Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on June 21, 2017
Trump’s Attack On Renewable Energy
Fossil fuels have long been subsidized by tax policies, such as the oil depletion allowance, and by infrastructure construction, such as the interstate highway system. In light of these long-standing subsidies, it’s always a little ironic when fossil fuel industry advocates complain about tax expenditures and other subsidies promoting the renewable energy business. In my view, in their time, all of these subsidies played a positive role in the nation’s economic development. The Tennessee Valley Authority and other New Deal programs subsidized rural electrification and brought the modern energy economy to a part of the country that the free market in energy might never have developed. No one seems to argue for the free market when they receive a subsidy, but if a competitor gets an incentive, suddenly the government is dominated by socialists determined to “pick winners.”
At this stage in our economic history, the global economy has begun to make the transition to renewable energy. While the Obama Administration took some modest steps to participate in that transition, the Trump Administration seems determined to reverse those initiatives. It began in May with the appointment of Daniel Simmons to lead the Department of Energy’s renewable energy office. According to the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis:
“President Trump has appointed Daniel Simmons, a conservative scholar who sharply questioned the value of promoting renewable energy sources and curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, to oversee the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), according to an email distributed to department employees. The selection marks one of several recent Trump appointments to top energy and environmental posts, which appear to repudiate the Obama administration’s policies aimed at shifting the nation to low-carbon sources of electricity.”
In a similar move, Trump and his Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry have closed a small office that worked to bring renewable energy to the developing world. Last week, Brad Plumer of the New York Times reported that:
“The 11 staff members of the Office of International Climate and Technology were told this month that their positions were being eliminated, according to current and former agency employees. The office was formed in 2010 to help the United States provide technical advice to other nations seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The small office also played a lead role preparing for the annual Clean Energy Ministerial, a forum in which the United States, China, India and other countries shared insights on how best to promote energy efficiency, electric vehicles and other solutions to climate change.”
It is important to understand that most of the real action in energy efficiency and renewable energy is happening in communities, cities, states, corporations and large nonprofit institutions such as universities and hospitals. Even under President Obama, the Tea Party-dominated congress ensured that federal efforts to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency were relatively modest. We should not overstate the importance of these ill-advised actions by Trump team, but like the slow and persistent drip of a leaky pipe under the kitchen sink, the long-term effect will be corrosive and far from helpful.
The anti-renewable energy push by the Trump Administration is driven by a staggering degree of ignorance, as indicated by an astonishing statement by Secretary of Energy Rick Perry at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York this past April. As reported by Time Magazine reporter Justin Worland:
“During a question and answer period, Perry…suggested that increased reliance on renewable energy sources like wind and solar might make the grid unreliable given they only work when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, creating national security concerns. The Trump administration might try to preempt state and local governments that use policy to encourage clean energy to address those concerns, Perry said. “There’s a discussion, some of it very classified that will be occurring as we go further,” Perry said. “The conversation needs to happen so the local governors and legislators, mayors and city council understand what’s at stake here in making sure that our energy security is substantial.”
No one pushing renewable energy is calling for an intermittent electrical grid. Distributed generation of energy is intended to allow renewable energy into the grid, but the use of renewables is being coupled with grid modernization and the development of smart, computer controlled grid technology. The entire dialogue around the smart grid and distributed generation of energy calls for the incremental construction of microgrids with renewable and fossil fuel sources of energy generation and substantial increases in energy storage. No one is advocating an unreliable grid. The goal is a more secure energy supply with a higher mix of renewables. By decentralizing the grid and diversifying the sources of energy, the goal is a more resilient grid, better able to compensate for interruptions due to extreme weather, human error or terror. The push for energy efficiency is simply an effort to continue to do more with less. Fossil fuels will be needed until renewable energy and battery storage is as cheap and reliable as fossil fuels. Renewable energy and smartgrids make our energy supply more, not less, secure.
The idea that the administration is even discussing pre-empting state greenhouse gas targets in the interest of national security is beyond absurd. Where does Perry get this stuff? Is this a serious conversation somewhere in the federal government? I can’t imagine an executive order rescinding state energy targets that could possibly be upheld by a court, and I can’t imagine any congress that would allow the federal government to preempt state greenhouse gas standards.
The reason to pursue renewable energy and to modernize the electrical grid is that energy is central to every aspect of the modern global economy. We can’t do without energy and we will need more energy in the future. Fossil fuels helped to develop this modern world, and they will not be abandoned overnight, but their long-term price and impact on the environment drive the search for lower cost, less destructive alternatives. The development of renewable energy and energy storage technologies will continue with or without Trump and Perry.
It would be much better if our national government played a leadership role here, but the ideological biases and ignorance of Trump’s energy appointees ensures that it will not. This is not simply about climate change. It is about air pollution, toxics, and also about the long-term price of fossil fuels when compared to renewable energy. There are plenty of fossil fuels beneath the surface of the earth at the moment, but as time goes on they will become less plentiful and more difficult and costly to extract. The price of the sun will always be zero and will never change, and the price of harnessing and storing its energy will go down as technology improves. Our use of energy will continue to grow, especially as automated labor replaces human labor. Any economy that is able to lower the proportion of its GDP devoted to energy will be better able to compete with other economies. Any company that can lower its energy costs while increasing its output will have an advantage over its competition.
