During a slow period at the Electric Drive Transportation Association conference this afternoon, I walked a couple of miles across town to interview spokespeople for the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) – Senior Attorneys Jay Predergrass and Lisa Goldman. We talked largely about the subsidies that
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subsidies
With demand for fossil fuels outpacing the growth of renewable energy technologies worldwide, the International Energy Agency suggests that fossil fuel subsidies worth $312 billion be realigned to develop cleaner alternatives.
Although renewable energy has seen growth of 30 to 40 percent in recent years,
I got a call shortly after dinner last night from a radio host in Denver, explaining that due to a last-minute cancellation, he had an hour-long opening on his show. He asked if he could call me for the interview – at 1 AM!
I agreed, stayed up late, reading, checking out Jay Leno, and fighting off the yawns.
Attacks on climate change regulations, thawing permafrost in National Parks, and attempts to cut funding for climate research. Climate change has had some bad news this month. There’s at least one (sort of) bright spot, though: the state of US greenhouse gas emissions. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency
In my last post, I opined that the United States was at risk of losing its share of the global fuel cell market to Germany, South Korea, Japan, and perhaps China. Unfortunately, this is a story that the United States knows all too well. For example, in solar and wind, the United States had an early advantage, only to see its leadership position fade away to Europe and China.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo published yesterday the results of the 4,016 inspections made by the Spanish Energy Commission (CNE). The investigations show that three out of four solar photovoltaic (PV) parks didn’t comply with the Spanish
Japanese government and industries are likely to invest $6.4 billion in green energy technologies over the next 15 months.
The Japanese government would offer subsidies worth $1.9 billion while the rest of the investment is likely to come from some 142 companies which include Fuji Electric Holding, Toda Kogyo Corp, Toshiba Corp,
The results of political compromise — maybe by definition — are seldom satisfactory to anyone. But hasn’t this whole process recently gotten worse than ever before? The ultimate version of the healthcare reform that the Obama administration put through was the product of a hammer and tongs fight from the
In a recent article in the Financial Post the authors make the case that while the Ontario government and its feed-in tariff (FIT) program quickly make the province a leader in renewable energy, other, traditionally “greener” economies are shifting away from subsidizing the industry. “Across the world,” says the sub-heading, “unsustainable subsidies for wind and solar
It’s always interesting to get out and interact with different groups who have specific perspectives on the energy industry. And, to that end, I’ve commited to a certain travel schedule that will take me — either as a speaker or as a participant — to a decent number of conferences over the next 12 months.
I enjoyed my trip to Boston earlier in the
By now there’s little debate that the technology used to obtain oil in deeper waters was developed and rapidly put into use before safety technology could keep up. As we’ve noted, that’s a development that regulators allowed, despite their concerns.
But the expansion of deepwater drilling wasn’t solely a result of industry rushing into deeper waters and toward greater profit. According to the Los Angeles Times, it was also encouraged by the federal government, which gave oil companies tens of billions in tax breaks, subsidies, and royalty relief. Many of these incentives have outlasted their initial purpose, according to the Times:
Government subsidies that helped fuel Europe’s most successful solar markets continue to be slashed, raising concerns that the region’s burgeoning renewable sector will be unable to compete with China and the U.S., according to a report on Greenwire.
Germany, the world’s largest market for solar power, will cut the price paid for electricity from roof-mounted panels by 16 percent and electricity from larger solar power stations by 15 percent.
Analysts say the government simply underestimated how quickly the renewable sector would grow. From 2000 to 2008, the production of photovoltaic energy in Germany rose from 32 million kilowatt hours to 4.4 billion kilowatt hours. Government subsidies in Germany now cost nearly €1.5 billion annually.
Despite strong evidence that growing food crops to produce ethanol is harmful to the environment and the world’s poor, the Obama administration is backing subsidies and programs that will ensure that half of the U.S.’s corn crop will soon go to biofuel production. It’s time to recognize that biofuels are anything but green.
In light of the strong evidence that growing corn, soybeans, and other food crops to produce ethanol takes a heavy toll on the environment and is hurting the world’s poor through higher food prices, consider this astonishing fact: This year, more than a third of the U.S.’s record corn harvest of 335 million metric tons will be used to produce corn ethanol. What’s more, within five years fully 50 percent of the U.S. corn crop is expected to wind up as biofuels.
Here’s another sobering fact. Despite the record deficits facing the U.S., and notwithstanding President Obama’s embrace of some truly sustainable renewable energy policies, the president and his administration have wholeheartedly embraced corn ethanol and the tangle of government subsidies, price supports, and tariffs that underpin the entire dubious enterprise of using corn to power our cars. In early February, the president threw his weight behind new and existing initiatives to boost ethanol production from both food and nonfood sources, including supporting Congressional mandates that would triple biofuel production to 36 billion gallons by 2022.
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