overseas industry by giving tax credits for installation and forcing utilities to buy excess power from roof-top installations at non-commericial rates to help make installation of these overseas panels make economic sense. By giving govt guaranteed loans to on-shore companies to attempt to compete, are we attempting to break the laws of economics? Should we continue to subsidize the overseas solar industry or pull back? Or perhaps should wait until the economics gets sorted out before we pour more money into the current situation.
***In contrast, the transcontinental railroad was able to attract all sorts of private capital in addition to the US-backed revenue bonds issued to fund it because the business folks and investors saw the light at the end of the line (new markets, telegraphand the government didn't have to worry about stuff like the bond money going to overseas iron suppliers (although there were a significant number of imported chinese and irish labor used).
It is also not used to generate power by the utility company. It is only mandated because it replaced the chemical used to oxygenate fuel in order to meet epa regulations in gas engines. The previous chemical was being found in ground water and the health risks weren't completely known so ethanol replaced it.
It really is hard to connect ethanol to solar lime that unless we ignore important facts in order to make points.
The [HISTORICAL] Hull Effect Technology accidentally discovered in the year 2009... HISTORICALLY ANTIQUES solar panel harvesting and managing electricity !
This technology breakthrough...ANTIQUES ALL PATENTS ISSUED since the year 1900 ! This is a TRUE STORY...and the US PATENT OFFICER refused...
to GRANT the FIRST patent application approval. The same GAME of non-sense by attornies... they did to TESLA ! It is posted on the internet !
This was totally accomplished without any Special Government Project Funding Monies !
I am Robert W Hull...the inventor of The New Era For Humanity...FFOTHET-TNBHFH...Have A Nice Day!
But... that would be "raising taxes"! And that is a sin against the lord our god, Grover Norquist.
Yup, and the libertarian wing wants to.
I take it "fair share" means whatever you want it to mean, but usually it's "as much as possible" vs. "as little as necessary". If so, think about why that is.
You cite two inventions, implying that they (and all the other inventions) would never have come to pass except for government funding. Does government funding power Moore's law? Have computers, disk drives, displays, and memory been getting cheaper per unit capability for the past 50 years solely because of government funding? Why are you dissing all of the private individual inventors who ever filed a patent?
Consider the irresistible march downward of solar cell prices:
http://blog.greenwizard.com/wp/2011/11/rising-solars-falling-prices/
A major part of this is the decreasing cost of silicon, and of using less expensive non-crystalline silicon to make cells.
Sorry, but this tidal wave has very little to do with governments. They simply are not a player in the course of history of solar power when viewed at the decade and century-scale.
Honestly, we should not wait for the US to figure it out. Large lobby organisations and stupid backward politicians in conjunction with a not so well-informed (guess why) will hinder any green economy and renewable energy program. Instead the EU should just develop the guts to go renewable in the next 30 years. The only problem, we have to sack all the lobbyists ... But still presently countries like Germany are ahead of the US. We will see if this is still true in 4 years.
Kind of -- tax breaks for specific industries and activities, and subsidies are the same, though at least the tax break has them using their own money, rather then someone else's.
Of course, it really comes off the top, AKA borrowing, so you are robbing future generations to buy votes today.
Let's have a balanced budget amendment and let the power-hungry fuckers in Congress do their job -- fight out spending there. We are long past the point of borrowing to invest (infrastructure, or war) both of which ostensibly benefit future generations so it is moral to borrow from them. But the bulk is wealth transfer payments to past generations who did not save enough.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That's right. Conservatives don't have some personal grudge against silicon. The big difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans tend to make policy decisions based on calculations while democrats base theirs on wishes. Democrats say "wouldn't it be great if ...". Republicans say "yeah that'd be great but here in reality the numbers just don't work."
See for example my own Slashdot posts regarding solar. I, a conservative, have pointed out that once you factor in the costs of batteries, etc., solar just doesn't make sense. Now that the cost for panels is half of what it was, solar makes more sense in more situations. Lead batteries that last three years before becoming expensive toxic waste are still a problem, so solar is still a long way from being good as the primary energy source for most people, but it now makes sense for some people.
T
The other thing conservatives have pointed out is this recurring pattern:
" Green" company is failing, unable to compete.
Green company donates $1 million to Obama.
Obama gives $100 million of OUR money to Green Inc.
Executives of Green take $20 million bonuses.
Green shuts down.
That's bribery and graft. Graft with a green label on it is still graft and it's unacceptable. It just so happens that this administration called their graft system "Clean Energy and Recovery".
sounds like a genuine question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States
OECD summary: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/USA.pdf
OECD page for all countries with links to data: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/
The biggest "subsidy" to the oil industry imo is the amount spent protecting oil and gas pipe lines and shipping lanes.
BM3
That system works when the minority party has any honest interest in negotiating. The present Republican party typically acts in ideological lockstep with a stance of "negotiating means doing EVERYTHING EXACTLY OUR WAY NO COMPROMISE." The filibusters aren't over negotiating small adjustments on middle ground to make things work better, but demanding ridiculously partisan extreme overhauls.
Fair share = as much as needed for the proper functioning of society. We can debate what is needed for society but for pretty much any answer we can agree on they do not pay their fair share.
And hence the problem with entitlements. Even if you do nothing to the budget for entitlrments, they expand. If you try to address them, you are vilified and stopped before a complete thought makes it out. So all that is left to realistally cut is discretionary and research (stem) where the most economic benifit can be had.
"for pretty much any answer we can agree"
No, we cannot.
Of course it is not all about safety. If i paid a premium for my house because of an athstetic standard in place, i expect that standard to remain in place. Go build your dream home then tell me you will not fight the smokestack factory someone wants to put in next door or the car lot or the liqor store or whatever else. Solar panels are no different in this respect as it changes the natural views just as artificially. This also isn't a republican thing. It isa people thing just like the kennedy's putting a stop to the off shore wind farms that would spoil their views.. not in my back yard is not unique to any party.
3000 telecommunication companies were destroyed by the USA government to provide a monopoly to AT&T.
The free market invented the telegraph, the phone, the radio, the TV. The Internet did not absolutely need TCP/IP, other protocols would come on line, telecommunications with computers is a logical step to other forms of communications and was inevitable.
You like to point at some specific government programs that ended up being useful but how much money and other resources is wasted by government on things that never work out and only reduce total economic viability?
Well, this is no longer very important, at least not in the USA. Chinese just decided they will no longer buy USA Treasuries and no American media reports on this. Guess what, you can't avoid the reality even if you don't want to acknowledge it.
You can't handle the truth.
The bias in this article is so strong, it's actually generating it's own gravity well.
One also has to remember that a lot of this funding was the result of the govt buying products to satisfy its computer networking needs at a time. They weren't just shoveling cash out to companies and giving people tax credits to buy a computer they could connect to an ISP. Is the government a buyer of these technologies to reduce its electrical costs, make its buildings more redundant, make military deployments more flexible, etc? Those aren't bad because they actually solve a problem and push the envelope for everyone else.
you mean like coal, gas and oil pay their own way? They get hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies every year.
Oil was being drilled for 50 years before automobiles and Spindletop made it mainstream, all without government funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindletop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well
http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/pennsylvania/pennsylvania.html
Legitimate cost? Sure. But why do they get to write off the cost when they already make money hand over fist?
If you're going to say "any other business gets the same benefit" then I'll preempt that by asking: Why that should matter? Maybe, just maybe, a business shouldn't get to write off expenses if it's fully capable of affording it and still making billions of dollars in pure profit. All that does is subsidize shareholder's dividends payments and CEO's avarice.
=Smidge=
The big difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans tend to make policy decisions based on calculations while democrats base theirs on wishes.
Oh my god my sides!
That's the idea of tariffs. Unfortunately, China will retaliate with tariffs on US goods regardless of the justification.
The program that Solyndra was funded under is still under the budgeted failure rate last I heard. There were a bunch of other investments under that program that are working just fine. Not all investments work out and practically nobody foresaw the precipitous decline in solar cell prices that caused Solyndra's demise. The reason it became a big deal is the GOP saw it as a way to make political hay against the Obama administration. If it had happened under a Republican President you never would have heard of it.
Extreme overhauls are not a bad thing. Thr aca will need one and it can be said that it should have had it before it was originally passed.
This is especially true when the senate is do closely divided that a single party cannot end a filibuster. At 60 votes, that would mean roughly 30 states nerded to be in line with the legislation. With 51 votes, only half yhe country plus half of one more state can override the rest. The burden is decreased to the point litterrally half the country or more could be in disagreement with the legislation or significant portions of it entirely.
The senate cannot be gerymandered. This is the last sanity check before it gets sent to the adiminstration to become law.
If you cant bother to read my post (like the part where I dont actually like the corn ethanol subsidies), you shouldnt expect the discussion to continue.
See that is because you don't believe in society, or its benefits. I hope you remember that on your drive home. Either way talking to you is pointless, you refuse to see anything beyond your ideology. I will ignore any further messages, but you have a great day enjoying the benefits of society whilst you complain about paying for them.
link: http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/no-more-free-sun-arizona-if-solar-power-fee-approved.html
AZ is, however, a conservative stronghold.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I guess it should also be pointed out that income tax subsidies on energy-efficient improvements start out looking like a win for Democrats, until they realize that poor and lower-middle-class folks can't afford to pay the up-front costs for energy efficient automobiles, air conditioning units, windows, doors, solar panels, etc.
Those subsidies primarily benefit the wealthy and put more tax burden on the poor, so then Democrats want to reduce the subsidies (which, of course, reduces the incentive to go green).
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid.
And I dont oppose that, and I dont see why the government even needs to be involved with that; it seems to me to be a smart move to install solar panels from the consumer point of view, and it makes solar companies money, so Im not exactly seeing why the government needs to pick winners in this area.
Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday.
This is baloney. For one, democrats had the house, the senate, and the executive from 2008 to 2010. For another, you could argue that any time the house and senate are held by different parties, each holds "effective veto power", but only if you assume one particular party has a particular right to execute its own agenda.
Its irrelevant though, because if democrats really wanted to make a change regarding subsidies, they had 2 whole years of free reign to do so; they did not, and the attempt to hide behind the following few years (where republicans STILL couldnt do very much, given senate opposition and Obama's veto power) is a little lame.
It also staggers imagination that you seem to be implicitly supporting the "nuclear option", which was historically opposed by both parties, has never been invoked, and was opposed by Obama as recently as 2005 because of how utterly insane it is to have a vote that its time to ignore the voting rules. Have fun with that in 4 years, I guess; you may want to listen to Carl Levin's remarks on why it was a stupid idea that everyone now has to live with.
One issue I rarely see talked about is the safety of solar power. Large plants somewhat removed from residential areas will do less damage if they have a fire than the solar units on the homes themselves. There have been instances where fire crews literally had to watch buildings burn because the roof was completely covered in solar panels and electrified.
Just google "fire fighters watch building burn solar panels" and you'll see a ton of articles from different cities fire departments wondering how to deal with this.
So what happens when we scale up nuclear power generation to chase this exponential growth? You've conveniently omitted the problem of disposing with nuclear waste. Your typical traditional nuclear power plant generates 20 metric tons of used fuel each year. In 40 years, we've generated about 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste which is going to remain hazardous for thousands of years. Should we send it to Mongolia or let the Mafia dump it in the ocean? I am glad that you will volunteer to let us put it in your region, wherever that may be. I don't want it.
Oh, are you talking about thorium reactors? I think a lot of your arguments against renewables (too expensive, too much research required, not feasible, blah blah blah) would also apply to this technology. Doubt my opinion? Perhaps you'd like to refer to the report from the Union of Atomic Scientists entitled "Thorium: Not a near-term commercial nuclear fuel." You have to admit that at this point commercially viable thorium-generated power is vapor ware. Furthermore, it also generates nasty waste, although less nasty than traditional nuclear. Personally, I'd like to see such research money spent on advanced energy storage and efficiency technology instead.