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy will be long and difficult. Our investment in fossil fuels is massive and global and the industry has not been shy about converting its economic power to political power. Energy is as central to economic life as air and water is to human life. There are powerful economic, organizational and political forces at work resisting the transition to renewable energy. Yet, we live in an era of disruptive technologies and rapidly changing patterns of production and consumption. We carry computers in our pockets, drive cars that will someday drive us, and communicate and gather information at practically no cost. The powerful companies of the last generation are gone, and the powerful companies of the next generation are being invented in someone’s garage. The companies that develop cheaper and more reliable renewable energy and energy storage technologies will drive fossil fuel companies from the marketplace. It would be better for the planet if that happened sooner rather than later. Since Trump’s team won’t help, let’s convince them to end their attack on renewable energy and stay out of the way of the change that is on the way.
28 Comments on "Trump’s Attack On Renewable Energy"
Davy on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 6:21 am
Huff post is nothing but a liberal rag. Trump is not getting anything done but disruption in the imperial city. This is a good thing. Other than that all his policies are impotent and are going nowhere. Renewable energy should stand on its own. If it is so effective then it will prove itself with itself. The government has never done anything good for energy policy. It just politicizes it. This is all the rag Huff Post is doing by politicizing something that is a nonevent.
eugene on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 8:15 am
Yep, Davy, I’ve always found total, mindless disruption in my personal life a good thing. If adds chaos to my decision making, craziness to my relationships and great disorder to me personally. It always brings bad decision making with unintended consequences In other countries people like
Trump have brought dictatorships and totalitarian. If you think Trump, and even more the powerful moneyed interests behind him is a good thing, I hope you enjoy what is coming.
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 9:35 am
Denver hits 99 degrees, breaks record set in 2007
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/denver-hits-98-degrees-breaks-record-set-in-2007
All a trump tard can do is make a bad situation as bad as it can possibly be.
bobinget on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 10:13 am
Hottest Cities in United States
City Days a Year Above 99 °F
Phoenix, Arizona 107
Las Vegas, Nevada 70
Riverside, California 24
Dallas, Texas 17
Phoenix hit 119 yesterday.
The city issued blankets to homeless to keep from frying on 150 degree pavements.
Welcome summer.
Davy on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 10:41 am
Go whine somewhere else Eugene. You are a liberal rag and can’t acknowledge the fact that Trump is disrupting your liberal chaos with his own chaos. You know a double negative thing is a positive. The status quo in DC of both parties has been turn upside down and the rot is plain to see. It took Trump to do that. Your liberal corruption and elite privilege with victimization politics need a good kick in the ass. I know you are poor and pissed because of that but you still believe in the liberal elite BS. The reason there is a Trump is because of people like you. You hate America and hate yourself and you nominated someone who was an embodiment of hate. If your wonder woman Hillary was in now worse would be occurring.
Kenz300 on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 10:47 am
Safer, cleaner and CHEAPER.
Wind and solar – WINNING !
Sissyfuss on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 10:58 am
Evidence of a dying empire hanging on for dear life. Wind powered tanks strike no fear in the hearts of one’s enemies.
Jerome Purtzer on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 11:25 am
According to The Donald’s good friends at the National Enquirer The Donald has (an untested but inferred) I.Q. of 163 making him the smartest president ever. If they could hook up electrodes to his brain we could easily power up the entire U.S. electrical grid and probably have enough left over to power up Mexico and Canada as well. Why have they not thunk of this yet?
Plantagenet on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 11:43 am
Every study shows that turning corn into gasoline is wasteful and harmful to the environment. We are in an oil glut, for heaven’s sake. Wasting taxpayer dollars subsidizing giant agribiz to make ethanol to replace gasoline is idiotic.
Cheers!
sidzepp on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 12:32 pm
Subsidies to the petroleum and ag industry are nothing new here. The rapid expansion of the railroads in this country was due to the subsidies in land grants that were given to the infant industry and allowed the rapid expansion during the mid 19th century.
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 12:38 pm
Davy, so? So the political parties are being disrupted, but those who wield the real power are not. Just a circus side show. Nothing has gotten better for the ordinary person and the hollowing out continues. The system of plunder is unaffected. The only thing that has changed since trump was elected is you dropped all pretense of being neutral and now angrily bark out “liberal” 58 times a day.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 12:38 pm
I guess this writer has not read about what happened in Australia.
Davy on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 12:54 pm
Little exaggerated Ape. I like neither party. If I attack liberals it is because this site is overflowing with extremist liberals. Liberal extremist here bash trump and talk themselves up. If you try to be moderate here I am considered the “other side”. I want you to show me where I praised the conservatives. Please reference it, bitch. If I don’t appear completely anti-American then I am considered a flag waiver. I am defining myself as a doomer. That’s it.
