Force Change

McCain and Obama miss Senate vote on extending solar and wind tax credits

The Mustache (as Grist.org has taken to calling Tom Friedman) had a column in the NY Times this week about Senator McCain’s failure to show up for all 8 of the votes in the Senate for a bill to renew the tax credits for wind and solar power.  Due to strong Republican opposition to the bill, it has stalled, and we are now facing a situation where these tax credits will expire at the end of the year.  If this happens, it will be a major setback for attempts to build a meaningful renewable energy industry in our country. 

McCain, who has faced significant criticism this year for his voting record (or lack thereof) on the environment, continues to emphasize his green credentials, even showing majestic images of windmills in his campaign commercials running this week during the Olympics.  However, as Friedman points out, not only did McCain not vote all eight times on this issue, but for one of them, “he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.”  

With that said, Senator Obama has proved only slightly more genuine on this matter, having missed the most recent vote on July 30, but making the previous three.  However, given how the candidates have been wasting their time bickering over tire pressure and off-shore drilling lately, it is funny (and sad) to see that not only are they not voting to support their positions, but their campaigns are using almost identical windmill footage to promote those “policies.”

The Mustache really puts it best by stating:

Without taxing fossil fuels so they become more expensive and giving subsidies to renewable fuels so they become more competitive - and changing regulations so more people and companies have an interest in energy efficiency - we will not get innovation in clean power at the scale we need.

That is what this election should be focusing on. Everything else is just bogus rhetoric designed by cynical candidates who think Americans are so stupid - so bloody stupid - that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they’ll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power - when you didn’t.

Posted in Energy, General, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Politics | No Comments »

Huge potential for solar energy generation in outer space

The concept of space solar power has been receiving a lot of attention lately.  The commonly noted problems of skyrocketing energy prices and global climate change have caused the revisiting of many previously passed upon energy solutions, including SSP.  The basic premise of SSP is that satellites holding massive solar panels would be put into orbit, where they would redirect the sun’s rays to a receiving station on Earth that would process it into electricity.  From their perch above the atmosphere, these solar satellites could generate power 365 days a year.  While the concept of space solar power has existed since 1968, it has only regained momentum as of late, due to current economic and environmental issues. 

Apparently, if an array of solar satellites were put together to form a one kilometer wide band of panels, there would be enough energy generated in one year to exceed all of the known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth.  However, not surprisingly, there are a number of technical hurdles that must be overcome, including the lack of an efficient means of getting all of the necessary equipment into space, given our aging space shuttle fleet.

Nonetheless, the potential for a massive source of renewable and clean energy is intriguing.  While it clearly will not be a short-term fix, given the technological and logistical hurdles to be cleared, it does sound like a promising future alternative.  Right now it appears that attempts to develop such a system will be a mix of public and private efforts.  It will be important, as a leading space pioneer, that the United States takes a leadership role in this process, rather than being surpassed by other countries like Japan and Russia, which are also pursuing SSP. 

Photo credit.

Posted in Energy, General, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Science and Innovation | No Comments »

Google joins major investment in BrightSource Energy

Google, which announced back in November that it would be investing millions of dollars in the pursuit of renewable energy sources that would be cheaper than coal, recently joined a major round of financing for BrightSource Energy. The $115 million round of financing will go towards developing and growing BrightSource’s solar thermal business (the process where solar panels focus the sun’s heat on a liquid, turning it into steam, which is then used to turn a turbine which generates electricity).

Google, which used its philanthropic arm, Google.org, to make the investment, has more than just an investor’s interest in the development of renewable energy sources. Google’s network of computers and servers use a tremendous amount of energy. As the cost of energy increases, so does the cost of operating Google’s business. This has created a unique situation where the private interests of a massive corporation have aligned with the greater good. Fortunately, Google has a track record of innovation and accomplishment, which bodes well for the future of renewable energy.