There are a lot of aging, crappy nuclear plants because politicians chicken out the minute people like you embrace FUD
How do you figure? The way I see it is that there are a lot of crappy nuclear plants out there because our ancestors were short-sighted enough to build them. And now the task of cleaning up the mess, which was never factored into the cost of the electricity they generated, is left to us. I'm happy France is exporting something besides their delicious wine and cheese and noxious sentimentality, but I expect their waste will end up somewhere that is not France.
And, well, there is the usual FUD which "people like me" embrace. It's a self-evident fact that nuclear power has associated risks and that history has shown that these risks occasionally result in catastrophe. I'm no actuary so I can't put odds to it, but there are certain similarities between SoCal and Fukushima: old coastal powerplant with creaky design, on a fault line, etc. I'd rather pay a little extra for my energy so I don't have to die of radiation sickness or see my property rendered worthless by a disaster that could have been easily averted.
But the math on this one isn't even close...The sun just ain't hot enough for long enough.
What math are you referring to (your article is TL;DR)? Do you mean the math that shows a rapid decline in the cost of PV systems and a dramatic increase in installations of 60% globally? Or the The math Steve Chu used to predict that renewable energy will be cost-competitive within 10 years? As for the second statement, the current insolation of the earth at the ground is about 7 times total power consumption -- to say nothing of wind or tidal power.
You no doubt think I'm a knee-jerk partisan relying on wishful thinking and flimsy data. I certainly think you're a knee jerk partisan (and pessimist) relying on wishful thinking and flimsy data. I personally would support spending on research on thorium reactors. I'd much prefer fusion (not likely very soon and already pretty well funded) and would pref
"See that is because you don't believe in society"
Is that like believing in a flat earth? Of course I believe society exists. Your mistake is identifying the concept with the moral righteousness of ever-greater financing of its government.
we really should be doing more XPrizes, 10 million to whomever can get 50c/watt panels
10 million to whomever can get a 1MW/Hour storage battery
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
If it generates electricity, China is pushing it -- solar, wind, coal, NG, giant hydro dams, nuclear... They're trying to lift hundreds of millions of people up to some sort of modern, at least lower middle class lifestyle in a remarkably short period of time. And understand that to do that will require prodigious additional generating capacity.
And? They already are attacking US-manufactured goods by subsidizing production of their own domestic production. Tariff or subsidy, it has the same impact on US-built products: it makes them effectively too expensive in the market.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
What they did with Solyndra? You mean bankruptcy? Adoption will come when the price drops. That probably means they will come from China. Throwing free money at bad corporations will not magically shift production from China to the US.
I must be having a dull day. How are drilling rights a subsidy?
You have to pay for an exploration permit, spend massive amounts of money looking for oil, then spend billions more in drilling and exploitation. Quite a lot of that cost is in direct payments to governments at all levels for licensing, permits, impact assessments, regulatory compliance and now more than ever, public relations.
I just have a picture of old Wishbone in '49 climbing down off his mule and staking his claim. As he starts piling wash gravel, exercising his digging rights, Nelson Muntz walks past pointing "Ha Ha, subisidised bastard!"
That system works when the minority party has any honest interest in negotiating
Rhetoric like this may make you feel justified in tearing down the checks and balances built into our democracy, but lets be clear you arent justified. Your logic appears to be "Id like to compromise, but the other side is so darn pigheaded". Problem is, EVERYONE says that when they dont want to compromise; this is very similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect. IM not being argumentative, YOURE being argumentative!
he present Republican party typically acts in ideological lockstep with a stance of "negotiating means doing EVERYTHING EXACTLY OUR WAY NO COMPROMISE."
Both sides do this. The easy answer, as Carl Levin (D) pointed out, is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to call the bluff of the filibusterers: Make them actually get up and filibuster, and when they falter, call the vote, and pass the measure.
Obama said it pretty clearly in 2005....
As did Biden, calling it a power grab by republicans to minimize the voice of dissent.
As did Reid in 2008, indicating that he believed it would "ruin our country", and he would never support it
In case you think the situation is different now and that no longer applies, Id note that there were 3 democrats who voted against it, and basically gave the same reasons stated above. The difference is that they had the integrity to back their words up with action when the tables were turned. You want bi-partisanship, here it is: if Carl Levin were in my state, and were pro-life, I would consider voting for him simply because he showed integrity in this matter, unlike basically every other democrat who was in office in 2005 and objected when republicans attempted the same maneuver. And for the record, I say the same for those republicans who favored the nuclear option in 2005 and now find themselves on the wrong side of the fence: it displays an utter lack of integrity.
Every once and a while it is good to do a sanity check and see whether you are simply falling into a default defensive position rather than rationally evaluating whether "your party's" position is defensible. I recognize that there are probably a good number of democrats who, if aware of the nature and consequences of this vote, would oppose it. I would hope that it would be the majority of them, and that corrective action would be taken-- though at this point its pretty much too late.
You like to point at some specific government programs that ended up being useful but how much money and other resources is wasted by government on things that never work out and only reduce total economic viability?
I dunno, why don't you tell me? Let's go one for one! You name a specific government program and describe how it "reduced total economic viability" and for every one you come up with I'll come up with one that turned out to be a really good idea in the long run.
=Smidge=
There are an infinite amount of ways of not stabbing me to death. There are only several alternatives to fossil fuels. It has as much to do with global warming as an alibi has to do with murder. It only becomes important once an investigation is started.
Thats totally my mistake-- I was aiming for "between 0.5 more and 10x as much" and ended up screwing the numbers up.
It is possible i was multiplying by 4, because of the 4x difference in capacity factor-- but that too would have been a mistake, as (I believe) that number would probably be figured into the costs listed in the graph.
Should be factors of 1.5x, and 10x, or "between 50% more and 900% more" -- the 10x number coming from the Max Levelized Cost of Energy for Solar PV (590) compared to "Coal, pulverized, unscrubbed" (40, though admittedly not sounding like a good choice of fuel) or "Natural Gas Combined Cycle" (70, almost 1/9th). These came from the OpenEl database (2 charts down from where the link lands you). I was basically attempting to look at average case (50% seemed close) and worst case (10x).
They should stop subsidizing things like coal, oil and gas and "let the market decide the most cost-effective options for electricity generation". Oh and that counts for any other energy sources subsidized by the government including Corn Ethanol.
Stop subsidizing energy production in any form, remove any blocks, red tap or other things that result in anything other than a level playing field and let the chips fall where they may.
If that results in higher electricity prices, introduce a direct subsidy on electricity that is totally unrelated to the method of generation.
Do people in the desert really use a dryer? You can just hang your clothes out for an hour and everything will be bone dry.
I live in Toronto, Canada, and I'm still hanging still stuff outside on the days when it's (somewhat) sunny and not below freezing.
I grew up in the desert and had the job of hanging up clothes from the washing machine. Often, especially if there is a breeze, laundry will be dry by the time you are finished hanging it up.
The problem is that few people like to work out in the sun when it's 40 and often even 45 out. Convenience almost always beats efficiency. As soon as I moved out, my parents bought a dryer and removed their clothes line.
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
Seriously?
A quick Google tells me that the oil industry has been receiving subsidies since essentially day one, by being allowed to write off the full cost of drilling new wells. Even to this day the oil industry in the US gets $4 billion per year in subsidies one way or another. =Smidge=
Don't forget all the money spent to build and maintain roads for cars (most of which use and burn petroleum products)!
And every widget manufacturer gets to write off the cost of making widgets. In fact all businesses generally get to write off the costs of doing business .
Why is this a subsidy for an income tax?
It wasn't just that private people became interested after investment in the infrastructure. Government institutions like many public universities had a major part in making use of that infrastructure in a way that was interesting to private people.
Big companies aren't much interested in risky bets when they have a stable business, and little generally companies don't have the resources unless they have some other source of money. Big bets need to be made sometimes for big success, but the flip side is also sometimes they don't pay off. Losing bets once in a while isn't a failure, it's just the cost of progress.
This is not the link to hard numbers I was expecting.
... the Telco and Cable companies bringing you this commercial Internet, this bastion of free enterprise you are talking about, is about as heavily subsidized as an industry can get?
The public Internet wasn't developed by the Telco and Cable companies. It was developed by garage shops that started as small ISPs or equipment companies. Telcos fought it, while cable companies watched from the sidelines.
The "Mom and POPs" built the public net at first. Some of them were literally in people's bedrooms. (At least one I know used rack-mounted equipment but built its own 19" rack panels out of two-by-fours.)
Many of the equipment companies, too, started in garages. Cisco, for instance.
Once things were up and running the Telcos decided they were missing out on a good thing and tried to enter the marketplace. But at first they did it by trying to sell their own overpriced ATM-based services. Others continued to compete rings around them - though often leasing their copper wires for the last mile and various digital carriers for long-haul - or leasing those from the more competitive long-distance carriers.
DSL and cable modems were both developed, not by the Telco and Cable companies, but by private equipment manufacturers (including one spun out of Bell by the antitrust decision), trying to sell boxes at a profit. Some cable companies used this new stuff to leverage their installed base and get into the ISP game. Other ISPs, such as Covad, used DSL to push fat bandwidth through legacy Telco copper leased at regulated wholesale rates.
What finally happened is the FCC relaxed the access requirements on the legacy telcos - deciding two competitors was "competition" (when it takes three to four, minimum, to destabilize defacto price fixing and drive the price down towards cost). The tellcos immediately started squeezing their competition in the ISP market (for instance, Covad), eventually doing in or crippling pretty much everybody but the Cable companies (who also had legacy subsidized copper in place) and some rural little guys.
Telcos and cable companies, with their government subsidized infrastructure and rights-of-way, are the bulk of the ISPs NOW. But they AREN'T what "build the Internet". They're the big fish that ATE it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
AZ tends to have TONS of solar heating as well as numerous solar panel installations.
AC is because it's dangerous to health to let it be 105F in a workplace.
There are dryers in all sorts of places that don't need them - sometimes they are advantageous, other times you have the choice to dry your clothes by hanging them up. That's a choice you can make for yourself and one that you certainly don't need to be making for others.
Ok, you like what Heritage has to say about the "EOR Tax Credit" and the "Marginal Well Production Credit." Now you -- and The Atlantic, and the CS Monitor, and the Center for American Progress, and Heritage! -- should get your terminology right by grokking "The Difference Between a Tax Break and a Subsidy" on the aptly-named Reason.com.
It's pure Orwellian doublespeak to assert that confiscating a smaller fraction of a Company X's profits is the same thing as subsidizing Company X. I have no particular love for the oil industry, but freedom from doublespeak is something for which we should all fight passionately.
Then there's the matter of your cherry-picking -- failing to mention Heritage points out that "the oil industry faces a higher marginal tax rate at 41 percent compared to 26 percent for the rest of businesses in Standard & Poor’s 500." I bet the industry would gladly give up small-potatoes stuff like the EOR Tax Credit and the Marginal Well Production Credit in exchange for getting its marginal tax rate reduced to 26%. How much higher than 41% would the industry's rate be, if not for the tax credits you detest?
My position is consistent: there should be no subsidies for oil, ethanol, solar, nuclear, wind, or coal; no subsidies, period. (And when I say "period," I mean the opposite of what was meant in this quote: "no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Really, what's wrong with buying all of our solar panels from China? If they can produce them cheap enough to ship them halfway around the planet and still sell them cheaper than locally produced panels, they deserve to win.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And the "sieg heil" democrats are marching in unified lock step behind which of the options?
Right. But if you look at all of the technological advances that resulted in the first space program, I think we have every reason to guess something similar would come out of the Mars program.
The startup costs for nuclear are largely high BECAUSE of government? What could industry do more cheaply without the government? Buy the land? Install adequate safety measures? Build the enormous facility? I don't see what industry could do to make the process cheaper.
The biggest subsidy fossil fuel companies get is they don't have to pay the cost the pollution the use of their products imposes on society. That's not unique to them but they're probably benefit the most from that.
