Stimulating Green Growth: Although the recent stimulus package boosted hopes about renewable energy, projects still have a ways to go before they can become a reality.
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The renewable energy revolution President Obama wants to jump-start with stimulus money might be coming. But it's going to take a while.
While Congress and Obama moved quickly to pass the stimulus legislation, corporate planning for the future is more measured. Any increase in green energy must overcome business and regulatory obstacles.
And businesses dominating the renewable energy arena are based outside the United States. Those companies will need to add or expand U.S. manufacturing before incentives in the stimulus package result in jobs for American workers.
"How real are the green jobs? Of course they'll be some, but how real are they?" said David Garman, President George W. Bush's Energy Department undersecretary from 2004 to 2007 and before that assistant secretary for renewables and energy efficiency. "It's something that we're just going to have to learn by doing."
The stimulus package offers a bevy of benefits to power companies making green energy. There are tax incentives, loan guarantees and direct payments. Companies can choose between grants and a 30 percent tax credit for investments in manufacturing facilities. There are also tax credits based on the amount of energy generated for wind, geothermal energy, biomass and other types of renewable power.
Those create new financial security. But several barriers are likely to stall the process. There is a lack of clarity in stimulus provisions, companies said, particularly those dealing with "Buy American" requirements. Corporate leaders fear a lack of highly skilled workers, and industry experts say rules at the state and local levels can take years to overcome.
"There are a lot of institutional barriers that can't be addressed at the national level," Garman said. Building a power line can take 12 years, he said, when you include the decade sometimes needed to receive permits.
Building a geothermal plant takes an average of three to five years, said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association, a trade group for 120 companies.
Manufacturing plants might increase production in a year, said Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, a group of chief executives, university presidents and labor leaders focused on corporate competitiveness.
Though a year might be short in political time, it is "not short when people are out of work in a global recession," Wince-Smith said.
The political climate around green energy has shifted, however, a factor companies say is crucial to investment and planning decisions. Spending money now seems less of a risk with the stimulus incentives and other moves that businesses believe the Obama administration will make in support of green power.
"For the first time in a long time there are some financial incentives to attract manufacturing in the U.S.," said Roger Efird, president of Suntech America, a subsidiary of the world's largest solar power company, which is based in China.
Suntech is among companies planning to expand partly because of stimulus incentives, Efird said. The company makes its solar panels in China and ships them to the United States at an added cost of $15 per panel. But it anticipates that within a year it will be manufacturing those solar panels in the United States.
"It really doesn't make any sense logically to build this stuff on one continent and ship it to another," Efird said.
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9 Comments
Add CommentEverything takes longer than people think it will. We will still be using fossil fuels well into the future because of the tremendous capacity already built into the systems we have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe U.S. is already the world’s largest producer of wind energy and will soon be the largest producer of solar energy, according to a Scientific American article I read here last month. But even with all this, alternative energy hardly makes a dent in the very large energy pie.
The only non-carbon emitting energy source we can ramp up reasonably quickly form the technical point of view is nuclear and that energy source has lots of political enemies who will drag it down.
I attended an interesting talk about energy and wrote a blog entry re http://johnsonmatel.com/blog1/2009/02/changes_takes_time_energy.html. The bottom line is that it takes a lot of time to make energy transitions, decades at least. For example, natural gas was easily available before 1900 but it didn’t come into wide use until the 1940s, when the distribution system became sufficiently developed.
The title sure sounds like one of those self-fulfilling prophecies. A business can just as easily say "we will wait and see" as "we won't be competitive if we don't stay ahead of the curve."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt always surprises me in how negative the republicans are when it comes to ideas that are not their own. The sooner we start building renewable energy, the sooner we will have it and the sooner it will boost the economy. Nuclear energy is the most dirty and the most dangerous of all the energies. Nuclear energy is a McCain idea that could help to bring the human race to extinction...remember Russia?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you go to Upcoming Stories and type Renewable Energy Lottery,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou will find solutions to every issue in this article. This will jumpstart
the economy, help homeowners, increase jobs, increase home values, and overall get money flowing again.
Best Regards,
Energy Lottery
Please go to Upcoming Stories and type Renewable Energy Lottery to see entire Plan. I am only in this to help Americans. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAttached you will find a proposal I have written called the National Emergency Energy Farming Lottery. (Please Take A Moment to READ THIS PLAN.)
This plan will allow every state in the Union to participate. With every Governor of every state in cooperation, we can realize millions of jobs nationwide for the installation of Solar Panels, Windmills, Heat Pumps, Solar Attic Fans, Energy GREEN Appliances, Hybrids, etc…
3.96 winners every minute 24/7/365 would win a FULLY TRANSFERRABLE $25,000 voucher for buying Solar, Wind, Energy GREEN Appliances, or even a HYBRID. That’s a lot of buying and installing every day. (provided $1 billion tickets/vouchers sold per week) Ambitious, I know, but we can do it. Winners would go to a website and buy from an Approved Vendor List, anything dealing GREEN. Using the U.S. GREEN Building Councils certification program could be a great start for winners to Buy GREEN. Or take a mini-vacation to a GREEN Hotel/Motel and/or eat at a GREEN restaurant with your winnings.