Posted in Energy, General, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Investments, Science and Innovation | No Comments »

Germans debate continued solar subsidies

There is a debate going on inside Germany regarding the appropriate level of subsidies that should be allocated to solar energy generation.  After years of government encouragement, solar energy generation in that country has boomed.  In fact, the world’s largest manufacturer of solar cells, Q-Cells, is based in Germany.  Now critics are arguing that these subsidies have led to unreasonably high energy prices.  On the other side, solar proponents counter that without government protection, Germany’s dominant solar energy industry will go the way of past world leaders, like the United States and Japan, whose governments failed to maintain high incentives for solar power.

One of the unique components of Germany’s solar energy policy is that it requires power companies to purchase all of the energy generated by solar panels, even if they are just located on a private citizen’s roof.  This has created a huge demand across the country to install solar panels on a micro-level. 

While we are far too removed from the intricacies of domestic German energy policy to be able to take sides in this debate, it is interesting to see how much effect governmental policy (subsidies) can have on the development of alternative energy sources.  But with these subsidies, there is always the danger that the alternative that is being encouraged may turn out to be a less than ideal solution.  (Not that we believe there is any indication that solar energy is a bad solution.) 

We feel that while governments should take measures to encourage clean technology, mechanisms that properly price the cost of externalities into polluting energy sources (i.e., carbon taxes), rather than subsidies for alternative sources, may prove to be a more efficient solution.  Of course budding technologies often require some propping up, but at some point they must be able to stand on their own.  And one way of ensuring this is to properly price the cost of energy generated from fossil fuels through a carbon tax.  Subsidies may be necessary at first, but should probably not be a long-term policy.

Photo credit.

Posted in Energy, General, Governmental Regulations, Greenhouse Gas Emissions | No Comments »

Massive solar plant to open in Mojave Desert.

Treehugger cited a story in SFGate.com reporting that deals were agreed upon this week between Pacific Gas and Electric and a company called BrightSource Energy, for the construction of a series of massive solar energy plants in the middle of the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles. 

The impetus for this deal is a California law requiring all major energy utilities to have renewable energy (other than water power) account for at least 20% of their overall energy production by the year 2010. 

While it is unclear how much the energy generated by these plants is projected to cost, it is good to see that costs have come down significantly from past decades—indicating the possibility that solar energy might someday be able to stand on its own without governmental mandates. 

Posted in Energy, General, Greenhouse Gas Emissions | No Comments »

Shade found illegal in California?

A seven year dispute between two neighbors in the Silicon Valley town of Sunnyvale recently resulted in a criminal conviction for casting too much shade on a neighbor’s property. The facts of the case were as follows: Neighbor A (who drives a Prius) planted a series of redwood trees in 1996. Within 5 years, or so, those trees had grown so tall that they cast a large shadow over the house next door, owned by Neighbor B (who drives an electric car).

Neighbor B did not appreciate the shade, and asked Neighbor A to replace them with a smaller alternative. Neighbor A apparently refused. Fortunately for Neighbor B, he received creative legal counsel, which appears to have advised him of the details of the California Solar Shade Act of 1978, which makes it a criminal offense to block more than 10% of a set of solar panels’ access to the sun. Consequently, Neighbor B installed panels on his property and made a demand to Neighbor A to trim the trees or face criminal prosecution. Neighbor A again refused and was subsequently hauled into court to face a charge of criminal violation of the Solar Shade Act.

Neighbor A was convicted of violating the Act and, while apparently not sentenced to jail or a fine, was ordered to trim their trees so that no more than 10% of Neighbor B’s solar panels were shaded. Apparently this was the first conviction under the 1978 Act.

This conflict is interesting because it pitted two pro-environmental public policies against each other (tree growth vs. solar power). However, of course, neither of these policies were really at issue in this case. It was most likely just a good old fashioned feud between neighbors that took on the appearance of a green policy debate merely because environmental laws provided the plaintiff with a weapon to wield in the dispute.

Photo credit.

Posted in General, Governmental Regulations, Green Design, Of Interest | 2 Comments »