Posts Tagged by Congress
Renewable Energy and Job Creation
| September 10, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m in the process of studying the size and shape of job creation that will come as a welcome by-product of the migration to renewables.
How this sits in the constellation of benefits to renewables depends on whom you ask. But regardless of the level of importance that job creation has compared with national security, fiscal responsibility, the health and safety of the world’s population, and stemming the long-term ecological damage wrought by extracting and burning fossil fuels, it’s got to be in there someplace.
Yet job creation is a very complicated subject, as it comes with so many moving parts:
- What percent penetration of renewables are we talking about? What type? In what time-frame?
- How are market forces affected by the actions of Congress (e.g., removing/perpetuating subsidies that keep the price of oil artificially low, creating incentives for renewables, state legislatures enacting renewable portfolio standards)?
- What’s happening outside the US, where many countries are taking aggressive action to move to renewables?
- What are the strategies of the corporate giants like GE and Siemens in this global economy? From here, it looks like they don’t care where the green jobs are; if the US misses the boat, that’s too bad. Is that true?
- What brown jobs will be lost (e.g., coal mining) simultanously to the build-up of green jobs? Do we have the political stomach to deal with any job loss?
- What will be the impact of all the green job training in the community colleges?
I’ve become particularly interested in the issue of subsidies, as they seem to be so critical in forming the climate in which private investors will climb on board the clean energy bandwagon. But because macroeconomics isn’t my strength, I’m going to have to speak with a great number of economists, analysts, and political pundits to get this right.
It appears that the reason this is so complicated is that subsidies take many forms, some of them (deliberately?) hidden:
- Construction bonds at low interest rates or tax-free
- Research-and-development programs at low or no cost
- Assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company’s stead
- Below-cost loans with lenient repayment conditions
- Income tax breaks, especially featuring obscure provisions in tax laws designed to receive little congressional oversight when they expire
- Sales tax breaks – taxes on petroleum products are lower than average sales tax rates for other goods
- Giving money to international financial institutions (the U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars to the World Bank and U.S. Export-Import Bank to encourage oil production internationally, according to Friends of the Earth)
- The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
- Construction and protection of the nation’s highway system
- Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid – apparently, we get about 40% of revenues from oil on public land vs. 60% – 65% in most other countries
- Not forcing the industry to deal with the “externalities” – healthcare costs, long-term environmental damage, etc. — costs that are becoming increasingly clear and subject to quantification
If anyone has a suggestion for people I should interview in this regard, please let me know.
Congress: Sincere in Helping Small Clean Tech Businesses?
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
A friend of mine who is trying to raise public or private money for his extremely well-conceived electric vehicle start-up just wrote to me with words that ring true:
[We’ll be attending the] upcoming Annual Congressional Business Summit, and this is a point of focus for me right now. I don’t know what they will do, other than to hear them say, “Wow what a neat idea.” I guess I shouldn’t be a cynic, but the last 14 months have opened my eyes as to the two-facedness of Congress. They like to talk about how small business is the source of 80% of the new jobs, and then promptly deliver money to the large corporations that spend most of their time trying to make sure small businesses evaporate. Millions in campaign support and a veritable army of lobbyists seems to be working just fine.
Obama’s Approval Ratings — and Energy
| July 20, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Below is a link to a piece I wrote recently for Renewable Energy World in which I attempt to explain President Obama’s falling approval ratings. In it, I point out that, although his administration has been hamstrung with compromises from Congress whose end products are garbled, wrong-headed trash that wind up pleasing no one, he has been far more effective than its predecessors in supporting the development of clean energy. Read More
On Corruption – Continued
| March 12, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Here’s a follow-up post to what I wrote earlier about corruption. I had a series of meetings when I was back in Washington DC a few days ago with a top-level DoD (Department of Defense) executive. She told the group of which I was a part some spine-chilling tales, for example:
- The US Air Force fought for years against the use of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles); they want human pilots. If they don’t have live pilots, they have fewer people overall, less appeal in recruiting, and ultimately fewer resources. Of course, they wouldn’t have pilot casualties, but that seems to be an unimportant ingredient in the overall equation.
- Many years ago, the DoD said it wanted no more C-17s. But they continued to get them anyway — year after year, rammed through by Congress and the powerful Boeing lobbyists.
The Air Force wants human pilots, so they can put them in harm’s way? Congress spends billions of dollars on items that are specifically not needed or wanted?
The relevance of this is not simply to rant; it’s to point out that dirty politics will be very, very likely to play an ongoing role in the adoption of new forms of energy. After all, if our leaders will do patently dishonest things for billions of dollars, what do you think they’ll do for trillions?