Tax "breaks" as you refer to them (also known as tax expenditures) are equivalent to a subsidy. If the U.S. government sends you $10,000, or they craft a special tax credit that only benefits you, reducing the taxes you pay by $10,000, the net effect is the same. Either way, they could have charged everyone a little less in taxes by not sending you that money/arbitrarily letting you pay less taxes than everyone else.
On page 7 alone, there are tax breaks so targeted that they clearly exist only to send money to oil and coal companies, e.g.
BTW, the dollar figures are in millions, so that one credit, by itself, is a $14 billion giveaway to people who are producing the dirtiest fuels possible; aside from biomass and fracking for natural gas (the latter being arguable), every other entry listed there is far worse for the environment than the energy sources we used even a decade ago. And we gave them $14 billion dollars to encourage this behavior.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
In short, there is NO SUBDSIDY OF FOSSIL FUELS by the US Government.
If you're going to YELL, at least SPELL CORRECTLY. Otherwise you look like an IDIOT. You're welcome.
There is HUGE potential for reducing energy consumption, which I suspect is the lowest hanging fruit.
More like the fruit that has already fallen and is rotting because it was hanging so low.
You forgot the AOL network, Prodigy network, EarthLink network, and CompuServe network... (if the Internet hadn't taken over, one of them might have become the big winner)
Well, true. But that was done for a reason. Even back then they knew the difference between producers and consumers.
Most Easterners have been sufficiently conditioned to believe being a consumer is a good thing. They have become very good at it. They will write books about freedom, but they are not free to feed themselves.
I think the solution is for the lightly populated states is to switch to GPL.
Then they can simply tell everyone else, you are free not to use our food.
There are hidden energy costs in foundering solar cells.
The boules of silicon used to make solar wafers , common to most panels,
are grown in a blast furnace that uses huge amounts of natural gas
or other fuel or electricity to make the melt.
The metals used to make mounts use huge amounts of energy to
mine, founder and mill.
The plastics used for covers almost completely come from oil.
The electronics processes used to dope and assemble
cells and panels are poisonous and cause huge amounts of pollution.
When we talk about costs and environmental impacts solar panels
look good if you close your eyes to how they are manufactured.
I think one commenter hit the nail bang-on when they wrote that
products imported to countries should be required to be manufactured per
the internal environmental laws of the destination country (us).
Solar electric is no a panacea. It is certianly no environmental saint either.
Wind has a far lower carbon footprint and much faster return scaled
against production energy consumption. But people don't want the noise
and dead birds.
They all have a down side. Pick one, and let's get on with it.
That's right. Conservatives don't have some personal grudge against silicon. The big difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans tend to make policy decisions based on calculations while democrats base theirs on wishes.
Oh, what a load of bullshit. Please stop lying. Taken as a whole, conservatives hate science, and by extension, calculations. I used to think like you do, but then the profoundly anti-science Bush presidency happened, and then the last 5 years happened, and in particular the debt ceiling bullshit happened. I (and others who have woken up) now know that conservatives make policy decisions based on hatred, fear of change, and hyperpartisanship, not on rational analysis.
Like it or not, James Inhofe is one of you. Like it or not, conservatives in America have a massive anti-science movement going, what with climate change denial, hatred and denial of what the facts say about issues like abortion, access to contraception, and so forth, and the entire creationist movement.
You tell yourselves that you are the rational ones. You repeat it to yourselves over and over and over until you actually believe that shit. But you're living in an echo chamber, not reality.
See for example my own Slashdot posts regarding solar. I, a conservative, have pointed out that once you factor in the costs of batteries, etc., solar just doesn't make sense.
So have you personally done the calculations? Or, let me guess, you read a paper published by a conservative "think-tank", one which is being paid to produce the desired conclusion?
People who actually love following the truth have found that conservative think-tanks lie. Over and over and over. They exist for no purpose other than camouflage. It's cargo cult stuff, calculated to sound sciencey enough to fool useful idiots like you.
A great example on a related topic: there was that infamous think-tank paper which claimed to prove that the lifetime energy costs of a Toyota Prius were worse than a gigantic fuckoff Hummer. Very popular conservative ammunition against the hated greens. It was riddled with what amounted to shameless lies, and has been debunked into oblivion, but I've seen still being used quite recently.
That's because nobody cares about the truth on the right. Nobody. Not even you. You're just telling yourself that you do, while being lazy about actual intellectual rigor, and about acknowledging your own mistakes and excesses. I know this because I used to be one of you. Wake up.
(Note: absolutely none of this means I think the left is perfect. Please do not attempt to derail from the topic of how intellectually bankrupt your side is by trying to point fingers at the other. That's a trap which only leads to fooling yourself.)
Getting back to solar... one of the many ways in which this conservative "oh but solar will never be any good" argument falls apart is that conservatives always try to base their objections on a strawman -- namely, that anyone seriously thinks solar is good enough for base load electrical power generation. That's the only way to make sense out of your "solar makes no sense without batteries" nonsense.
Solar doesn't have to be the base load solution to make sense. Everywhere that there are hot summers which demand lots of AC? Obvious candidate for solar as a supplemental solution, to provide peak AC demand right when you need it the most.
Now that the cost for panels is half of what it was, solar makes more sense in more situations.
Hey, imagine that. And how did we get there? Government investment in solar tech. (Chinese government investment in PV solar tech, that is.) It's almost as if the invisible hand of the market isn't perfect at attracting capital to long-term investments which might or might not pay off, and therefore you might sometimes need to have politicians spend the resources of a nation on technology d
"Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help..."
Too young to remember Drew Pearson's "Washington Merry-Go-Round" syndicated column and his many mentions of the "Oil Depletion Allowance" tax break giveaway to the oil companies and how in about '66 or '67 Texaco payed less in Federal Income Tax than just one of the cleaning ladies at its New York headquarters, I take it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Well, actually the last ice age (glaciation in scientific terms) ended around 10,000 years ago and temperatures hit a peak around 8,000 years ago when the combination of Milankovitch cycles maximized insolation. Since then it's been slowly cooling and from the natural forcings it would expected to continue to cool. But that's not happening any more. A little warming was probably a good thing but we're way past that point now.
Yeah, Chinese dumping of solar cells on the market below cost had nothing to do with Solyndra's problems, just like Japanese dumping of television sets on the American market in the early '70s had no deleterious effects on U.S. television manufacturers.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You obviously forgot that ATT was one big giant government regulated monopoly. The only reason corporations exist is to funnel government money to the politician's friends. Insiders have always picked the winners and losers. That is how capitalism is structured..
because they use resources when transporting them across that ocean thing that could otherwise be saved or spent on something more worthwhile. Just because you can buy them cheaper from china does not mean they were cheaper to produce. It just means someone or something else is getting the short end of the stick
My primary concern is what they cost me. 15%(or more) better at retail is more than enough reason, for me, to purchase Chinese.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This is very true. But the problem is that often the AC systems overshoot massively. Usually in a large air-conditioned facility, I find myself shivering because they aim low. In my last job (Texas, a few years ago), several senior staff had space heaters in their offices to bring the temperature back *up* to the 68-72 F level, which is insane. They'd reset the thermostat if they could, but it was a building-wide system, with an idiot at the switch.
All that does is subsidize shareholder's dividends payments and CEO's avarice.
and anybody trying to form their own company; anybody doing work for hire.
Legitimate cost? Sure. But why do they get to write off the cost when they already make money hand over fist?
How do you legitimize trying to take their money, to take their capital, to take food off others tables? Who decides "hand over fist"? You or the guy in Ethiopia?
As I understand it the issue is the sheer amount of regulation and requirements set by government around nuclear power. Specifically, requirements requiring pre-allocating funds for decommissioning a plant (something which will generally have to occur many decades after the plant opens), the amount of insurance, etc.
Not really trying to get into a debate about the merits or lack thereof of those regulations-- but they are a huge factor in the startup cost of a new nuclear plant, and factually noone really disputes that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants
It only has to be cheaper over a decade or so than whatever power utilities want to gouge out of those consumers that have the capital to put some panels on their roof. In that case solar is the free market option versus the protected monopoly (or at best protected cartel) option.
Perhaps if you didn't use multiple accounts you wouldn't get modded as a troll so often, thus obviating the need for multiple accounts.
Ah yes - the old selling at a loss to make a profit fallacy. I wonder where this one came from because we are discussing a massive industry at this point. It is far too big to subsidise. A lot of people bring it up but nobody to this point has been able to show me where they got that from apart from some handwaving from people trying to sell nuclear reactors and complaining about the cheap price of solar.
I hate to spring this on you because you are obviously parroting it instead of actually having seen any proof of what you claim, but any chance of tracking down some sort of proof before you spout such a deluded pile of tripe again?
Tarrifs caused a massive fuckup in 1204 and a variety of problems since. Sugar and Steel are moribund industries in the USA because they relied on the life support of tarrifs and stagnated. Your kids are fat because they are full of corn syrup because tarrifs made it artificially cheaper than sweeter tasting imported cane sugar that can be used in smaller amounts. Most manufacturing that required a lot of steel moved to somewhere where it was cheaper due to a lack of tarrifs in those other places. It's a policy that provides a short term benefit to a few individuals but is a brake on a nation as a whole, reduces competitiveness, and strains diplomatic relations as can be seen from a pretty major example in 1204.
Solar can use low value land, in fact a desert is ideal, and if often a duel use thing anyway such as on rooftops. The opposition based on land use sounded ridiculous even in the 1970s so I'm sure you can do better with a more realistic objection.
Also nuclear is a different niche - the solar versus nuclear thing is a rather silly dispute among the alternative energies.
Nuclear performs best at enormous scales and stable output while solar can work at small scales and is best for covering times of peak consumption. The lead time for solar is now very fast, a matter of months from conception to completion for a few kW. With nuclear (or even coal since it uses the same or similar) it takes years just to get a turbine built and shipped, let alone everything else.
Then there's the scale, capital cost, requirement to go to governments to get that sort of money and the stigma of Fukushima scaring off governments which renders any sort of new nuclear construction in the USA incredibly unlikely no matter what the fanboys wish for. All you can do is hope than India ramps up their thorium research and China builds a few more things and maybe in a couple of decades a US government may get either of those countries to help out with something in the USA. The workforce needed to build reactors in the USA probably all retired while you were still in school.
In other words the horse has bolted so comparisons between solar and nuclear just make people who do them look as if they are very much out of touch with the state of civilian nuclear technology.
It's better than that. It's DC power transformed into whatever waveform the power distributor wants at any given time. It's not a "problem" like guy Luckyo is pretending it is below but instead a power utilities wet dream in terms of grid stability.
It's only the accountants that hate it.
I think you owe Bucc5062 an apology for attacking when he admitted ignorance and then making up convenient lies to cover your own. "Inherent instability"? WTF do you think those expensive control systems in the grid connected panels are there to avoid? Thousands of spread out DC power sources that can pump out whatever waveform the distributor wants are the exact opposite of "inherent instability". I would have loved a lot of panels on the grid in the 1990s instead of all the stuffing about we had to do at peak times.
I get that you don't like photovoltaics but please get your criticism from something factual instead of making things up.
Here's one thing from the basic electricity texts - consider thousands of DC power sources all with electronics under your control to pump out whatever AC signal you want at the time. Does that sound like "instability"? It sounds like the opposite to me. It sounds like the instability thing came from some Washington Intern who had never been anywhere near such a textbook and it's been a political talking point since.
Since government supplies the startup money (banks have NEVER touched it and show no signs of being interested now) that's fairly irrelevant.
It's also not true because those AP1000 reactors in China are not exactly cheap either.
The different alternative technologies fill different niches. Solar is to cover peak demand in daytime, nuclear is to provide a constant supply day and night. Both suck in the other's niche. Anyone that spouts shit about "one true energy" is selling something or has been fooled by salesfolk.
Such a thing means a government or power utility has more time before they need to put in more base load capacity. They save money in the short term. In the long term it's probably a folly but by then it's somebody else's problem.
