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Clinton Promises 500 Million New Solar Panels
An anonymous reader writes: Hillary Clinton, widely regarded as most likely to win the Democrat nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has unveiled her campaign climate plan. Speaking at Iowa State University, Clinton said she would set up tax incentives for renewable energy to drive further adoption. She also set a goal of installing half a billion new solar panels within her first term, if elected. Her plan would cost roughly $60 billion over 10 years, and she intends to pay for it by cutting tax breaks to the oil and gas industry. According to The Guardian, "Clinton has promised to make the issue of climate change a key pillar of her campaign platform."
How about attempting to end all federal subsidies and let us keep our own money and spend it how we see fit?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
She's getting a little ahead of herself there. She's assuming she will beat Trump.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is simply a reaction against Bernie Sanders. He is far more socialist than the original 'HIllary is a leftist (err center)' view and yet he is gaining ground (or beating Clinton in certain arenas).
I expect we'll see some republican candidates become more conservative as an action against Trump.
Also....who cares? These election promises are just hot smoke to blow up the public's collective ass. "Of course I love you, baby! No way, I'd never leave before breakfast!". etc.
I hate that saying though... what did those poor little birds do to you?!
She wants to cut tax breaks to industries that are making billions in profit to help make her country less dependant on limited ressources.
She'd have my vote except for the fact that I don't live in the U.S.A.
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One thing is for sure, the oil companies are going to spend up big on their brethren in the Republican Party to ensure that they get to keep their federal subsidies.
They won't want to lose those, that's for damn sure.
Even though subsidies are about as anti-Republican as you can get, nobody is going to say no to free government money and will do whatever they have to in order for it to keep flowing.
I promise I'll vote for any semi-competent alternative candidate who is not part of the Clinton/Bush family. Hell, I might even just write in Elizabeth Warren.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I know it is not enough to handle all our energy needs but this would be a good step forward, and presumably it would drive down the cost of solar panels. It is the kind of policy that would truly ve future oriented.
If solar is stored in lead-acid,how does it become environmentally friendly?
she intends to pay for it by cutting tax breaks to the oil and gas industry.
Wow so now she is backing out of the race entirely? If she was actually serious about it she would never get elected. My guess is if elected those cuts would mysteriously change place and come from somewhere with less money flowing into Washington.
And on top of it, you get a level of transparency the resembles what a blackhole does to sunlight her supporters will be just shocked--SHOCKED--that voting for a candidate with her horrendous record on honesty backfired on them.
I mean FFS, I'm generally a conservative and I'd vote for Bernie Sanders in a heartbeat over her even though he's an avowed Socialist because at least the man seems to have some real integrity and respect for the middle class.
I'm kind of wondering where they would all go.
If each panel was a square meter, that's 193 square miles of solar panels.
I'll even do the install on my home myself.
give me 30 monocrystalline current tech 300 watt panels. 9000 Watt Hour will reduce my carbon footprint dramatically, in fact I will use a syncing inverter that will push my excess power back to the grid so that my neighbors can benefit from it.
I'll even put a sign in my yard for her if she does this.
Note to the uneducated that will pipe in, This is how most solar installations work, grid intertied syncing inverters without battery storage are incredibly common for solar installs. No it doesn't cost the power company anything.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Cutting tax breaks sounds like a viable funding scheme on its face, but in the modern accounting regime that'll simply drive fossil fuel profits to offshore subsidiaries, with no substantial funding increase.
Cutting existing subsidies, conversely, offers real money to finance programs like this.
Its not a funding scheme. Its a get elected scheme. Net cost and cost benefit considerations are not even a part of it. The formula is "punish big evil companies, give away stuff to the masses". It works.
She needs to tread carefully with this. Obama's first move was to get involved with Solyndra, a company that made solar panels, and it was a huge failure and amounted to what was business fraud in the end (he pumped taxpayer money into a company doomed to fail from the outset, while the owners got to pocket tons of bucks).
I drive past the former Solyndra building every day to work, and it is a constant reminder of him either being so unprepared that he made a terrible mistake or mislead the public to enrich his business buddies. Given the unethical stuff he's doing now (Expanded drilling for Shell, trying to push TPP through, Keystone XL work, etc.) it was likely the latter.
