Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth — U.S. Senate's Energy Bill
I support a few clean energy projects that will benefit from this recently approved U.S. Senate bill that includes a wide variety of tax incentives that would help the biorefining and biopower sectors, including those related to cellulosic biofuel, algae, renewable diesel, biogas and biomass power.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but, obviously, these favorite projects of mine would enjoy even greater support if the incentives in question were not subject to cancellation at the whim of a Congress that may look at things differently a year or so down the line. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a guy at a conference a year or so ago; he looked down his nose at me and said, “I wouldn’t want to work in any industry, for instance clean energy, that receives federal subsidies.” When I pointed out that fossil fuels receive several times that amount of subsidies, he modified his position: “I guess what I mean is that I wouldn’t want to work in an industry that receives federal subsidies that might go away.”
It’s so invigorating to see raw courage like that. 🙂
Craig,
Do you have quantitative comparisons of the federal and state subsidies for each type of energy source? If so, I would appreciate the reference.
The best treatment of this subject I’ve found is this report from the Environmental Law Institute: http://www.eli.org/Program_Areas/innovation_governance_energy.cfm.
Hi Craig,
Just saw the video in the link ‘favourite projects of mine’ that you had posted. It is great that you have taken this initiative. In one of my posts I had mentioned that ‘focus’ on what is and is not possible is key to resolving this problem. You seem to be going through this process in ‘aces’ it is not an easy job to separate the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’. That having been said, remember that this is not an easy process, the ‘grid’ is what holds us together, it practically defines our lives. If we want to go off grid, it is going to take more than a cursory look into all the ideas out there to succeed.