Near where I am there are two 650MW units mothballed due to a large takeup of solar panels (and people reducing usage). It's projected to be a couple of years before either of those are needed and around a decade before another unit is needed. That's an extreme example because a combination of price gouging by utilities and cheap panels (with power buyback from the utilities) drove a massive takeup but it happened. People are getting the money they spent on the panels back in as little two years due to a payment instead of a bill from the utilities - that's how extreme that example is and why those units are mothballed. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the long term.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23475584
The BBC is about as reliable a source as you can get.
Extreme overhauls are not a bad thing. Thr (sic) aca will need one and it can be said that it should have had it before it was originally passed.
I think it remains to be seen how much of an overhaul the ACA needs. Yes, the web portal needs a lot of work and the "if you like your insurance you can keep it" didn't work out as envisioned* but that's pretty peripheral to the core of the act.
*You could argue that policies that didn't come close to meeting the minimal standards required by the act should be cancelled anyway.
Regarding the space required for solar PV cells, I read a few years ago that the area of solar cells required to supply of of the worlds electricity would amount to a block of 40 x 40 miles (or maybe km) which amounts to less than 0.3% of the Earths land surface. I think we can find room for them.
When it comes right down to it, the Republican Party has never stood for anything except keeping the foot of rich people planted firmly on the neck of everybody else.
The fact that they've managed to fool a bunch of drooling, ill-educated, propaganda-loving morons into backing them is no reason to believe they want anything for the middle class except abrupt reduction to slave status.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
....how happens to live in a 100% off grid solar house.
Groups trying to "stop" deployment of solar and wind (and geothermal and yes, nuclear) are just stupid.
I have zero problem with the basic thesis that none of these techs should be subsidized by the government. Let them stand or fall on their own; no industry (and that means none ) should be subsidized by the Feds in any way whatsoever.
But there's also no reason to throw up roadblocks per se. That's ideology, not conservatism or libertarianism.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Nuclear power is one of the most subsidized power sources around, at least in the US. Private lenders are not willing to lend to build a nuclear plant without substantial government loan guarantees and private insurers are unwilling to insure them at all (beyond a ridiculously small amount) leaving it to the government to provide that insurance. (See the Price-Anderson Act.)
The startup costs for nuclear are largely high BECAUSE of government.
Given past performance I'm not willing to leave the safety of nuclear power plants up to the private sector. The demands of profit making encourages cutting corners to the detriment of safety. After all Ford decided the cost of liability for exploding Pinto gas tanks was less than the cost of fixing the problem. I'm not against nuclear power per se but it still appears to be one of the more expensive ways to produce electricity.
with all other parameters being equal, of course. Like reliability or efficiency.
Not to mention that China has done this before, with strong magnets that use rare-earth metals. First they dropped the price on rare-earths from their mines until all global competitors closed shop, then cut off rare-earth metal supply from all customers except their own manufacturing base, and then hiked up prices on strong magnets once their monopoly was assured. It's pretty clear they're playing the same game with solar panels.
No. Politicians and regular people of all stripes make their political decisions based on ideology and then rationalize them afterwards. Except when they don't bother and simply assert that they're rational and "the other party" is irrational - or at least "tend to" be, which gives a convenient way to dismiss any evidence to the contrary as exceptions to the rule.
I think the problem is that most human thought is still stuck in the "greek period", where what matters is aesthetic and religious/ideological appeal rather than connection with reality. Physics escaped it, and have advcanced tremendously as a result; the question is, how do we move politics and economy from the realm of faith to the realm of science?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
i.e. it has as much to do with global warming as not stabbing you has to do with murder.
So quite a lot, then.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Drivel. How many jobs are going to be created in a community for placing solar panels on roofs vs working at a new coal or even nuclear plant 75 miles from town. You're also ignoring the fact that the costs of dealing with climate change are insignificant next to the costs of not dealing with it.
No, that's why they are political hacks. Otherwise, they'd first be complaining that the real pork barrel subsidies should be eliminated: ethanol subsidies, and the Department of Defense. Because the DOD spends over a trillion a year on war spending, most of which is focused on the world's gas station, the Middle East. The CIA, keeping the world safe for capitalism since 1953!
Even your crappy math can add together the costs of dealing with massive forest fires, record droughts and record hurricanes. You're also ignoring the fact that while coal might make for some jobs out in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, installing solar panels can be done in any community in the nation.
Otherwise known as the part of your post where you reveal yourself as being divorced from reality. What's next, how the Christian Coalition is under the sway of gay marriage activists?
Go on then - provide links to "educate" someone who was working in power generation and distribution as far back as 1994 as distinct from whatever you know about.
Allegations are not proof.
Actually, if it is bellow freezing it's even better. True, it takes some time, the clothes freeze and it is not a good idea to fold them at this point but after the ice slowly sublimates the cloth becomes dry, cleaner and carries a very pleasant smell of freshness....I loved that when I was a kid...
I agree with GP that there are so many low hanging fruits in energy saving. It pains me to observe how much can be achieved by very little effort, yet for some reasons (mostly laziness or ideology IMO) it does not happen. Pity...
Proof enough for the Commission to impose an import tariff.
$10b goes a long way towards making something 'cheaper'.
I though the problem is, they want to make solar power more expensive.
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
The USG already heavily subsidizes fossil fuel energy: http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Uncounted costs include the cost of disaster relief from oil spills and accidents which isn't an official subsidy, but this happens frequently enough that it can be counted as a yearly expenditure, and imho these companies (like BP) have not been held fully accountable for these incidents.
Fair enough but I think you'll find the Chinese photovoltaic industry is now so large that a subsidy would be impractical and incredibly unlikely in 2013. The Chinese government is not fond of spending money that they do not have to spend.
Startup loans are another story and may have been seen as a form of subsidy by European manufacturers that did not have such an advantage.
market pressure?
cheap solar panels?
And remember: We have too have petrol (BP? Shell?) Not to talk about our Rusky neighbours.
So, your "increased GDP" theory goes down the gutter.
Fact is that if you don't stop teabagging your own technological development and torpedoing your I&D just because it doesn't fit your idea of Redneck manliness and Far-Right political correctness you will end up being part of the third world in a few decades.
Just wait for a couple of teabaggers governments to finish what Mr. Bush did and you will be begging the UK to re-colonise what's left of your country.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Fossil fuels are cheap now because their price doesn't include the externalities (mostly in pollution) they cause.
This is possible because the externalities don't affect only those who cause them -- they're shared by an entire population.
The sharing of the effects also means that it takes a long time until the externalities start to become evident. The problem is that when suddenly you realize there's something wrong, it's very difficult to fix it. You can't simply stop polluting and everything will be fine the next day, and even if you could, people won't want to give up their polluting lifestyles.
For a preview of what will eventually happen in your city, just look at Beijing or Shanghai. A friend of mine was there recently and he had people tell him that the clear blue skies you see in pictures and movies is all done through editing -- the sun is supposed to always look reddish against a pale grey sky.
Adding externalities costs to fossil fuels (assuming you could calculate them) wouldn't make solar cheaper, but it sure as hell would make it a lot more competitive overnight.
Not to mention the expensive wars the government is fighting in the middle east just to guarantee those companies access to the wells.
SolarCity installs solar panels on your house for free and then you pay them for your electricity at a greatly reduced rate from what you used to pay your local electric company. Solarcity tho' is not licensed to do business in every state yet but it is in a lot of States... check if yours is. http://www.solarcity.com/
Heh, heh. Said the gore to the ox?
No problem from this here tea bagger hobgoblin, though.
It seems that the more the ACA comes on line, the more about it that is disliked. For instance, the 2 billion dollars given to coop health plans wighout congressional oversight seems to be the next big thing we will hear about.
I think the biggest problem is that it allows too much independence to unelected officials with little oversight. Another problem is access to birth control. Abortion was said to be out of the reach of government due to a fourth amendment to privacy. Now that access is built in and the government hasa qualified interest in everyones healthcare, that right to privacy is gone making previous landmark cases invalid to current situations. In fact, the mandate challenge used the exact same argument that won row v wade and was not rejected but the law was reinterpreted to claim the penalty was a tax in order to get around it.
There are a lot of things poping up that don't seem to be as intended. Thee aca is supposed to move us to a single payer system if you listen to the right people. Most people don't trust the government to being capable of that. They will demand changes, keeping parts that are good and rejecting most of the rest.
Really?? Its citizens choosing to use their products that ultimately pollutes. Why should the provider pay? So if your cancer treatment has a known unwanted side effect, and you choose to take it anyway...should the company who provided this treatment pay to treat your side effect?
Amen
" people won't want to give up their polluting lifestyles"
BINGO!! What happened to personal responsibility in this world???
... that someone put the "conserve" back in "conservative".
Having different rules for the rich and poor might not work out the way you expect.
Except that you have to gather the materials and manufacture the panels. I assume it's MUCH better than burning coal, but it isn't without any effect. Especially in places like China which have lax pollution regulations which is disregarded anyway.
HAHAHA! Bam! Spot on!
I'm not going to deny that nuclear has a tremendous ability to scale up. I know it can!
[...] Oh, are you talking about thorium reactors? I think a lot of your arguments against renewables (too expensive, too much research required, not feasible, blah blah blah) would also apply to this technology. Doubt my opinion? Perhaps you'd like to refer to the report from the Union of Atomic Scientists entitled Thorium: Not a near-term commercial nuclear fuel." You have to admit that at this point commercially viable thorium-generated power is vapor ware.
[...] You no doubt think I'm a knee-jerk partisan relying on wishful thinking and flimsy data.
Well I most certainly do not. You present yourself well and your aversion to nuclear energy and desire to jump into and 'crack' the remaining hurdles to solar is very clear.
There is a tremendous difference between the way the world was burning coal in the previous two centuries and the way it is burned today. Likewise nuclear fission needs a serious 'tune up'. Our light and heavy water reactors extract dismally small amounts of energy from fuel and leave long-term actinides in their wake.
But in my opinion the LFTR designs being proposed are so radically different in terms of efficiency, safety, containment and (with active processing) residual waste that it is a tragedy for me to see people draw straight line comparisons between LFTR and 'present day commercial nuclear power'. If it were not for the nuclear weapons program and its mandates nuclear would mean LFTR already, today.
I do not advocate solar and wind for base load energy ON ANY SCALE (as in, abort!) and I do want to see LFTR developed quickly to commercial deployment. I come to this conclusion on one single criteria only.
SURVIVAL.
With LFTR technology we can achieve a single building that will withstand any weather or seismic conditions (and no, it need not be sited near a large body of water) that will generate gigawatts of power, with years' worth of barely-radioactive thorium seed fuel stored in the closet. With active processing none of the long-lived isotopes will form and the harmful lifespan of this waste (of greatly reduced volume compared with spent solid fuel) is ~300 years. This is a BEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION.
With wind and solar -- even once we develop more efficient heat transfer or photovoltaics and more efficient turbines, there is a certain energy storage problem which I might refer to as vaporware. All the batteries presently in the world might power our grids for ten minutes. But okay, I will grant you as-yet-undeveloped storage battery tech, giant lithium chocolate bars the size of skyscrapers.
All of these solar/wind/storage 'solutions' collectively contain millions of discrete and precision parts spread over a large area that must (by their nature) be completely exposed to the elements. As opposed to a single self-contained building that merely outputs process heat or electricity.
What a logistical nightmare wind and solar are, even when they are working. Imagine trying to light a sports arena with Christmas lights. Only now imagine this on the supply side. It is mad in a way that has nothing to do with the 'ultimate promise' of these energy sources. It is a logistical nightmare. Nay, impossibility.