I want Hillary to win, but a big solar component to her plan will make the Republicans bring up Solyndra over and over again.
What this means to the layperson is, "The solar industry can't survive on its own and needs a crap-ton of subsidies to keep it afloat."
This didn't work in the 70s but I guess because "the right people" will be in charge, it'll work this time around.
That has to be the most paranoid, pedantic and inane wiki article I've ever read.
The term "Democrat..." has been used countless times by DEMOCRATS themselves on television for as long as I can remember.
You might as well get your panties in a twist because people don't call you "Star-Lord".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That will cost a minimum of 75 million dollars.
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Rooftop solar is a great offset for energy usage in sunny parts of the country where the construction is all one-story. Now what about the high-rise apartment buildings in cities where the roof area per inhabitant is tiny and where buildings shade each other at different times of the day? Renewable power sources are highly situational, in that the type and availability of each source, and how they might mesh together, is heavily dependent on location. Then consider demand: a household may not mind having to wait to turn the oven on until the sun is high, while an industrial user has no such option.
If Hillary wants the government to help, there is a better way to do it than having it subsidize all the "good" energy and hope for the best. Fix the legal system so that all forms of energy construction are limited only by the siting and safety standards that apply to that source, with the religious preferences of political pressure groups losing all legal standing to interfere. Capital will then flow to energy projects that are the best for each place.
$60 Billion for 500 million panels = $120 per panel. Of course, panel size is not specified (not a needed detail when hawking votes), but the present incentives are more than that per panel if you are talking $1kw panels or larger. Is she proposing a reduction in incentives?
unless you're a Republican
Shouldn't that read "unless you're a Republic"?
Have gnu, will travel.
You act like Oil Companies care about solar panels.... They don't. Let me explain why...
Solar panels exclusively generate electricity, Oil companies have little to do with electricity. Yea, they sell natural gas to electric producers, but that's the limit of their involvement in electricity production. Natural gas production is not a huge money maker right now, prices are down even though demand is up and there is little expectation that this changes in the next decade. Oil companies don't care about solar panels or wind farms because they don't have anything to do with their core business. Start messing with fuel oil, gasoline and other Oil based industrial production, then you might get some interest from big oil.
Of course this Clinton position is about appealing to the liberal environmentalists. Now THAT does interest Big Oil because this position implies a national energy position that is slanted in a way that impacts the ability of oil companies to produce more domestically. Solar panels don't matter to this, but it's the rest or the implied policy that this solar panel idea betrays.
So you are parroting what really amounts to a "liberal lie", which amounts to a misrepresentation of what is really going on. Big Oil doesn't oppose solar panels... They simply don't care...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Does the US manufacture a significant amount of solar panels, or will much of this money go overseas?
But the fact of the matter is that people are short sighted and subsequently, the markets.
Look it now. With all this abnormally cheap gasoline, people don't give a shit about gas mileage anymore. Now is a great time to buy a hybrid or electric, btw.
But, petroleum WILL go back up again and we'll be back where we started.
Secondly, pollution. I want clean air. I hate this bullshit of smog days and being told to stay in - I love being outdoors. And unfortunately, the majority of people don't care because they are couch potatoes and stay in.
Third - the future. China is investing heavily in solar and other non-fossil fuel energy production. While we the US insist on staying in the 19th century. In other words, we're setting ourselves up to be stuck behind because we are so short sighted - which is what the free markets do; be short sighted.
$60 Billion for 500 million panels = $120 per panel. Of course, panel size is not specified (not a needed detail when hawking votes), but the present incentives are more than that per panel if you are talking $1kw panels or larger. Is she proposing a reduction in incentives?
My first impression is that this is the standard politician trick of promising something that is already highly likely to occur or inevitable. Most successful politicians, regardless of political party, use these kind of promises all the time. Especially in areas where the measurement of progress can be boiled down to a single or a small number of numerical values.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
But if you're a heavy in the stock market, you couldn't ask for better. She's gonna make a lot of money for some folks. Just be sure to cash out in 2023
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Current projections I've seen show about that many being installed regardless of what political efforts are underway. So she's basically pulling a Canute. That's really bold and ambitious of her. /s
public: what about rampant police abuse of power?
the constant unending stream of shadow money into political campaigns?
the nearly endless war on terror and our secret torture prison in Cuba?
