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Alternative Energy In America Is A Promise Delayed, But Not Failed
The check from Metropolitan Edison arrived, as it always does, at mid-month. You see, we don’t pay our local utility for electricity. It pays us for the surplus electricity we generate from the 20 photovoltaic cells on our south-facing roof, which is more than enough to light our house, run our appliances and heat our water.
The installation of the system was not cheap, but because of generous federal and state tax rebates engineered by President Obama and his ally Ed Rendell, whose stepped down as Pennsylvania governor in January, it was an investment well worth making and one that will pay off in tiny increments in the form of those Met Ed checks and then pay off big time when the system is paid off in a little less than 10 years.
Our happy story aside (as well as a neighbor’s who installed a 28-panel system after being impressed with ours), these are tough times for solar as tax incentives begin drying up and the industry undergoes a shakeout that has forced Solyndra, a California solar tube manufacturer that received nearly $600 million in federal loans under the 2009 stimulus bill, to file for bankruptcy. Others are likely to follow despite the unrelentingly happy picture being painted by the green energy movement.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is investing heavily in solar production and that has forced down product prices worldwide, while the market in green-conscious Europe is booming. (Our solar control panel, which has a lifetime guarantee, is made in Austria.) New Jersey had just six solar power systems when it launched incentives in 2001 and now has more than 10,000 solar installations alone with more than 400 megawatts of installed capacity (our system is a mere 4.5 kilowatts). These huge arrays typically are on the rooftops of factories, warehouses and shopping malls.
The densely populated Garden State is close to attaining its goal of getting 2 percent of total electricity generation from solar by year’s end and seemed to be on the way to embracing wind power with equal enthusiasm, but in June Governor Chris Christie announced that he planned to scale back the state’s renewable energy goals and ambitious planned wind power farms off shore from Atlantic City are likely to take a hit.
The upshot is that the state’s previous goal of 30 percent of total electricity generation from solar and wind by 2021 has been scaled down to 22.5 percent.
In 2009, the most recent year for which national figures are available, wind and solar combined made up a measly 1 percent of all U.S. energy production and 0.8 percent of all consumption, according to the Energy Department.
Tapping into these alternative energy sources require big up-front investments with the payoffs down the road, but that is anathema to a nation addicted to instant gratification (and fossil fuels) despite austere times, and while the U.S. should be taking the lead in green energy, it is China and Germany who are well in the lead and eventually will reap the benefits.
The sun continues to shine and wind still blows, but we as a people seem fecklessly incapable of taking advantage of it.
Anyone who thought that it would be a whole new ballgame when it came to energy and the environment when Barack Obama took office is bound to be disappointed. While the president has moved aggressively to promote green initiative including solar energy and has pushed back against Republican efforts to gut the Environmental Agency, his record on fossil fuels is decidedly mixed.
Then there are instances of behind-the-scenes backscratching between government agencies and Big Oil, including the State Department becoming involved in the proposed $7 billion Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
The pipeline would allow an enormous supply of a particularly dirty form of oil, locked up in Alberta’s tar sands, to reach refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and markets around the world.
In June of 2010, in the midst of the BP Gulf oil disaster, someone deep in the bowels of the State Department was considering a two-year delay in the pipeline project, according to documents released last week. Public concerns about the oil industry were peaking, and the pipeline was getting a closer look.
At one point, The Guardian reports that State even asked a lawyer for TransCanada, the Alberta-based company that was trying to get a federal permit to build the pipeline, to provide an assessment of how such a delay would impact the company.
What happened to that request — or to the idea of possibly delaying federal approval of the pipeline — remains a mystery.
21 Responses to “Alternative Energy In America Is A Promise Delayed, But Not Failed”
…and so goes the energy quandary.
Meanwhile coal trains and coal barges pass by my home less than 1 mile away like disemboweled megalithic monuments on the march for the poisoning of the planet.
We have a greener jet fuel now though. Baby steps.
“Many people don’t seem to remember that George W. Bush was the first president to put solar electric panels on the White House. That may be because the solar panels Jimmy Carter installed on the White House are (rightly) far more famous, symbolic as they were of Carter’s symbolic effort to stimulate alternative energy.”
So, you, and two presidents.
duck-
Oh I see. So now George W Bush was an environmental president?
…but it only proves my point that Republicans always adopt Democrat ideals and ideas, albeit decades late, but always.
Republicans are to stupid to lead. Much better they follow.
the market in green-conscious Europe is booming. (Our solar control panel, which has a lifetime guarantee, is made in Austria.)
Our ARRA dollars at work.
Glad that some NJ installation contractors benefitted, but what brainiac designed this program without requiring US made products be used?
CStanley:
Good to hear from you. I am on somewhat shaky ground here, but I don’t know if Made in USA Only clauses can be inserted into tax incentives.
As it is, New Jersey exports enormous numbers of products (primarily pharmaceuticals, chemicals and electronics) overseas and imports enormous number of products. Limiting companies, some of them non-U.S. to begin with, to using only domestic parts would seem to run against the grain.
As it is our home solar system has US-made cells, an Austrian-made control panel and a Japanese-made two-way meter. The guys who installed them said the variance in the country of origin is because each were the best and most cost-effective available.
This is micro-generation, and IMO this is the way it should be.