But okay I'll grant you the (remote) possibility that this will all fall into place within 50 years or so, who knows how many open pit rare earth mines will be opened up to achieve the chemical storage feat. Or hydrological or compressed air 'storage' with its laughable efficiency (how many million acres of solar panels again?) or environmental blights. Let's say it's all good, and it's done. There are now one hundred million discrete parts in our base load energy system that are somehow working in concert (again, as opposed to a few LFTR buildings) We are now 100% solar and wind, day and (one, two) nights. That was hard.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
The Internet was not publicly funded on the scale it is now. Once enough academics were addicted to it and it reached the scale it was at when the National Science Federation stopped funding NSFNet, turning it over to the GTEs, At&t, etc who were already doing that for the NSF...and Aol, Prodigy, CompuServe, etc were let on...
Whenever there's a new Republican whipping boy, I invest in it:
starbucks
Cytec (gone private after it tripled in a year) and Nautilus
Rick's Cabaret
Missed out on EAgames (boy, that Was stupid)
First Solar
Apple (at 25 a share, but I sold 3 months after Steve died... not nearly at the peak)
Fannie and Freddie Mac
if Whole Foods, Volvo, abortion, or Sushi can be stocks, I wish I could invest in them.
Yes: they would have been one of "n" winners, each with incompatible content. You'd be in the situation (like the old phone companies) where a person on network "a" couldn't contact a person on network "b". That would be substantially less valuable than the fully interoperable internet we have today.
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
You're rather cherry-picking your data. Solyndra made a big bet: that the raw cost of the silicon in solar power would be important, and that a remarkably cool manufacturing technique to use a lot less would have a ton of value. As it turns out, that's not how the industry went: silicon costs dropped faster than anticipated, and the manufacturing costs of the Solyndra didn't.
We weren't "picking winners and losers" here: we enabled a big bet.
DoE analysts said Solyndra was crazy, that silicon prices were already dropping faster than Solyndra predictions. That's why they reccomended that the loan be denied. But then along comes a new administration, that said "Solyndra was a major campaign contributor, and to the victors go the spoils! Free money to what we already know will be a failing business!"
That's not picking a winner or a loser - that's just flat out corruption.
More than that. It is a fight for campaign dollars. Big Utilities and Big Unions have a lot to lose. Blame the GOP or Rand Paul! Yes, that is it! Obama and his ilk are for sale. The high bidders now are entrenched government-like entities and big Unions. But, it is all Bush's fault after all...
Your case is extremely well-put and I appreciate you taking time to re-state your case to me, especially given that you've already spent a good amount of time stating it elsewhere. Consider me (mostly) converted to your point of view. I expect that energy diversity is a good thing and I'll always prefer solar/wind/tidal and energy efficiency in some philosophical way. I can also see the frustration that would come from seeing such substantial investment (and waste) in competing technologies if you are convinced that there is a better way that is not getting a fair shake.
Seems to me LFTR needs a proper PR campaign. The thorium remix vid is certainly a good start, but it's over two hours long and jumps right in with both feet and quickly surpasses the intellectual capacity of 99.9999% of the world's population. Might I suggest one of those whiteboard-and-voiceover videos like the ones produced by RSA Animate? If you can cram a synopsis of your views into a video under five minutes long, I'd be willing to bet you could achieve a much bigger change in public opinion.
Yeah but they'll run it in such a way as to pollute the hell out of whatever poor hole has the honor digging up the rare earths or whatever that will be required in large quantities. The basic problem is the externalized costs of capitalism; AGW, nuclear waste, black lung disease, etc are merely the symptoms. Which is just another way of saying that there are always enough bastards who will screw somebody to make a buck and the rest of us at some point will look away because we would like to just live our lives, unless it comes home to us by threatening the whole damn climate. And I don't have a clue how it can be fixed.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"Encouraging" something (renewable energy) by raising taxes on everything else (non-renewable energy) is social engineering in its purest form.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
Oil companies receive huge tax breaks (which most definitely are a form of subsidy) to "encourage" further exploration.
Personally, I'm against government funding of an inefficient power system that uses more power to create than it generates over the mean effective lifetime of the installation and creates large amounts of hazardous waste.
Solar is a good way to relocate a source of power to an area that has no connection to a generating station or the power grid. (i.e. a remote village) But, solar units still requires a high density power source and tank car loads of hazardous chemicals for manufacture.
The subsidy system for solar is more of a pork barrel item for sun belt states than it is any long term solution for the country as a whole. If you run a system analysis I think you will find that pushing solar grids on a large scale basis actually causes more fossil fuels to be burned overall.
NRRPT/RCT
You might think sending solar power business to China is not that bad - after all, it's just a little trickle of cash leaving our economy. Let's think of the cash in our economy as blood in your body. You only have so much blood. Cash leaving our economy for the solar business is like a tick sipping a little of our blood at a time. A little isn't so bad - you don't miss it. But there are millions of low cost products flooding our markets. It's like there are a million ticks feeding on our economy. The blood flowing out of us like a river. How long can your body live when your are spouting a river of blood? How long can the US economy stand to lose that river of cash? Our economy is currently suffering from a major shifting of wealth from us out to developing nations.
And who will lose cash if China places tariffs on imported goods? Big conglomerates. Who does the GOP represent? Big conglomerates. They'd never vote for it. Never happen.
Go to the store and price out some solar power systems, the complete system with inverters and all, and get back to me.
If you can't be bothered to get your butt off the couch, Google and check some of your statements against even the most favorable of sources - the manufacturers themselves. Interstate battery's own web site will tell you batteries that work as designed will lose half their capacity in three years. Maybe in a few years something other than lead-acid will make sense for storing enough energy to power major appliances. The lithium batteries we have today? Ask anyone who has kept a laptop for three to five years what happens to lithium batteries.
Funny, you argue those things, pretend the manufacturers know nothing about their own products, then admit that indeed solar can't replace traditional energy sources. That's good you can at least admit that now.
You mentioned air conditioning, using solar to supplement when it's very sunny and you most need the power. That's certainly the scenario that is most favorable to solar. Look up how much power a decent AC system uses (about 4000 watts) , then how much a complete solar system providing that much power will cost (about $40,000). You don't need a whitepaper, plenty of online stores sell the stuff. The output of solar cells drops over time. Figuring the average useful life is 10-20 years @ 4 months per year of AC use, that's about 60 months of active use. 60 months for $40,000 is $750 / month cooling. I don't know about you, but I'm not spending $750 / month for AC. Maybe during the less sunny months it would still have some usable power, and maybe we can get away with a 3000 watt unit. So around $300 - $400 / month on the low end. That's still pretty steep, but might work if you have more money than brains. What's that? It only runs during the day time, when I'm at work? You want me to spend $400 / to cool my house only when no-one is there, then still pay the power company to cool it after 5:00!?!? You go right ahead and buy a solar system. I'll stick with clean burning natural gas providing my electricity.
Yes, solar is a great idea, and it has gotten better. But solar will really make its stride when it is economically viable WITHOUT subsidies (overt or 'second part') for the production, installation, and the owners/users can still make $$ from them.
I love solar (PV, heat, disassociating it into hydrogen, grid tie or off grid use, etc), but subsidizing it to go from basic research to development is one thing, but we are moving from development to production and this should be the part of the commercialization and not subsidized by tax payers.
The same thing goes with subsidies for agriculture, oil/gas industries, etc.
I am neither Dem or Rep. I tend to be conservative and would rather the Libertarians have their way. But most of all I would rather the gov stop trying to direct how to spend MY money whether it is mine now, or tax money paid on by me or on my behalf.
I agree, but what's happening is that the money for the research and investment goes to the politically favorable company, not the one with the best ideas. As long as it costs a fortune to get elected, this is not going to change.
Like a lot of liberals ideas, its well intention-ed and altruistic but when put into actual practice it ends up being crony capitalism, and the return is far less than the investment. The free market actually works, it ensures that the most cost effective idea wins.
Murphy was an optimist
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
There are a few possible reasons. For one, oil was arguably a low-hanging fruit compared to "green" energy. Harvesting something and burning it (to put it into overly simplistic terms) is far easier than engineering and manufacturing devices to convert solar or other power into electricity. The next reason is that oil is currently what society has built around. Even though we're now extracting oil from areas of the Earth that require more effort and sophistication, it would be costly to make changes to our infrastructure and operations to support "green energy" (which is partly why you're seeing push-back against green energy from utility companies).
Might I suggest one of those whiteboard-and-voiceover videos like the ones produced by RSA Animate? If you can cram a synopsis of your views into a video under five minutes long, I'd be willing to bet you could achieve a much bigger change in public opinion.
Thanks for your kind words, and what a great idea! I love those RSA animates, especially the one on 21st Century Enlightenment which ends with a quote by Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world... indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I used to be an engineer for a big solar power company. Here's the dirty little secret too few people talk about: Grid Stability.
This is why coal and natural gas usage still goes up even if you're using wind or solar power -- like Germany. The less stable a source is (cloud cover, wind variability, etc.) the more spinning reserve you have to fire-up and keep running just in case the power drops or demand climbs.
For wind, about 80% of the production capacity is matched by fossil fuel generated electricity whether it's needed or not. For solar it's more predictable, but considerable spinning reserve is still needed, often more than 50% of the installed capacity.
If you want to talk about wasted energy or inefficiency, you have to include all the power generating plants running "just in case" they're needed. And if we turn them off, how upset would the public be if their nice clean renewable energy source also meant frequent blackouts and brownouts lasting hours or even days.
The electric grid is one of the most complex engineering tasks ever created. Putting a lot of random variable stuff on it isn't good for anyone, and this is what the power companies are bothered with. It has little to do with economics. It's a technical challenge.
Don't get me wrong, I love solar power. I have solar power myself. But it's not tied to the grid. My power is stored in a battery bank using charge controllers and inverters I specked myself. If you get off the grid and have to manage your power budget, suddenly you take efficiency and intermittency a whole lot more seriously. (And it will also help to create the demand and economic conditions that just might force the advances in energy storage technology that would truly solve the whole problem.)
I think everyone should do this, (wind and solar in an off-grid system) but use the grid as an emergency backup and recharge system only, in the event of storms, dead wind or extended overcast days, etc. Then power the grid with Nuclear. This would be the most straightforward way to end our fossil fuel dependancy. Feeding your power back into the grid, essentially using the grid as a battery, is a bad idea from a technical perspective. It saves money on batteries up front, but there will be other costs to the grid operators. (look up the economic meaning of "externalities".) The grid operators will pass that cost back to the public.
There's no free lunch!
Wolfram alpha says 12.51/ kw-hour in 2011. Thus for a megawatt hour $125 for the utilities vs $143 from the article for solar. The curve on utility electricity prices over time is relevant. Time to get serious here. If you think the curves are future predictions and you have the space and the capital...
How is it that so many educated people can convolute solar energy, petroleum drilling companies, utility companies, and middle east stability for oil?
These 4 things are barely related. We do not go to war in the middle east for Exxon Mobile. We go to war in the middle east and pressure Iran to make sure Saudi, UAE, and Kuwait sell their oil to us. This DOES NOT HELP EXXON. Exxon would prefer less competition from the biggest drillers in the world. We want to make sure we have a wide variety of oil sources.
Oil, though, is mostly irrelevant to our utility power generation. We use oil for petroleum based products (plastics, etc) and vehicle transport. We do not use it for electricity generation almost at all (0.75%). So Oil companies are not trying to shut down solar power. As long as there are billions of people in the world who will use gas powered engines and are working in economies that are growing very fast, Oil companies don't care about the US slowly moving towards electric vehicles. US Oil consumption peaked 8 years ago, and yet oil companies continue to make good money.
Solar is trying to compete with coal and natural gas, NOT OIL. The only thing oil ,coal, and LNG have in common is they are fossil fuels.
There are some obvious differences between Germany and US. US actually has huge swaths of land that are almost perfect for solar - New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, southern California, Nevada.
Also, no-one is talking about switching to solar completely. But why not develop it in regions where it makes sense, like we did with hydro?
coal or natural gas (which market forces are decreasing the cost of sans government interference)
The cost of those is not decreasing sans government interference, it's just being passed onto you and me and everyone else, since environmental effects of those go unaccounted for. It's a classic example of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
well, seeing as how no power company could ever survive the financial ruin of a meltdown at a power plant (vs a coal fire or LNG explosion), there is a good reason for government regulations being strict. Frankly, any company doing nuclear power will not be around to clean up its own mess ever, as its mess will be too big. When externalities like that exist, it's a good idea to consider quite a bit of regulation.