What are you going to do about the impending student loan collapse and the rampant US unemployment fueled by abusive trade agreements that are largely unreported?
what approach will you take to immigration reform?
How will you address the growing number of domestic mass shootings?
What is your approach to the continued neglect of social security? the highway trust? the Veterans Administration?
Clinton: Free solar panels for everything forever.
Good people go to bed earlier.
What exactly is she talking about? Every company has to follow GAAP accounting. Expenses are deducted from earnings to arrive at profits, which are taxed at rates set by federal law. Depreciation schedules are also set by law. Is she talking about requiring gas and oil companies to follow more punitive tax laws, which have not been written or passed? Is it even legal to treat some companies differently than others depending on their product?
All authoritarians are bad at math. Many of them just incompetent and the moment they open their mouth and speak in areas that require quantification, they fail often.
This time is not exception. Who does Hillary has in her presidential team? Liberal art majors?
Here is the calculation:
One solar panel generates approximately 200 Wh of energy. Some might say solar panel generates 230 Wh, but for the sake of simple and easy to understand calculation let's use 200 Wh. There will be 500 million of them.
Let's say there will be 4 hours sun in one day, called Peak Sun hours, a factor which need to be taken into account when making this calculation. Let's say there will be 365 days in a year.
Total energy will be generated per hour: 500 million panels times 200 Wh= 100,000 million Watt hours, or 100,000,000,000 Wh, or 100,000,000, KWh, or 100,000 Mega Wh, or 100 Giga Wh per one hour. My math is correct so far. Right? Per year total energy to be generated 100 GWh X 4 hours x 365 days in a year = 146,000 GWh = 146 TWh.
146 TWh, is the output of 500,000,000 of solar panels
Total energy consumed in USA in 2009, is approx 25,000 TWh per year, here is the source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So Hillary is proposing to install solar panels that will be 0.5% of overall energy consumption?
Calculating energy in solar panels, is just as bad as scaring the world with Iran's 100,000 centrifuges, or measuring volume with Olympic size pools.
Yeah. Authoritarians are often bad at math and they are bad this time also.
0.5 % is of course better than nothing, speaking in absolute terms, but the same, or more, can be achieved by many other alternatives.
Because if she is, then I'll certainly take them. Otherwise, piss off.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I was told there were going to be death panels!
When the hell is O'bummer going to take our guns?!! He better hurry up!
Because subsidies turn 10k of PV into 30k, much like when the 7k fed tax credit for hybrids went away the price went down 7k.
No sir I dont like it.
I will never understand why Democratics take such offense to this, it seems like it's about the least offense slur one can muster. The appropriate response is on the order of an eyeroll.
When Obama calls tea party members "teabaggers," isn't using the term "Democrat Party" like bringing a wet noodle to a gun fight?
Hey, its amazing how fast people will work for an extra $120 per panel.
Not trolling here, but you assume a lot of people think all those are a bad thing.
My check from the government is my earned entitlement. Your check from the government is an amoral welfare. Paul Ryan hates Social Security, but when he drew Social Security to get to college, it was somehow fine. Even Ayn Rand drew government checks.
Also JEB Bush is redundant, like typing your PIN Number on an ATM Machine. J.E.B. is an acronym for John Elliot Bush. The Bush is redundant, much like Bushes in general ;) Ok, that last part was a troll, but the first part not, I swear.
She could strangle puppies on live TV and the Democrats would nominate her.
She's batshit crazy in the most evil of ways.
Wait a second here... We don't know that they will nominate her.. They didn't LAST time she ran and was seen as the heir apparent... And look who beat her then... A junior senator from Illinois out of Chicago who NOBODY outside of his state had taken any notice of...