Every homeowner, apartment/condo complex, or business should have their own micro-generation solution appropriate to their own location, whether it’s solar or wind or geotherm or whatever. Something that lets them generate electricity, heat, or hot water, in whole or in part, “off the grid” and in a green manner.
I say this not because we should make any big sweeping government mandate or anything, but simply because it makes good, old-fashioned, Boy Scout sense. Oil & natural gas are going to become more expensive, supplies are going to be shrinking, and utility companies are unreliable (as proven by the recent East Coast hurricanes).
It makes incredible sense for everyone to have some sort of self-sufficiency.
Barky:
Not to get all touchy feely, but we went solar, recycle, do organic gardening, have a compost heap and will take delivery tomorrow, as a matter of fact, on a hybrid that gets 40-plus mpg and is made of 90 percent recyclable materials because it saves money in the long run.
What is also does is make our little corner of the earth a little more sustainable, a little less polluted and us a little healthier.
I hasten to add that most people cannot afford to go green in a big way, which is why it is why micro-generation programs are so important.
@CStanley
The US actually has a trade surplus in solar panels but most of the manufacturing is on the west coast so it’s probably cheaper on the east coast to import panels from Europe.
@Barky
The resistance to micro-generation has come from utilities who have billions of dollars of transmission infrastructure.
Shaun, I commend your little corner. Well done.
I’ve been contemplating buying a Nissan Leaf, which is totally gasoline free, for local driving. Partially because of the novelty, partially incase we have another 1973 oil shortage, partially for the fuel savings bragging rights, and, partially to reduce my carbon footprint. Unfortunately I live in a Tea Partier congressional district and it would identify me as a liberal and believe me, that ain’t good.
Don’t be a wuss, get the Leaf and cover your private options. However, think ahead as to where that old battery will eventually be disposed of.
Can the deniers and glibertarians over at reason.com imagine the Chinese government being played for a fool by those demonic, manipulative and alarmist scientists they are always yammering on about?
The Chinese government wants what works and they put the money where there is more money (or lower costs) to be had. But the libertarians will have none of that. Preempting market forces rather than waiting for the need to become pressing so the Galtian overlords can step in – why, that’s fascist!
They can’t stop it. Do it safely, do it within all the electrical codes, but do it yourself. Just about every electrical utility in the country offers some sort of “buyback” arrangement like Shaun has.
We can’t keep complaining that “big brother won’t let us” or “corporate America stops us”. We still have some freedoms in this country. Use them.
Well, Barky, now that you mention it, I don’t have a handy utility to sell electricity to. I live in an apartment in Manhattan. Shaun, and his ilk have an opportunity advantage over me and the rest of us energy economically challenged folks. I think it would be “fair” for a tax on Shaun’s lucre to be used to subsidize our electricity bills.
ROFL!!
I’m done. I’m more qualified to discuss quantum theromodynamic effects on muons in high gravity environments than discuss the economics of the Manhattan apartment market. Talk about unknowable topics!!
Enjoy your solar panels, guys. We can only hope for a breakthrough in the science to make us equal.
[...] The Moderate Voice [...]
Shaun, I congratulate you on make real steps to move to alternative energy sources. I would love install photovoltaic panels on my home – it has a very large southern exposure – but according to a former co-worker who now runs his own solar installation company I would need to cut down a maturing maple tree to make it worthwhile. The maple tree was a gift to my wife and I from her parents, and I’m pretty sure I know where I’ll be sleeping if I suggest cutting it down.
As someone who designs vehicle hybrid systems (unless you have a CDL or are a heavy equipment operator you’ll never see my systems), I would caution you on expecting the high mileage the stickers claim. We’ve studied a few of the hybrids available and found a few too many of them are optimized for the EPA drive cycle, which isn’t the way most people actually drive. And you will need to change your driving habits to get the best mileage out of them. Making those same changes to your driving habits in a conventional vehicle will often provide a better increase in mileage than changing to a hybrid vehicle and not changing driving habits.
Well I admit I was just being a bit snarky although the point was to consider this one of many reasons that Keynesian ‘multipliers’ aren’t what the are cracked up to be (if memory serves, for another example, weren’t there an awful lot of imported new vehicles purchased by people who traded in under the cash for clunkers program?)
@Ron…that’s an interesting stat about our trade balance although I googled and it sounds to me that the reporting on this is a bit deceptive…I’m reading that the net balance for the whole US solar industry was postive but this was based on big surpluses of raw materials and factory equipment, not the finished product solar panels themselves (I didn’t see numbers on what we imported: exported of the panels, but it sounds as though there was a net trade deficit there which was more than made up for by the surpluses in polysilicon and in factory equipment- presumably facilitating more panel manufacturing capacity in the countries that are importing that equipment for us.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/business/us-posted-a-trade-surplus-in-solar-technologies-study-finds.html
So when you look a little deeper, that doesn’t sound all that good for the US panel manufacturers and certainly sounds like they could benefit from some soft protectionism of tax credits for those who install the US made panels.
This is pretty cool, I’ll look into doing this for my house.
We may not be very good cost/pricing wise when it comes to solar panels, but we sure know how to screw up the corn industry. I call it an industry because less than half of the production is being used to feed our faces or export for food use. Instead it is being used to enrich the subsidized ethanol producers who are protected by a 57 cents a gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Bottom line, corn prices are probably twice what they should be.