All of this is really simple. Energy and computers have concentrated most of the wealth in the nation into the hands of very few. Much of that concentration is due to energy costs, the rest is due to the efficiency of the digital revolution which has disadvantaged most wage earners in the nation.
If you want to understand what drives political policy look at who is paying the campaign bills of the major parties, but especially the GOP. It is big carbon energy companies and interests like the Koch Brothers of Wichata Kansas, and it is that they are trying to buy resistance to creative destruction of the carbon energy economy by alternative energy. If some members of the GOP are realizing that solar is actually economically compettive, then that would be consistent with a pragmatic reality that carries with it much agreement across political boundaries, but if the policy of the GOP is driven by the entrenched interests that are fighting tooth and claw to preserve capital investment in what may really be a very toxic industry, and I know of no more ruthless bunch of businessmen than those who produce carbon fuels, then the GOP deserves to go down with them.
Exactly. The other guy isn't dead. Therefore, there was no murder. Solar power won't murder the ozone layer.
I'd be willing to bet that GE or Westinghouse or some of the many companies that are in the nuclear sector might be willing to chip in the cost for such a video. How hard could it be? An artist to draw some cute drawings on a whiteboard. A friendly-sounding narrator. Some time-lapse photography. A few ads to encourage viral popularity. All you'd have to do is write a five-minute script and get maybe $10k for a high-quality production.
Agreed with M. Mead quote. You might also find a few lessons in From dictatorship to democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation. While the book is about fomenting a movement (e.g., a revolution), there are some powerful ideas about how to change minds.
"You are right, and meanwhile China is pushing solar power all the way and if the US does not move fast China will be the winner (again) and the US will be the loser."
Like we "lost" the ability to produce PCs the average consumer could not afford, but are now ubiquitous because their production and the pollution that goes with it was offshored? Cry me a river.
My computer is made in China, my phone is made in China, and if I can buy solar panels which serve me as well as the many Chinese electronic products I've purchased I don't care that they aren't enriching a few American CEOs plus a microscopic-and-shrinking US production force by being "assembled" in CONUS.
I win when I can buy quality I want at the price I want, not when industrialist fucktards who (cue George Carlin voice) "don't give a fuck about me" make more money by using a "Buy Amurrican" sales pitch. I don't want their shit and if they die I am amused.
Plenty of countries don't make all the equipment they use. Of course, plenty of countries don't loot their citizens to fund perpetual globalist wars to enrich the plutocracy. When I blindly "Buy American" I specifically fund the class who rules and oppresses this country and fucks over a goodly number of other people.
I don't care about that any more with the narrow exceptions of companies who care for their workers and customers, such as Lincoln Electric who manufacture welders.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If there true it is a long term net positive (and I agree that there is) then forward thinking people and companies will keep solar going, despite the fact that it might be more expensive from a strict KWH comparison.
This signature is false.
The oil industry gets subsidies right now. Yes, they not only rake in ridiculous profits, use government access to stiffle competition but also get billions annually. The original issue with Solindra was it was competing with Chinese companies that were heavily subsidized.
How do you figure? We already do have different rules - both officially and de facto.
It's just that right now, the rules are almost entirely biased towards the wealthy.
=Smidge=
and anybody trying to form their own company; anybody doing work for hire.
Does not compute.
How do you legitimize trying to take their money, to take their capital, to take food off others tables? Who decides "hand over fist"? You or the guy in Ethiopia?
Take who's money? I'm talking about making people and corporations who can afford it pay their own way instead of mooching off of taxpayers.
It's a pretty simple concept: Establish a minimum profits:subsidies ratio. Tax incentives scale back as your company becomes more and more profitable until you don't qualify for incentives at all. It's kind of like how social services for poor people work right now, where if your income is above a certain threshold you don't qualify for benefits.
Or is it okay to give away taxpayer money to someone who clearly doesn't need it?
=Smidge=
Assuming that's a quality system, with the price you mentioned, that's an extra $200 / month to cool the house during the sunny part of the day only, when you're at work. Peak temperatures are at sunset. So you've spent $200 / month on solar that you can't even use while you're home after work. Maybe that might somehow be useful for 1% of people. For most people, that would be really silly.
It the full cost were included in the price the citizens pay they might make different choices.
Here in Australia if you use 1.5kw for 4 hours a day you would pay $54
Using a 10 year 8% loan that repayment would be $4000
http://www.lowenergydevelopments.com.au/1.5kW-Complete-Installation-Kit-Tin-roof-Tilt-Frame is 2,750 leaving $1000 to pay for installation.
That is assuming you have 1.5kw of usage for the 4 hours during the day for solar to offset.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
The invisible hand will rip the heart and lungs out of the fossil fuel cartel as soon as alternatives compete on cost... That will happen on it's own assuming the fossil fuel cartels do not succeed in using their not-so-invisible hands to smother the solar revolution babies (wind, solar, and molten salt batteries) in their cribs.
The utility power that costs you $54 only costs me $12.42.
Hmm, you're paying four times as much for utility power, and can buy solar systems for half the cost compared to the US. I wonder if that huge extra cost on your electric bill is what's paying the other half of the solar panels, through subsidies. If the government mandates for solar are paid for via taxes on utilities, that would explain things - you're effectively being forced to pay for solar whether you use it or not.
Most of the extra cost is the grid was predicted to use a lot more then was used. So the grid has to payback the investment,
http://www.ret.gov.au/Department/Documents/clean-energy-future/ELECTRICITY-PRICES-FACTSHEET.pdf
From the $54
$27.50 network costs
$10.80 energy efficiency (and FITs which does not effect the cost of purchasing)
$10.80 to generate the electricity
$4.86 Carbon Tax.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Aren't they the same thing, though. Doesn it really matter to you if I give you $10 and say it's new money or I give you $10 and say it's money you previously gave me? In both cases I gave you $10. It doesn't even matter if you owe me $10 and I say you can keep it. It's all the same.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It's not to hard for people to argue about whether or not burning fossil fuels impacts global climate. You could publish the math but since public schools do all they can to decrease the amount of math they teach most people couldn't follow it anyway.
Instead, how about if you live in a major city go the outskirts and look towards downtown? Chances are your air look likes a giant shit blanket over the city. That folks is the impact of your gas guzzling vehicles and coal generated electricity. You don't need math you just need eyes.
Then again how many of you remember hearing about air quality warnings? It's not just because we know more that we have these warnings now or because people are paranoid (ok, maybe some of you are paranoid). Our air quality sucks!
Stop arguing stupid fucking disputable points you bunch of inbreed ignorant fucks and open your fucking eyes or just take a deep breath!
the Blue Haired and the AARP.
Otherwise known as the people most likely to vote. Is it any wonder politicians protect the people who vote for them the most?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Actually, government predates free enterprise by a long shot. It was government that moved you ancestors out of caves (albeit probably a pretty small government, probably nothing more than a tribal elder recommending it be done).
I'm no anthropologist, but from what I understand, free enterprise requires a certain population level that could only be achieved after early cheiftains ordered the construction of works for the public good. Those early works were focused on increasing the available supply of food thus creating the carrying capacity to actually allow non-food producing population to exist. Without that additional food production, there would be no one to develop mercantilism, they'd be too busy trying not to starve.
Frankly, the history of humans has been a history of successive governments, each one corrupt and when that corrupt grows too great, it is overthrown and replaced by a new government. In our history, the fat of people with weak goverments was to become the slaves of those with strong governments. It isn't pretty, but it's how history has gone through the ages. That's probably what makes libertarians so preposterous, they hate government and yet seem to know nothing at all about it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Thanks for link, it provided a lot of good information.
If anyone else from outside Oz is still reading this, where catprog says "FITs", that's Feed in Tariffs, which is where each customer is forced to pay for some other guy's solar installation.
The PDF which breaks down the billing shows 9% "carbon tax" and 20% "customer service and renewables schemes". Only 10% is the actual cost of the electricity, so the customer's bill in no way reflects the actual cost of the electricity. That 29% is more than the entire bill paid by Texas residents.
In our area of Michigan (Saginaw valley) much of solar is restricted and the roof installations are still expensive. Panel Price is down, but installation is up. 5 years ago, it was over 50,000 to go off grid. I could probably do it for 35,000 to 40,000 now. That still come out to about 3X the commercial rate. Grid tied installations have been limited since day one. My farm, about 30 miles from where I live is part of a wind farm coop. They are still running over 93 or 94 utilization. Gratiot County has a uniform zoning favorable to wind farms making the regs uniform across the entire county instead of by township. There are already 3 farm and frowing. Wind speeds are ideal and consistant with very few calm days. Just googl;e Gratiot County Wind Farm. AFAIK the farm was built with private capital. Most of the people see how much is being paid out per acre whether you have a turbine on it or not and welcome the wind farm. Turnin sites and access roads par around a thousand per quarter each. The sites make very little noise. The neighboring county to the east (Saginaw County) has people fighting the installation of any towers.
gosgog:
OK you are not sure about how Carbon based fuels are affecting us?? Then add up the cost involved in helping those devistated by Typhoon Hiyan in the Philippines, think back to "Katrina"....it ain't gonna get better, its gonna get worse if the Coal, the Oil, the Plastic Garbage dumped in the Ocean and those folks involved in Nuclear don't start moving to a "Thorium" Base instead of URANIUM. We need to charge industries making a ton off Coal, Oil & Gas and put that money into Solar, Wind Panel, Hydro & Thorium based SAFE Nuke plants.(Won't hurt either to see the auto industry move away from gasoline & diesel power).
Don't.... & y'all are gonna see 300 mph Hurricanes & huge Tornados & Bad snow and ice to come! Take a good look at those Politicos we elect, make sure they aren't owned by Corporations like they are now.
Which is exactly why the bullshit you are parroting from some anti-solar energy luddite political science graduate (or similar) is being attacked by someone who was an engineer by profession (and still is from time to time between cluster wrangling).
Semiconductor controlled rectifiers means this stupid "stability" bullshit has not been an issue since before photovolatics were connected to power grids.
I'm really sick of this political shit of bringing up fake technical problems just to oppose a technology that a party thinks is liked too much by their political opponents. I do not think this is the place for such propaganda which is why I'm asking for proof that it is reality and not such propaganda.
One difference may become clear once you replace some of the verbs "give" with "forced to give" to more accurately portray the subservience relationship. Another difference is that the "owe" is not any normal voluntary debt, but a threat to unilaterally take more.
In any other legal setting, it is simply not the case that not taking something from someone is the same thing as taking something from them then returning it later.
The other difference is what I said above. Collecting less taxes from X and correspondingly cutting spending does not leave the other taxpayers Y != X worse off, whereas giving a subsidy to X and preserving other spending requires extra taxes to be taken from Y != X. The former is preservation of wealth. The latter is a transfer of wealth.
Georgia's regulation of electric utilities defines what it means to be an electric utility: if you produce electricity and sell it you're a utility company and subject to regulations governing same, with an exception for individual installations for local generation where excess might be sold to the grid providers. In Georgia, this messes up 3rd party installers who try to fund solar installation in one particular fashion. You can pay cash for a solar system and you're fine. You can borrow money to finance your installation and you're fine, even if you're borrowing from the solar panel installer. What Georgia says you can't do is allow a 3rd party to place solar panels on your roof and then buy the electricity produced by those panels from the 3rd party. That makes the 3rd party a utility provider.