Looking back, I wish she'd won that nomination.... Where I believe she would have won the general too, there would have been no way for her to win the second term and we'd be done with this craziness by now... Besides, Bill would have loved a new batch of interns to play with as I'm sure he's a lonely man even at his age...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The current trend is 500 million new solar panels without any special action by any legislator/executive. Simple market forces and trend lines. Residential solar is becoming competitive with subsidies and net metering. Utility scale solar is on track to become competitive with natural gas in a few years. It is already competitive with coal for fresh installations. No new coal plant has come on line this year and last. The pipeline is dry too. Number of coal plants have fallen from 633 to 518 in the last decade. Coal has lost 20 GW of capacity in that time, and is on track to lose another 40 GW. Natural gas providing base load and solar meeting the peak load is going to become the norm in the next 10 years. No new breakthrough in energy storage, no battery wall made by Elon Musk, no widespread investment by home owners needed. Simple existing technologies, free market forces, interest rates and world flush with 2 trillion in capital not knowing where to invest for good returns.
So half billion new solar panels might happen no matter who wins, Hilary or Jeb! or Walker or Trump or Bernie. We might even look back and see Hilary's half a billion solar panels the same way we look at Romney's 2$ gasoline.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The same question could be asked about oil.
Each one has a little solar panel and an LED that comes on at night; they'r eimported from China by the million. I have a half dozen of them along my driveway.
She also set a goal of installing half a billion new solar panels within her first term
Come on, even working four years straight there's no way she can install that many solar panels!
On the other hand, if she's doing that there's no way she has time to screw up the country like past presidents... OK, i'm in, as long as she keeps her promise to just install solar panels.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
500 new solar panels AND a pony. No, TWO ponies. And a yacht. And a lifetime supply of whiskey. And Sofía Vergara as my personal sex slave.
I mean, as long as we're dreaming....
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Let's not get into any more long-term debt for it (with creative accounting, more national debt, etc.), but I'm sure there's some way to get these panels out there with a long-term support plan.
No more Solyndra-type money into black holes, please.
Why do you think that even matters? If it's down to a Bush/Clinton matchup, who WOULDN'T vote for the Trump candidate... hell, the result is in the name!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Big oil opposes and end to oil subsidies. Clear enough for you.
I'm voting for Bernie, the Independent Social.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We need to drop the subsidies and simply say that all buildings less than 6 stories are to have enough on-site AE to equal the energy used for the HVAC (and require AC as well). In addition, the local utility must buy any daily extra at the maximum price that it costs them to buy electricity from elsewhere.
If she gets that passed, then not only will it put a stop to energy growth, but it will pretty much encourage cheaper buildings, and storage mechanism.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I"m still trying to thumb through my US Constitution and find where within the enumerated responsibilities and rights of the Federal Govt. that it is charged with picking winners and losers in industry. Also,where in there is the Fed govt supposed to figure out health costs of one industry vs another and penalize one over another?
And no, it has nothing to do with the "General Welfare" parts....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
She probably means the more common 250W panel size, and is including installation costs, and other equipment costs like the inverter.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Which cost more per KW overall. What a senseless waste if that is the case.
Ayn Rand at least, was forced to pay into that fund. Why should she surrender her money just because she opposes the program?
It is up for debate whether Ayn Rand could have taken the money that she'd have gotten back in her SS checks and have done better with investing that money or not. The thing is, she had no choice in the matter and it is always supposed to have been her money. It wasn't some sort of government largess, you know.
That's like saying that someone who opposed Communism that waited in a food line in the Soviet Union was hypocritical for taking food from the government while opposing it.
I suppose they have the option of starving themselves to death to make a point, but suicide isn't actually required for you to sincerely believe in something.
Big oil opposes and end to oil subsidies. Clear enough for you.
There are NO subsidies unique to oil companies that I know of.. Care to enlighten me?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
My check from the government is my earned entitlement. Your check from the government is an amoral welfare. Paul Ryan hates Social Security, but when he drew Social Security to get to college, it was somehow fine. Even Ayn Rand drew government checks.
Because as an individual its not a moral act. You leave nothing on the frigging table. Rand and Ryan I am sure never voted to support those programs, they also never voted for the taxes and regulations they labored under before or after utilizing them.
