President Obama campaigned on renewable energy as a core part of his plan and is reportedly using billions of his stimulus plan to fund renewable energy. Of course, most of the stimulus plan is going to rebuild the exact same banking system using the exact same people as we had before, an amount between itself and the amount we’ve squandered on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid 100% for a 100% renewable energy infrastructure including new transmission lines and all the solar, wind, geothermal and hydro to avert global warming and an endless series of energy crises. Most of the money marked for renewable energy won’t be spent right away, and what is spent is and will be spent on immediate projects like weatherization. Unfortunately the Obama approach to renewable energy will be much like previous approaches using the same people to make the same mistakes as they had in the past using the same schemes to accomplish little at great expense.
Obama drank the cool-aid and believes that the only way to develop renewable energy is for the federal government to bribe people to do it with immense tax incentives that only favor those with enough taxes to offset, in other words, gifts to the fabulously wealthy to help them become more fabulously wealthy. He and other like him refuse to even consider a plan where energy consumers can pay for 100% of the cost of renewable energy production and perhaps allow the government to fund the delivery infrastructure. The system he won’t consider is one where you and I and businesses can invest in renewable energy production and in return for our investment we get our portion of the electricity produced delivered to our homes and businesses, with some of the production being given to the utility for operation, maintenance, backup power, and delivery. Using such a system we all can invest and we can all benefit. For each dollar of my investment I will receive electricity credited to my account each month, the more I invest, the less electricity I must buy from the utility. This approach doesn’t need government subsidies and doesn’t include middlemen or even costs for financing.
An investment of about $6,000 might wipe out most families entire electric bill for 20 to 30 years. If your electric bill is currently $100/month, then it is $1,200 per year or $36,000 over 30 years or with inflation, possibly as much as $55,000. The plan is described in the book Profitable Renewable Energy:It Can be Done.
Mr. Obama will spend a great deal of money over the coming months and years on “clean coal” technology which is not renewable, an oxymoron, and something that if it made any sense at all would be funded by the immensely profitable coal industry. It doesn’t make any sense and the CEO of Duke Energy stated bluntly that his company (the third largest energy company in the US) has not and will not invest a dime on clean coal implementation, yet they are all favor of the taxpayers squandering billions.
The Obama plan will be based on production tax credits, direct grants, R&D credits, and some money on infrastructure and some actual production. The sad truth is that we need trillions invested in renewable energy today since the problems are immense and immediate yet with the downturn in the economy, we are actually seeing turbine manufacturers laying off employees and projects being tabled if not canceled altogether. The reason why the Obama plan won’t work is that if it isn’t radically changed, industries such as solar manufacturers and wind turbine builders can’t count on current or future business because they can’t count on future administrations continuing tax benefits. That is precisely why we don’t have a significant renewable industry in the US and why we won’t have one. Using consumer funding the future prospects for these industries are predictable and bright. If I can buy a piece of a large scale energy project and guarantee myself 20 to 30 years of electricity, it is both an economically sound investment and one that is good for the economy and the environment.
[...] has called this initiative all a part of “beginning a new era in energy [...]