It would be more useful to talk about the science, technology, economics on the issue. The politicking is killing the country.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Are you prepared to dig into the subsidies that oil gets around the world? Why would Exxon and buds spend $200Million per year lobbying Capitol Hill if they could compete on their own true cost merits? Its because they are subsidized to death, yet we don't see it because unlike solar, the subsidies are hidden. Reduce the cost of land rights or of drilling rights and you've just lowered the cost of oil. Fail to account for the cost to our health care system because of all the now proven cardio-pulmonary diseases aggravated by pollution, and you have subsidized the cost of oil. Fail to account for the cost of whatever component (lets not argue size for the moment) of global warming that fossil fuel burning contributes, and you have lowered the cost of oil. If you really want a fair playing field, dare to dig a big deeper than just what oil companies have "drilled" into our heads...
Everyone seems to conveniently forget that Chinese photovoltaic industry is built with mostly European technology. European companies had or were delivering some 150 turn-key factories to China, India and other countries around 2009, and they made claim that with their production lines could produce panels at very low cost. European companies had problems because they had older and less efficient production methods. It is a bit like selling tools to gold diggers, it makes more profit than digging the gold. Thin film people can beat the cost per Watt, but the panels are already so low cost that installation, electronics, wiring and support structures are substantial part of investment, so efficiency becomes important.
The EU-China trade war is typical trade war, the party (EU) which wants to stop the flow of cheap panels is loosing by getting its demands met. A low cost solar panel imported to EU is making net profit to EU, as it produces much more energy during its lifetime than was made in its production. Even if Chinese government subsidized Europeans making cheaper energy, it would be a win for Europe. EU wants China to get more of that profit, at cost of allowing European Solar industry to become even more uncompetitive by avoiding necessary restructuring and innovation.
Before you make that statement, you need to asses the manufacturing impact of the solar panels. Whilst they may not generate any CO2 after installation, there's a lot of nasty stuff involved before they get to your rooftop.
A number of supposedly "green" solutions are worse than the things they replace, so it's worth approaching them with a degree of cynicism (Eg, bio-ethanol often uses more fossil fuel in its production than the energy derived from the fuel as sold - and that's on top of the issue of damaging the "food pool")
Ditto "hybrid cars" - a lot of them involve so much extra manufacturing cost/CO2 generation that they're a net negative over their lifespan over a standard vehicle. (Bear in mind that for most cars around 50% of their lifetime CO2 generation occurs before the engine is switched on for the first time.)
I'm in no way associated with the crazy ideaological shit that happens stateside, but the issues aren't black and white. Much of the high tech is cool as hell. but not practical for mass production until the backend issues are properly sorted out. In the meantime the best way of reducing CO2 impact is to drive less, use less power, eat less luxury stuff (The CO2 associated with food transport and production is mind-boggling) and most importantly of all: Have fewer children.
Bravo!
Simple wishful thinking because it opposes your deception.
It's also amusing that you are dismissing experience from some time back extending to the current day as less relevant than your computer science studies - what a pathetic little bluff.
Since you are arguing that very tightly controlled and clean signals are causing instability, which is the opposite of what is observed, you really need to put up some kind of fact to back it up instead of "trust me - I know about computers".
You are gravely misrepresenting the issue here and pretending a series of unrelated problems is a single one that conveniently fits your silly propaganda and can be blamed on a thing you do not like.
With respect, in comparison to output from other generators it IS trivial. Not much power in one spot, spread out, clean signals with the right timing. How could it be anything else? Oh yes - those mythical spikes that somehow leap out of a DC source and somehow bypass and ignore everything that is turning it into better behaved AC than anything without those rectifiers. You should know better than that from your high school physics.
More doublespeak.
If a government confiscates a smaller fraction of a person's earnings, the government did not "give" money to that person. It was never the government's to give; 100% of it belonged to the person until the moment when taxes were rendered. It's just scary how many people have begun to think of all assets as belonging to the government, and that we should be grateful for whatever fraction the government "allows" us to keep.
If words are to mean anything, government "giving" should be reserved for situations where a person receives some benefit without having paid for it. NOT for a mere adjustment in the rate at which privately-owned assets are confiscated.
Confiscating fewer privately-owned assets only increases the deficit if the government is already living beyond its means. In 1998 - 2001 there were four consecutive years of surpluses. If fewer private assets had been confiscated during those years, the short-term effect would have been a smaller surplus, not a larger deficit. (And the long-term effect depends on whether we sit on the inhumane side of the Laffer Curve.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Thanks for the thorough treatment of this subject. However, you have called it a "tax break" as well as a "subsidy." It can't be both -- see "The Difference Between a Tax Break and a Subsidy" on the aptly-named Reason.com.
It's pure Orwellian doublespeak to assert that confiscating a smaller fraction of a Company X's profits is the same thing as subsidizing Company X. I have no particular love for the oil industry, but freedom from doublespeak is something for which we should all fight passionately.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And who would be responsible for ensuring these external costs are accounted for in the price? I don't see how this would be possible without government involvement.
What are you talking about? Really, you're not making any sense. You sound like you're talking about stock investment instead of public-sector infrastructure.
Seriously, by your line of argument, the freeways wouldn't exist. You need to look beyond the near-term immediately quantifiable numbers. A power utility has a low rate of return when properly operated and managed. The only power utilities that get high margins are the ones on the verge of breaking things -- like Enron. That said, the greater return -- beyond just the financials of the utility company itself -- includes things like, you know, people having relatively inexpensive access to electric power. Which is kind of a requirement for anything resembling a modern life and economy.
Enterprises with low rates of financial return, but high rates of overall return in terms of what they enable, are precisely the kinds of things that government should do, precisely because the private sector either won't get involved, or will engineer market conditions that benefit the company while screwing over everyone else. Imagine if every road were a toll road, or if every power company were like Enron. I certainly don't want to live in that world.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I always love how shrill this discussion is. Just curious...
Say that we wanted to switch over alternative fuels now, how much could they actually provide in the way of energy? Just curious, how much solar can our cars use? Trains? Trucks, which carry about 50% of the good we all use across the country? Industry? About 7%. Not ready for prime-time.
Here's how to do it: Be innovative, keep the cost down and compete:
http://thezeroenergyhome.com/
Yes, government involvement is always needed to prevent market failures. Breaking up monopolies is another example.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Instead they are designed to do things like cover the sudden loss of 500MW or so when a unit fails somewhere on the grid. The sort of thing that happens every year or two in state sized grids. Keep that in mind and consider your proposed problem again, which is far easier to handle than such incidents.
Because I have been in distribution control rooms and had it all carefully explained to me and had a long association with people who actually are experts in this field and talk about it at length. Sadly I don't have to be anything close to being an expert to identify the technical flaws in the propaganda you were parroting when you presented yourself as an expert to rudely attack the poster far above and attempt to mislead them.
You seem to have forgotten how a combined turbine and generator works - there is no DC line. Coils spinning and stationary coils. AC comes out. High school stuff. For a while it looked like you were starting to think for yourself but now you've reverted to making things up again.
It's your misinterpretation of what they are saying, especially your own contribution of "to enable spot generation" that is at fault. A combination of neglect and expanded requirements mean that huge investments are necessary in a lot of areas whether people put photovoltaics on their roof or not.
My point is that the experts are not saying what you are which is why I took you to task in the first place.
You misunderstand what is required (and what is in place). It's like turning off peak water heaters on and off. 20th century technology not microcontrollers.
No.
HVDC power transmission is still very new and rare. There's an interesting wikipedia page on it you may want to look at and it's the way of the future for very long distance transmission but you seem to have been very gravely misled by someone. Those 30kV lines you see crossing the landscape are most definitely AC.
No, not really. I personally believe that there is no compelling evidence that AGW exists, or that CO2 is in any way a pollutant - but that has absolutely *nothing* to do with why I'm against solar subsidies, whether backed by the GOP, the Democrat party, or anyone else. (Not solar itself, note the difference...)
(Disclosure - I've spent the last five years in the solar industry, dragging it kicking and screaming into the modern world...)
Solar still has a great many problems, and is very, very far from the panacea that most people in the industry (and green fanboys) delude themselves into believing.
First, solar is not economically feasible without huge government subsidies unless you live on an island or similarly remote area and have to ship in your fuel. This is not easy to change - panels are cheap (and getting a little cheaper), but most of the money in a solar install is not the panels, but rather the BOS (balance of system) cost. BOS costs are NOT falling, and may be going up with increased regulation. Let solar grow into the places where it makes sense - subsidies only distort the market and create huge incentive for graft, corruption, and cronyism. (Solyndra really is a great example here - it was clear from the very beginning that there was no way a company could spend $7/Watt to build goofy tubular PV and sell into a market where top-grade German panels could be had for $4/W. This was just the worst sort of corrupt cronyism on an unprecedented scale.) Recent studies in Spain have shown that any ground-mount array not only produces marked ecological damage, but that you will *never* recover the site prep energy required by a large-scale ground-mount array. And we're just starting to wake up to the risk that rooftop solar arrays present in a fire - there are downsides to materials that MUST (according to quantum physics) produce voltage when exposed to sunlight - many fire departments are instituting "watch it burn" policies for building with rooftop solar arrays, since there is no other reasonable way to protect firefighters on a solar roof. Bottom line, Solar is still *really* expensive, and not reliable enough to benefit the grid on a large scale. (Germany's grid is facing instability issues related to their relatively high usage of solar.) The US EIA reports that the LCOE (levelized cost of energy, taking into account lifecycle costs) of solar PV is at best about 3X that of combined cycle natural gas, with a capacity factor (availability) of only around 25%, compared to 85-90% for coal, gas, or nuclear. "Grid parity" is still a pipe dream.)
Second, solar panels don't last *nearly* as long or work nearly as well as people (including the manufacturers) say. I know - my team built and collected the largest database of per-panel performance data the world has ever seen. Very minor soiling (say, a business-card-sized drop of bird crap) eliminates 1/3 of the power output of most panels. Add another one or two in that string, and you've now removed that entire string's power production from your array. Even a little shade, as you might expect, can cripple the performance of entire arrays. The harsh economic reality is that you need at least 20-25 years of production to breakeven - even *with* most subsidies. (With current technology, the power output of even quality panels degrades very rapidly after about 20 years. Yes, that's right, you get to re-buy your solar power generation every couple of decades, and deal with difficult-to-get-to toxic heavy metal waste in the old ones...) There are good quality panels out there that last, but we're starting to see way too many arrays with third-tier Chinese panels beginning to fail in the field after only 5-8 years (delamination and backing failures being the most common). Arrays being built with most of the crap that's on the market now will *never* breakeven. (And even the Chinese cannot afford to continue selling panels at current prices - a shakeout is virtually inevitable, and will traumatize the industry even further
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
$10b goes a long way towards making something 'cheaper'.
No, based on what we've seen the last few years, it just fuels corrupt cronyism...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Solyndra's product was *always* stupid, and was inherently even less efficient than the already abysmal efficiency we get from conventional solar panels. The *only* advantage of Solydra's technology was that snow could (maybe, if you were lucky) fall between the tubes and you could generate power in the winter, while flat panels were blanketed in snow, if you're unfortunate enough to live someplace where it snows.
All kidding aside, this is a big benefit, since PV produces far more power cold weather, but it's not nearly enough to offset all the other really big drawbacks to Solyndra's approach. At the time of Solyndra's bankruptcy, their technology cost nearly twice as much - but it would be 4-5X today, since Si panels bacame so cheap...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Those are not subsidies, they are ordinary tax deductions. The cost of drilling wells is part of the COGS - Cost of Goods Sold - this is and always has been deductible in all modern tax codes, in all industries, for at least he last 100 years...