If there were an option to opt out of society and only opt back in when the time to collect comes that would be wrong. The way I figure it even though I totally support dismantling most of what the federal government does until someone tells me I don't have to file a 1040 form and sends me a check re-reimbursing me with interest for all the various activities my tax dollars have paid for along the way that I did not support you better believe I feel entitled to collect from and utilize programs I qualify for. I did not vote for them, I did not get my way. My fellow citizens did however.
Its a democratic republic. We take the consequences of elections good or bad. There is nothing wrong with voting to end programs, distributions, etc and still taking advantage of them if you loose. That is inherit in the rules of our society.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
True, but they are more practical due to smaller size.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
True, but they are more practical due to smaller size.
More practical? You are reaching.
>solar, wind, and other sources of cleaner energy
>ending reliance on foreign oil and domestic coal
It's funny how Hillary is repeating things Sanders has been talking about for 40 years. All except for the things that really matter, like bringing back Glass-Steagall.
I vote D most of the time and she can fuck right off.
And no, I won't settle for Hillary because Bernie is "too radical" (all his policies are supported by the majority of people if you ask them) and that if he wins the nomination he might lose to a Republican. No, no he wont. The Republicans have people who appeal to the Idiocracy (seriously listen to Rubio or Cruz, they talk like they know what they're doing, but they're really empty suits) but that only gets them through the Primaries. Against Bernie in a national election, they fail.
Hillary is in such a bind it's hilarious. She's positioned herself as a "centrist" which is far right of what people actually want. She sees what Bernie is saying is getting the crowds to come out and she wants some of that. The funny thing is, she has all this baggage (She's quite the warmonger and Wall Street "woman of the street." which she has to discard in order to do that. It's not going to go away, and the more she tries to appropriate his messages, the more of a hypocrite she looks, and all Bernie has to say is "where were you when I was saying this stuff ten years ago?"
She thinks it's "her turn" and that she should just be anointed, especially if you talk to the Hillary supporters and read between the lines. She thought that in 2008 against Obama, too. She's going to be so disappointed.
Popcorn. I'm buying a truckload.
--
BMO
I didn't check your math but you didn't factor in the time it would take to pass in the legislation to make this law (probably at least a year). Then I doubt there's that much excess supply in the solar panel industry especially with China installing all that it can so you would have to wait at least another year for the plants to be built because they probably aren't going to invest in them until they know for sure that the law has been passed. That's if they build the extra plants because they might not make their money back if the surge in panels isn't kept up past 2020.
So if we had 100,000 workers installing panels, they would only have 7 hours per panel to install it?
Horrors. We might need to get unions involved to keep people from exceeding that rate and put hard working solar installers out of work.
I forgot to put something in my original rant... and Slashdot doesn't allow editing of comments, so I'll post this here.
Paul Ryan rails against people getting their entitlements. He calls people who take those entitlements freeloaders. Yet he himself took an entitlement. Why is he allowed to get his entitlement, yet others, who don't want to "leave anything on the table" bad? It's duplicitous. And technically, Ryan wasn't even entitled to it directly, it was his dad's SS benefits. Also, his family had enough cash to send him to college, but he took the government entitlement. Again, leave nothing on the table is fine, but that's not my point.
I don't mind either Rand nor Ryan taking benefits. I don't even think Ryan duplicitous for trying to dismantle the same program that spawned him - though I view it short sighted. What bugs me is people who take entitlements who rail against others taking entitlements. Either don't take any, or shut up about others taking the same help you took.
I happened to attend a statewide convention for the Democratic party in Oklahoma this weekend. We had at least one speaker, a former Democratic governor, consistently refer to the party as "the Democrat party". I think it would be fair to say he meant no insult by it. I guess that's just how the party's name is said where he comes from.
Now perhaps that's because he lives in a rural area in a very red state, so everyone around him is hostile to the party. However, I get the sense from rather a lot of people that this is just how they think it is said, regardless of intent.
I'm not saying that's right and you have to accept it, but language is something achieved by rough consensus. At some point you may find yourself fighting the tide with a bucket.
