U.S. Federal Government’s Approach to Energy: Disappointing

Here’s a press release issued by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), expressing its disappointment with the U.S. EPA’s backing down on various aspects of our direction vis-à-vis clean energy.  Not coincidentally, I’m facing a certain level of disappointment in getting the manufacturers of hot water heaters and boilers to embrace PlexiSun – a novel approach to building-integrated solar thermal hot water heating. 

In a conversation I just had with a prospect, he told me,  “I like your concept, but right now is not the best time, because there are minimal federal rebates (though some exist at the state level).  We do large engineered projects, from about 55,000 to about 5 million BTUs, and we often design in solar thermal, but it’s subject to deletion, and it’s almost always deleted, because natural gas is so incredibly cheap.  We did 400 solar thermal design-in projects last year, and closed less than 1%.”

PlexiSun is going great guns in Europe, where they are all over stuff like this.  I’m not sure what the little girl pictured here is so cheesed off about, but personally, I find it a shame we can’t have the same realization here in the States about our reliance on fossil fuels, and the importance of renewables going forward.