Role of Government in Energy Policy
Frequent commenter Larry Lemmert writes:
Is government intervention the way to change the hearts and minds of the consumers of energy? Look at prohibition of alcohol. See the NYT article that was published today. This is a case study that should be studied by every interventionist before embarking on a legal framework of prohibition of anything.
Larry, you raise a good point about government and unintended consequences.
Obviously, here we’re not talking about prohibiting anything, but using government to create a level playing field in which we pay the full costs of the energy we’re generating and consuming, rather than passing the costs of fossil fuels on to future generations.
Having said that, asking the government to do anything at all for the public good is problematic, given the level of corruption that exists. If that appears to be an unfair exaggeration, ask yourself why we’re subsidizing the oil companies, the most profitable industry on Earth, whose activities are ruining the planet. Then note that the members of Congress who voted recently to retain the subsidies received five times the campaign contributions from Big Oil than those who voted to remove them.
It really doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see what’s going on here. Whether we like it or not, government plays a huge role in determining energy policy; I’m just suggesting that we lean on our elected leaders to make it a beneficial, rather than a destructive one.
This seems to be another good opportunity to suggest that readers write to their representatives on this very subject using the handy 2GreenEnergy advocacy page: http://2greenenergy.com/express-yourself/
Obviously, here we’re not talking about prohibiting anything, but using government to create a level playing field in which we pay the full costs of the energy we’re generating and consuming, rather than passing the costs of fossil fuels on to future generations.
But we would be prohibiting certain energy choices if the taxation on that choice is prohibitive.
You point out that fossil fuels are subsidized but you must agree that they are also taxed with user fees at the state and federal level. If you put the gas pump out of business by raising taxes on the oil companies you would have to find a way to replace the road tax on all of those green alternatives. Unless everyone is going to fly from point A to point B, we will end up making the green choices less attractive. Right now they are riding on the coat tails of the fossil fuel guys for free. Electric vehicles would have to be taxed on distance rather than fuel consumption unless you find a way to tack in onto the electric bill of EV owners. L
Every vehicle has an odometer. In PA that reading is taken and reported to the state each year at inspection. There is the mileage reading that the road tax can be based on. Now you can tailor the taxes to induce certain changes. Heavy vehicles taxed higher than lighter vehicles. Fossil fuel burners taxed higher than non fossil fuel burners. (weight x miles x propellant type rate) I burn 100% biodiesel but I am paying the same tax rate as fossil fuels for road tax because I buy it out of a pump. If I were making my own or running straight vegetable oil I am supposed to keep track of the miles I drive on it and pay a rate per mile. That is not much of an incentive to use biofuels.
“Is government intervention the way to change the hearts and minds of the consumers of energy?”
The government has changed hearts and minds on other issues. Look at civil rights. Until the government began enforcing the Brown vs School Board decision and enacting civil rights laws, we made very little progress on racial equality. Obviously prohibition was a dismal failure and was recognized as such fairly soon, but there other issues on which the government as been successful in changing “the hearts and minds” of people.
For all the LEGAL differences, I really don’t see very much improvement on racial issues in the last 30 years. The difference is that now the minority in question has the ability to make a stink and publicly harangue you for your racial insensitivity. When we don’t need to have “Ethnicity” on legal forms and business doesn’t HAVE to hire a percentage of their employees as minorities just to show equality, will you have an end to racism.
Why should the government get involved?
Why do we have stop signs, traffic signals, speed limits? Laws are made necessary by those who cannot restrain their passions.
In the case of encouraging or even enforcing the move away from fossil energy and toward renewables, the passion that proves the only real barrier is greed – pure and very, VERY simple greed.
It’s useful here to point out that, just as slavery was a legal fiction that once coldly declared a person to be property, “corporate personhood” is a legal fiction that declares property to be a person. If we want to return to the days when the concept of ‘one person – one vote’ was the operative norm, and away from the ‘one dollar – one vote’ misanthropy we now suffer beneath, we must stop the bribery.
Government in this country was intended to be an arm of the people, by which the people could protect and preserve their well-being and prosperity for themselves and for future generations. We began with the right of sufferage granted only to white male landowners, and we saw the wisdom of enlarging the electorate to include the entire adult population. Even that advance had to be purchased with blood and treasure.
There have long been forces at work attempting to negate that grand progress of humanity and transform this nation into a totalitarian plutocracy in all but name – these forces are succeeding because of the blindness and apathy of the populace to what they have lost and will lose.
Government has become an arm of corporate power because of the lethally potent influence of money in campaigns and lobbying. The almighty dollar rules, and has given us as our leadership the most craven cowardice and brutal cruelty imaginable. If we are to survive as a democratic republic, and as a civilization, we must dethrone money.
Visit MoveToAmend.org as an example of something being done on this front.
Truth – Non-Violence – Cooperation – Direct Action – Perseverence
Cameron
Can someone direct me to a easy-to-understand web site where “the members of Congress who voted recently to retain the subsidies” are summarized?
Votes 40 and 63.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_112_2.htm
Click on the vote number in the left hand column and the voters are then listed by last name aphabetically, vote position and home state.
In case you ever want to see house of representatives votes:
http://clerk.house.gov/legislative/legvotes.aspx
Click on 112th Congress, 2nd Session (2012)under roll call votes on the right hand side.