So she eats to install 1/2 a billion solar panels at a cost of $60 Billion over ten years... Let's see, that makes each panel cost $120. No, that's the cost of the subsidy, $120/panel... Including all government waste, fraud and abuse - seems like a very low number.
And let me see, where is that $60 billion going to come from? Oh yes, by rolling back 'tax breaks' on oil companies, which will - anybody want to guess? Yes! Raise the cost of gasoline!
I sure hope all those poor and lower-income folks that can't afford even the subsidized solar panels don't mind paying more at the pump so that middle-class suburbanites can pay less for their solar panels...
Ken
I figure it even though I totally support dismantling most of what the federal government does until someone tells me I don't have to file a 1040 form...
I would prefer to just make them do the paperwork. Turn the Department of Internal Revenue into a Service!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It would be a great incentive for this panel:
http://www.goalzero.com/p/21/b...
Heck, I'd by 8 of them!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
As far as this solar issue, isn't there more pressing things that a presidential candidate should be consumed with? Russia, China, Iran, ( Clinton, in my opinion, will hurt this country more than help or lead. She has this sense of entitlement that wreaks. This is unfortunate as the battle and movement to be the "first female" president of the United States trumps (no pun intended) and defiles the dignity and integrity of the office of POTUS. I for one will be happy when there are no longer pursuits of social experimentation and where decisions of this kind of import will be based on what they should, the merit and qualification of any candidate. Perhaps this is a Utopian perspective on our democracy, however, it isn't a bad standard from which to start qualification.
Because many people in the northern US can't afford oil/natural gas to heat their homes, therefore they get subsidies that pay for that oil so they don't freeze to death.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Solar power + grid storage will initially replace natural gas peaker plants and break into the base load production. Southern California Edison is probably the most visible and recent example. Grid storage enables more variable power sources like solar and wind to function on the grid, displacing natural gas peaker plants. Simultaneously, the same technology that enables grid storage, low cost batteries, is bringing the EV to the mass market within the next 2 years.
Solar is certainly a major part of this energy shift. The oil companies take a hit on two fronts. Within the next 20 years the major uses of oil will be reduced to heating and large/utility vehicles.
Grid storage? PFFFT..
Don't make me laugh. Batteries may be getting cheaper but It's not happening *anytime* soon with any kind of capacity that can really make a difference for photovoltaic solar and wind power even with batteries that are free. It's absolutely NOT cost effective because the conversion and storage losses are huge and it makes it way too expensive.... And don't be fooled by the "sunshine is free" so we don't care how much we waste argument. Despite how hard Elion Musk tries to market his little home battery pack thing, it's simply NOT cost effective to charge a battery and use the power later.
The only real way one can do electric storage on an industrial scale is to pump water up hill into a large reservoir, then use it coming back down hill to generate power when you want it back. However, this technique only has a few places where it will work where the geography is suitable and enough water is available. Even then, the efficiency is abysmal and it's only really viable cost wise when you can buy the power for about 1/3rd what you sell it for at peek. Batteries are worse at efficiency, especially on the industrial scales required for what you are suggesting.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The top 3 'subsidies' for oil are:
1) The national oil reserve
2) farmers fuel exemption
3) Home heating oil credit
Those together make up over 60% of all the 'subsidies' big oil receives.
You can debate the need for the oil reserves but that is often considered a national security issue.
The farm credit excludes farmers for paying road and highway taxes on equipment not driven on roads.
The heating oil credit is used to pay for oil for low income families.
Unlike green subsidies which are mostly focused on the producers, the bulk of oil subsidies are for the consumers. Farmers will still need to buy fuel for their equipment and families in the northern states will still need heating oil. All ending those subsidies will do is cause both of those groups to have to pay more while having little impact on big oils bottom line since the additional cost will all go to the government anyway (which will then have to be given out as some other form of subsidy/welfare payment to keep costs of food down and help people not freeze to death).
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
We might be hard pressed to come up with an army of 100,000 installers. At present, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 4,800 Solar photovoltaic installers in the U.S.
At present, each installer would have to install about 104,166 in the 4-year period. Assuming each worker is on the job 250 days per year, that would be 417 panels installed per day, or 52 panels per hour.