Subsidies are *payments* made, usually to encourage behavior that is otherwise economically harmful. Solar does get subsidies - governments write checks or grant fungible tax credits such as RECs and give them to solar developers. Fossil fuels (with a few niggling corner-case exceptions) do not get subsidies...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
and how in about '66 or '67 Texaco payed less in Federal Income Tax than just one of the cleaning ladies at its New York headquarters
Corporations NEVER, EVER pay taxes. Sure, they may write a check to the government (although they owe it to their investors and customers to make sure that check is as small as possible) , but that cost is then necessarily passed on to their customers in the form of higher prices, and thus eventually to consumers. One of the biggest lies anywhere is the notion that you can tax corporations (evil, noble, or otherwise) at all. In reality, every corporate tax is paid for by all of us. There really is no such thing as a tax on corporations, just indirect and wildly inefficient tax collection mechanisms.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Whether or not SolarCity is getting direct subsidies (and I find it difficult to believe that they're not), they are most certainly getting the indirect benefits of those subsidies (tradeable renewable energy credits (RECs), etc.), since that's what's driving almost all solar projects today (which is why most are in New Jersey (nice, sunny place, that) and California - that's where the subsidies are biggest and still flowing. (Look at all the solar activity in Colorado that dried up overnight when the state killed the subsidy program...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Germany is hardly what anyone would call a bastion of sunshine, but they seem to be making quite a go of solar.
And a large part of that is their ability to lavishly fund subsidies because we provide a fair portion of their defense - and pay them for our bases there to do it...
Not that I'm advocating subsidies, I'm not, but it's fair to point out that European socialist welfare/subsidy states could not exist if it were not for the US subsidizing the costs of their defense. Not that I advocate that, either...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Every rooftop that doesn't have solar panels is a target for panels
No, that's just wrong - your roof has to face within about 20 degrees of due south if those panels are ever to produce enough power to recover their cost. (Actually, about 15-20 degrees West of South is ideal from an economic point of view, since power is worth more in the late afternoon.)
Also, if your roof has any shade (trees, chimneys, etc.) then you can lose a large portion of your generating capacity. Microinverters help, since they keep the losses to only the shaded panels, but they are really only cost effective for homes and fairly small commercial rooftops, today.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Lots of people tried to do thin-film/amorphous solar panels. All the others had the sense to make them flat to maximize the sun exposure rather than coat the entire inside surface of a tube, only half (at best) of which was going to catch sunlight anyway. Solyndra's engineering and design wasn't flat - but it was just flat awful.
Seriously, it's hard to imagine a stupider idea to throw over half a billion dollars at than Solyndra (maybe feeding plants Brawndo?) - this was corruption and unsavory dealing at its worst. Solyndra was doomed by a stupid concept, as anyone with any technical ability at all knew from the beginning.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
The biggest subsidy fossil fuel companies get is they don't have to pay the cost the pollution the use of their products imposes on society.
Except it is not the fossil fuel companies that are burning the fossil fuels. How are they responsible for the 20 gallons of gasoline that YOU choose to burn each week? How are the fossil fuel companies responsible for the pollution created to provide YOU with electricity?
You are the one who chooses to use the energy so how is it all THEIR fault? Right. The issue is a bit more complex than my fault/your fault.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Excusing you from something *everyone else* has to do - eg pay taxes - is a form of subsidy. It's special treatment. It's a benefit.
A subsidy is any form of financial assistance. If someone else pays your bills (a tax writeoff on equipment is exactly equivalent to having someone else contribute the taxable value of that equipment) then it's a subsidy. The taxpayer is picking up some or all of the cost of doing business.
But fine, if you only want to include direct payments - The fossil fuel industry receives billions in direct payments. $3.4 billion in cash (grants) and another $1.3 billion in preferential loan guaranteed as part of the Recovery Act in 2009. Everyone complains about the $535 mil Solyndra got but nobody seems to care that they gave the oil industry nine times as much cash when they didn't even need it.
Sometimes subsidies are warranted and justified. It's not justified when the person or entity receiving this perk could handily get by without the preferential treatment. If people making over $15,000/yr don't qualify for earned income tax credit, why should a company making billions in NET profit qualify for tax writeoffs and other benefits?
=Smidge=
I did not work in the control centres, and neither did you mister self declared expert.
I'm not even going to bother to read the cut and paste from wikipedia that I pointed you to about a non-solar reason why it's a good idea to upgrade grids. Why are you continuing this silly bluff after the "star DC from the 1950s" mistake?
shut the fuck up you hyperbole abusig son of a bitch
You didn't read my reply to the AC, did you?
States rights is not about allowing oppression, but allowing the people of a state to organize a government fitting their culture. Our current system does not allow this. Rather, it forces each state to adhere to what the federal judiciary and Congress believe should be a one-size-fits-all vision of America. Anyone who has looked at a "red/blue map" of America knows that we are dividied country, now more than ever in our history, and we need to devolve decision making down to the community level as much as possible. Most of our bad federal policies these days come from forcing all important decision making as high up the government food chain as possible rather than letting communities decide. So now you have a culture war between Chicago and the rural South and Midwest over gun rights because the federal government is inextricably involved that the two views cannot coexist within their communities.
As America becomes more diverse, poorer and the federal government more strained we will face a choice. Either we can devolve decision making to communities to take pressure off of the central government or face the inevitable acrimony as large minorities decide to break away because they are tired of having their visions consistently crushed by a small majority.
The further down decision making is pushed, the easier it is for political rights to be upheld. It's easier for a minority (political, racial or otherwise) to rebel or relocate when most decisions are made at the local level than the federal level. The further down you go, the smaller the political authority you are challenging. It's easier to challenge a mayor and sheriff than a governor; it's easier to rise up against a governor than the President with the backing of the US Army. It's much harder to justify federal involvement in an armed conflict between a revolting minority in one city when the federal government is not being challenged.
There are things that are completely ugly, and then there are things that are a matter of taste. Personally I like the look of solar panels and think they are a whole lot prettier than shingles.
However, these associations use the aesthetic excuse for banning people from putting any solar up even on back roofs. So we know where they are really coming from.
Someone had to do it.
The problem with a flat design was two fold. One is that it doesn't allow for wind to pass through as easily. This helps with the survivability but not efficiency of the panels in places that have high winds (like dust storms in the desert where many panels are located). The second problem is that a flat design requires some orientation to the sun. Many solar panels require motors to angle the panels based on the time of day. There is less reliance with Solyndra's design.
The main issue is cost really. With cheap silicon based panels flooding the market and the drop in gas prices to $3 range, Solyndra's design is not cost efficient. The gamble of half a billion dollars was that, a gamble. If gas prices hit the $5 mark and China didn't subsidize the silicon panel industry, Solyndra might have survived.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
you mean like coal, gas and oil pay their own way? They get hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies every year.
Not really. They pretty much get standard equipment depreciation schedules, present in virtually all heavy industry. They also get to deduct dry wells and other losses, also pretty standard stuff. Ethanol is a racket and basically just exist so that we may sacrifice to the corn gods, but oil and gas don't really get many subsidies that aren't standard for all industries. Per kilowatt hour, renewables get far more in the way of subsidies than oil or coal.
The Gospel according to lolcat
If the US and the EU decide to leave their renewable energy sector to the whims of the free market, while allowing China to subsidizes the hell out of it- we might as well just hand the entire industry over to them.
And if Chinese taxpayers foot our bill, what's the problem with that exactly? I'm not bothered by some foreign country subsidizing my lifestyle.
The Gospel according to lolcat
They DO have a thing called "winter" in Phoenix.
While, I do think that they could benefit from a lot more PV and solar thermal use (they're using incredibly scarce fresh water to cool that nuclear power plant in the desert), I can see why they still need clothes dryers.
The AC, IMO, is more a function of culture than necessity. Folks in these warmer climates DO tend to overcompensate. When I was in Illinois, people would crank them up full-blast in the summer, because it was so damn humid outside, and it felt so damn good to come inside from being out in it. But not so good to sit in the chill all day long, freezing your ass off.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Even though the oil/gas companies are diversified I am sure they are also behind their customers, the power companies.
These are the same tired and overwrought points y'all have been preaching since the 1970s. Americans don't want nukes, so just give it up. Move on!
Unless, or course, you are in favor of tyranny and ignoring the people's will. In that case, you've got a career in government waiting for you; you'll fit right in!
"Big bets don't always work"
That's why you are supposed to "bet" with private money and not taxpayer money.
When Obama says he is "investing" I want to puke. You can't "invest" with money that isn't your own, but you can sure gamble. It's so wonderful to live in a country where we get to be involuntarily co-dependent to a gambleholic, and Solyndra wasn't the only gamble that failed to pay off.
Solar power will come on in a big way, some day, but we don't currently have the technology to make it practical (in terms of cost or efficiency). We don't know what discovery lays in our future that will take us from the "vacuum tube" stage to the "transistor" era of solar power, but we do know which was created by government and which by private money.
I don't care if you want to put solar panels on your roof with your money, but millions of people are putting the equivalent of vacuum tubes on their roof and I'm being forced to pay for it.
Funny how there is an inverse relationship between government subsidies over time and the amount of usefulness of the internet over time.
Solar is great for micro/local-level offsets in particularly sunny places
So having exactly that as part of a national energy policy is not viable why, exactly? Oh, wait... you cited some "expert" on why Germany's renewable energy policy is such a "disaster". Too bad your "expert", one Ryan Carlyle, an engineer employed in (drum roll, please) ...the petroleum industry. Puh-lease.
The fact of the matter is that the technology commonly being deployed in Germany is a resounding success. Is it yet an economical replacement for fossil-fuel generated electricity? No, but then the key word is "yet". As fossil fuels become more expensive (due to both production and carbon mitigation costs) solar (small local installations) looks better and better. Only an idiot (or a petroleum industry whore) would refuse to recognize this trend.
You've said the solar is competitive but haven't stated whether it is competitive w/o the federal support, which is absolutely necessary. I see no conflict provided the government quit subsidizing solar and every other form of energy.
I suppose you think someday soon Scrooge McDucks money pool will be empty.
Money doesn't work like you think it does.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
All those investments 'worked out' just as intended. Money flowed to friends of the administration. Anything that happened after that is secondary.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You have liars claiming that taxes on gasoline that are used to maintain roads are a subsidy for gasoline. That normal business expenses write offs are subsidies.
Your side has lost all credibility on this point. Want to get it back? Call them on their bullshit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So what you are saying is you and your associates are so dumb you can't even do the least challenging job in construction?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Unless something changes in Africa, China will have the same luck there as everyone else did.
China will lose their investment and be called racist imperialists just for having tried to bring Africa out of the bronze age.
Besides which China doesn't really own much of a market. Granting they supply a big market, it can be pulled out from under them just as easily as it was _given_ to them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Monopolies on commodity goods are never assured. Anything made in China for export is a commodity good.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ok, I am from Arizona and I can tell you why you don't want to hang you clothes outside to dry, dust. Lots and lots of dust. Oh, and the get kinda of crisp and crinkly, and scratchy.
Now if someone were to build a heat exchanger dryer, that would work, most of the time.
What I want to know is why they put the stove and the dryer in the middle of the house where you have to manage all the waste heat with your air conditioner.
Hey, why not use the waste heat from the A/C to dry clothes.
Arizona has not been a hotbed for innovation for a long time. Build it fast and build it cheap. Offload as much of the cost to the community as possible.
Do fossil fuels even pay their own way?
I too don't think the govt should be picking winners and losers either, most especially because the merit being judged here is likely political rather than technical.
I like that the market is starting to work to promote solar, and I think soon it will pick up on other "green" energy things. Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
That being said...I hope the govt also doesn't jump in (either party) and start trying to regulate to death the fledgling solar industry or other green energy companies.
Govt should be there just enough to allow the market to roll, but also stay out of the way once it starts rolling.
Are you serious?
Why shouldn't they get to write it off?
Isn't it a standard business expense just like depreciation?
As if that doesn't happen with all administrations.
“Every town or city has a vast expanse of roof exposed to the sun. There is no reason why we should not use the roofs of our houses to install solar apparatus to catch and store the heat received from the sun. Solar heat [can be used].... to heat a liquid and store the liquid in an insulated tank... applying even the Thermos bottle principle of a partial vacuum around the tank.” (1914) “Coal and oil are......strictly limited in quantity. We can take coal out of a mine but we can never put it back.” “What shall we do when we have no more coal or oil?” “[ The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect.” “The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house.”(1917). -- He was pretty much on the button I'd say.
thats how production ended up in china,