ODDS: 25,000 to 1, a new drawing at 25,001…over and over, day in & day out 24/7.
Due to the randomness of this lottery, jobs will be spread across America, not just where wind farms, power grids, solar grids and natural gas production areas are currently being developed.
As you read the plan, you will notice that there are no losers. Every American would benefit. The Manufacturers/Installers, Homeowners, Apartment Complexes, Mobile Home Parks, Industrial Buildings, etc... Utility Companies could buy back from winners that install renewable energy the excess energy resulting in reduced infrastructure construction & maintenance costs for the utility companies. The losers benefit with potential lower KWH cost.
The operations for running this lottery will be by a non-profit organization to help the Homeless, Veterans, People with Disabilities and other less fortunate citizens get back on their feet thru jobs & assistance. APPROX. $20 Million per year from lottery proceeds @ $1 Billion a week ($10 a drawing) to help Americans get their Faith and Hope back for the American Dream.
In listening to the National Clean Energy Project (2-23-09) on CSPAN2, it’s all good, but unfortunately, it will take years to write the proposals with all the rules, laws and regulations required. We need Action and Implementation as citizens of USA, now.
Confronted with a series of exacobated problems brought by the pollution from the fossil fuel ,nuclear enegry or other kinds of energy resources,it is extremely imperiateive for the us or the other countries to pass some legislation to provide some sanction for the introduction or the innovation of alternative energy which is less contaminated.Nevertheless,we should also keep some persepective in mind that whether we are ready for the changes in the future.As is known to all ,for instance, the geothermal energy can cause some pollution problems due to its emission of gas such as the sulfur or the disposal of the water originating from the exploitation of the geothermal energy which apparently contain a lot of chemical component also hazardous to people's health.Consequently,as soon as the us congress or the federal government pass or support the legisaltion of "buying american" or incentive in the renewable energy industry,they should institute some regulation to prevent or minimize the pollution caused by the renewable energy .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with problems with renewable energy pollution, such as the output of gases from Geothermal, and so-called Clean Coal technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut, the bigger problem is not moving forward. When gas rose to nearly $5 bucks a gallon, the real sucking sound was what disposable income the average middle class home had in their pockets. The oil companies literally wiped out spending by taking away these monies.
Throw in the Subprime mess and the greed of wall-street, CEO's,etc...at the same time and we had the perfect storm.
We need to move quickly as a nation to convert from a consuming nation to a nation that sells excess energy to the world. Current Lithium Ion battery developments for the Hybrid industry is resulting in some significant improvements. Reportedly, a Japanese company has developed a battery that can completely recharge in 10 minutes. That's one hurdle overcome. The existing gas stations will become the re-charge stations of the future.
What if we converted Cargo Tankers from oil transportation to Lithium Ion Batteries and then those same tankers deliver energy to developing countries? And helping the world go GREEN at the same time.
Everyone is moving forward with their agenda's. T Boone Pickens, Al Gore,
and others. This is all good. They all acheive to the goal of energy independence.
However, these plans all have the same problem. The average Middle Class family is still paying a utility company for their electricity.
My plan does just the opposite. It spreads energy reduction and production uniformly, helps middle class with more disposable income,
creates energy GREEN jobs around the country. It expands manfacturing ramp-up for products and reduces risk to terrorist attacks against our infrastruture due to the random distribution of reduction of consumption.
Please take a moment to check it out. I want nothing in return. I just want
to help Americans. By the People, For the People seems appropriate.
If enough visitors visit, maybe Governors and Senators would take notice.
Best Regards,
Energy Lottery
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2865899857614469793
http://digg.com/business_finance/National_Emergency_Energy_Lottery_by_the_people_for_the_peo
JamesDavis:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice try to make nuclear power a partisan issue. If I remember right our president said he supports it.
Nuclear power is not a McCain idea anymore than the internet is an Al Gore idea. Nuclear power is an idea support by President Eisenhower over 50 years ago and it now supplies 20% of our energy and is emmission free. How does that make it dirty?
What about Russia? If you are referring to Chernobyl, that is irrelevant to US commercial power because we don't build those types of plants. To date the number of people that have been killed from US commercial nuclear power is zero. There are not many power sources that can make that claim.
Widmill is a most primitive and non effective machinery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it possible to score better efficiency was up to the third power better...
This problem ereting towers
can be resolved with Jazz Big Band. Just half of the turbine rotates in one direction and half in another page.
I did this study in the Venturi nozzle turbine and the calculations have a rather surprising results.
http://www.new4stroke.com/Venturi1000.jpg
Regards Andrew