So, we'll definitely need a whole lot more installers than we have right now to reach Ms. Clinton's goal. I wonder where all these people are going to come from? And who is going to train them?
Proverbs 21:19
Nowadays, clothes lines are "out of vogue".
I use one frequently. I've noticed there are two major users of electricity in my home. The clothes dryer and the air conditioning system.
If we cut our electricity usage by using "solar clothes dryers" (clotheslines) we'd enjoy a substantial reduction in our electricity usage.
Yes, it won't work for all (apartment/condo dwellers) but for suburbia, it would.
Sure:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...
Though I'll note that I was thinking of generation cost(~$0.05) for coal, not retail. Remember, that $0.10 per kWh includes transportation, electricity from the natural gas plant next door and the nuclear plant down the road, as well as the coal generation.
Also, the following article give some insight to the high energy usage by at least hospitals:
Yes, hospitals use a lot of electricity, but consider that everything else about hospitals are more expensive than average commercial buildings as well. After all, you're paying a lot of wages for doctors and nurses with masters degrees, using expensive drugs and equipment, etc....
As for your anecdotal 'evidence', keep in mind that I'm mostly talking about averages - you get lucky and don't have any upper respiratory track illnesses, but you're also 50 miles away. 30% of asthma cases are blamed on poor air quality.
Relative to coal, Natural gas isn't a problem at all, and nuclear, well, I want to see more of it. Remember, I wasn't putting down nuclear, just mentioning that worrying about the CO2 production from the concrete that goes into building the plant isn't actually that big of a deal in the face of the sheer amount of power the plant will produce over it's operational lifespan.
I don't read AC A human right
While it's easy to scoff at the campaign promises of politicians, I for one welcome anything that fixes our problem of coal powered electric vehicles.
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No, you just repeated the claim, but didn't say what the subsidies you think Oil companies get actually ARE.
I'm asking you to detail what they ARE if it's so clear they exist to you, tell me what they are... Enlighten me with the details of these subsidies you'd end....
BTW, I don't think any exist even though you and others make this claim all the time.... So tell me what they are, I'm waiting....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It is up for debate whether Ayn Rand could have taken the money that she'd have gotten back in her SS checks and have done better with investing that money or not.
She certainly didn't do better with the money that wasn't taxed (or she wouldn't have needed social security in the first place). So why would we expect her to have done better with the money that was taxed?
Furthermore, she, who was supposed to be the pinnacle of personal responsibility, failed to be responsible for her own life. How can we expect those who have fewer opportunities that her, to be more responsible than her?
That's like saying that someone who opposed Communism that waited in a food line in the Soviet Union was hypocritical for taking food from the government while opposing it.
The difference is that Ayn Rand railed against the program for years, and in the end she needed it. It's not hypocrisy that she took the money that undermines her entire credo. It's the hypocrisy that she claimed no one truly needed the safety nets of society, that only parasites would use them, that it was easy to live your life without ever needing to use them. The hypocrisy is that after spending years claiming no one should need them and having been given every opportunity to ensure that she did not need them, she failed to live up to her own minimum standards. She failed to do what she had declared was not only simple, but the duty of every American. She failed to stand on their own two feet. She, who had so much more opportunity for success than so many of her fellows, was not able to do what she claimed everyone should be able to do. So, in the end, everything she claimed and stood for was exposed as arrogance and wishful thinking.
Safety nets exist because even good people can stumble and fall, and it's a shame that Ayn Rand was never able to understand and admit that. She was so wrapped up in her bolsephobia that she was never able to see the government in a rational light. It is a bigger shame that she has a legion of parrots who look only to her ideas and ignore her reality because it suits their wishful thinking to do so.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Use fMRI to check the intregrity of Clinton's statement;
Casteism
the benefit of subsidizing the early expensive iterations of solar panels
One question: when do the "early expensive iterations" come to an end?
40 years ago I was playing with photovoltaic cells. Today, they are orders of magnitude less expensive than they were then.
Rational people like me would support subsidies, if they weren't open-ended; i.e., if hard-and-fast criteria were established for ending those subsidies.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.