Sanders and Ellison have also recently introduced the “End Corporate Wellfare for Polluters Act”.
I use http://opensecrets.org to find what politicians are receiving and from whom. Another good one is National Institute on Money in State Politics | Follow The Money
http://www.followthemoney.org/
At both sites you will find that the Republican Party receives the ‘Lions Share’ of the campaign contributions and kickbacks. And should help to understand why the Republicans are encouraged to not vote against Dirty Oil, Big Business, and the other corporations that are influencing our Government Leaders. I hope these sites will enlighten you as they have for me.
Scotty
Thank you, Scotty. These are great links.
Road Tax is now and always has been a totally inappropriate source of road maintenance funding. Those of us who are observant will note that roads regularly traveled by heavy trucks and semis are in need of considerably more maintenance than those only subjected to auto traffic. But is wear and tear on the pavement related to fuel consumption? NO Is there a more “Fair” taxation method for road repair than “fuel” tax or “miles driven” tax? I thing there is! And I have an example to show too. Trucks are what damage the roads the most, because of their weight. But, is it the empty truck? NO, it is the load they carry. so we already tax the goods they carry with sales tax. But not enough and we don’t earmark a portion of sales tax for road repair and enhancement. Ten years ago, in Polk County Florida we added one cent to the sales tax and designated it for roads. Now Polk county has well maintained roads, more intersection improvements, better traffic control signaling, and all from the “Penny”. The population can still afford to drive to work etc. because the fuel tax was not increased. Those with more income and but luxury items pay a penny more per dollar for maintaining and enhancing the roads they are delivered over thus placing the wear cost into the hands of the consumer who uses the goods whose weight damaged the roads. the poor can still afford groceries because there is no sales tax on human food or prescription drugs. Contractors pay sales tax on materials delivered by truck. But truck drivers only pay tax on their restaurant meals. The other problem with the road tax argument is that most “Road-Tax” is not used for road repair or construction, it just is absorbed by the general fund. That is why we should not pay per mile unless it is for miles times tons carried on each trip. and charging alternative fueled vehicles should not be charged an extra hundred dollars each year as part of their registration fee as drivers in Oregon, Washington stare, and Arizona are being charged !
We are seemingly surrounded nowdays by arguments about what to subsidize and how much more to subsidize one thing over another. This is my 29th year in biz – energy consulting and design. Once my sector was mostly about reducing use, even MINIMIZING how much we used. Now we are inundated with mostly supply-side arguments, from subsidies for renewables to rebates for certain sanctified conventionals. What about reducing use? Can USA lower its energy use by another method besides economic recession?
Believe it or not, there are still large areas in USA, including most of Ohio and Indiana just north of me, where electricity prices go down in just about every customer class when more is bought per month. In KY where I live there are PV advocates demanding that net-metered kWhs from PV be counted 1.33 times the value of kWhs from all other sources, even kWhs from energy efficiency, conservation and solar thermal. And those same PV advocates want FITs to further incentive more grid-tied batteryless PVs (who even cares about other kinds of solar and renewables….)
To me this is corrupt and distracting. Levelling our playing fields should be a primary role of any decent government. We should demand that market fairness means including and acknowledging all costs and consequences in our markets. We should treat equally all ways to avoid negative consequences or higher cost. With conventional energy, there are many ways to use less. Many do not involve renewables or higher technologies. Some ways to use less even cost less than using more or using higher technologies or renewables. This is why I do not favor any incentivized purchases of certain sanctified technologies, even grid-tied PV. Because those do not / have not produced actual reductions in overall energy use. Yet that’s what most advocates and governments do over and over.
It’s wrong to use corruption and favoritism to implement reform. Where we are today is largely because of corruption and favoritism. Regressive energy rates which charge less for higher use didn’t start yesterday, nor did subsidies are certain favored technologies and products. We should be reforming these practices.
What we need is a clear focus on reducing energy use, individually and nationally. Just increasing renewables or improving efficiency can happen / has happened while use is still actually increasing. Heck, up in Ohio, major utilities charge less the more you use but also offer subsidies to buy more efficiency and renewables! Is that contradictory or what! And in a recent CA webinar a presenter said it’s not uncommon for net-metered PV users to be energy guzzlers. True but crazy. We need a clear focus and national objective to lower energy use. Let’s stop playing games of favoritism and corruption.
This line of thinking puts me in a quandary. On the one hand, I believe that the government should help subsidize the cost of alternative power sources, but on the other hand as long as hybrid vehicles are that much more expensive than their regular gasoline/diesel alternatives, I’m probably not going to own a hybrid, and I won’t get into the fact that the 80 miles I commute means I will still get in the 40’s for fuel economy regardless of the vehicle.
However, at this point, I think the government should concentrate on energy STORAGE solutions rather than worrying about energy generation solutions because with most of the rest of the world figuring out how to make the power, no one has really figured out how to store it. Strides are being made on smaller, vehicle level batteries and fuel cells, but where are you going to draw power for your house, or your business if it operates 24 hrs a day, when the sun isn’t out and the wind isn’t blowing?
Hi Aaron,
Check out the developments in the use of molten salt to store energy as heat in solar thermal applications – it’s been demonstrated as effective. I agree that other storage solutions are needed, but we need to move on the generation infrastructure while the cheapest fossil fuel lasts, and those resources are rapidly thinning.
Cameron