I don’t know what you are but it is slimy. Your position is “suicide” based and you trumpet that 68 times a day. You are in fact one of the elite coming from one of the richest cities on earth whining and moaning about poor Americans 78 times a day. You are sitting on a small fortune in property in Hongcouver and pretending to be a poor man’s Robin Hood. WTF, are you going to do now that your clog obsession is gone? I guess you will join your other prick friends greg and makati and gang bang someone else. Oh and you are getting a little overboard with the AGW news a little is ok but you are now into vomiting it like that is going to change things.
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 1:28 pm
If you say so Davy
U.S. Heatwave and Tropical Storm Cindy (June 20-21 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeEjsx6snBI
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 1:33 pm
Power use peaks as temperatures soar
“PHOENIX (AP) Arizona Public Service Company, the state’s largest electricity provider, says customers set a record peak usage Tuesday as temperatures in Phoenix soared to nearly 120 degrees.
More than 7,300 megawatts of energy were consumed between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., topping the prior 11-year record set in 2006.
Phoenix hit a high of 119 Tuesday as the Southwest continued an extreme heat wave.
The area is looking at breaking another temperature record Wednesday with an expected 117 degrees for a high.
Authorities say people should avoid the outdoors and be in air-conditioned buildings during the heat wave.
Death Valley, California, reached 127 Tuesday and Palm Springs hit 122, tying the degree for the same day last year.”
http://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Power-use-peaks-as-temperatures-soar-429949133.html?ref=133
Apneaman on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 5:33 pm
No regrets for Trump voters: The media needs to stop looking for buyer’s remorse
Psychological research shows people are too tribal and afraid to admit they were wrong to regret their votes
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/21/no-regrets-for-trump-voters-the-media-needs-to-stop-looking-for-buyers-remorse/
“afraid to admit they were wrong”, that’s the same with the AGW denier tards. Records of all sorts are tumbling every day and they still won’t admit they were wrong wrong wrong. That’s OK, cause I’ll be here to remind them always and forever.
makati1 on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 7:06 pm
Ap, Davy’s sickness is getting worse. But then, the entire country is going insane. The few rational Americans left are leaving if they can or trying to prep for the storm that is on the horizon. At least three million of us are already living in other countries and most will never go back if they do not have to.
“… a 1999 State Department estimate suggests that the number may be between 3 million and 8 million. Other sources estimate that there are 9 million non-military U.S. citizens living abroad” WIKI
“National Journal. Retrieved 28 January 2015. ” At the same time, person-to-person contacts are widespread: Some 600,000 Americans live in the Philippines”. WIKI
I am NOT alone in my belief that the Philippines is a better place to live than the U$ Police State.
makati1 on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 7:38 pm
Caught On Video: Russian, NATO Jets In Near Standoff After F-16 Buzzes Defense Minister’s Airplane
“In an accounting of the incident, Reuters notes that one of the Russian fighter jets escorting Shoigu’s plane had inserted itself between the defense minister’s plane and the NATO fighter and “tilted its wings from side to side to show the weapons it was carrying, Russian agencies said.” After that the F-16 promptly left the area.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-21/nato-jet-menaces-aircraft-carrying-russian-defense-minister
The latest example of American insanity. War is going to happen if this continues. Nuclear war.
Outcast_Searcher on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 8:44 pm
Kenz: Safer and cleaner, yes. But not cheaper yet. If it were, it would be adopted at more than a tiny fraction of usage. If it were, there wouldn’t need to be whining about needing more subsidies for it.
It will get there, but it takes time. Even if solar panels were free, for example, there is still the installation and the batteries (if you want any backup) to think about.
onlooker on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 8:55 pm
Wow, Mak the crazies leading the Empire may just be crazy enough to trigger WWIII, pass the popcorn
makati1 on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 9:10 pm
onlooker, at this point, I would give odds as 2:1 that they will start WW3. I also give odds of 10:1 that they will lose. We can only hope that I am wrong as WW3 will likely be about 30 minutes long and no winners.
rockman on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 9:24 pm
Well, solar is finally beginning to take off in Texas. And part of the reason is the federal tax credit:
“The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value.”
Now one can argue if the tax credit is a true subsidy: the govt is not putting $1 into any solar farms in Texas. And if those farms don’t turn a profit there is no reduction in fed taxes because, obviously, they don’t pay taxes. IOW the govt doesn’t lose a $1 of tax rervenue. More important: the govt doesn’t lose a $1 of investment.
OTOH if they are profitable they still pay federal income tax that isn’t reduced below the amount of the tax credit. And more important: once the tax credit is taken they pay at the normal tax rate. But also remember there are companies paid to make and and install those solar fields that pay federal income taxes on the revenue they earn. As do the workers who pay income and SS taxes on the paychecks they earn.
Does sound like a win/win: if the solar fields are not built the govt never receives any tax revenue and the country uses more fossil fuels.
onlooker on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 9:27 pm
Unfortunately, crazy people do not think in reasonable ways
Sissyfuss on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 9:44 pm
That must have been a misprint by the Enquirer. Meant 63 IQ. The man watches TV and doesn’t read. No wonder the unevolved deplorables venerate him. Except for his ill-gotten billions he’s just like them.
makati1 on Wed, 21st Jun 2017 10:13 pm
Sissy, if he has an IQ of 163, he hides it very well. He is obviously intelligent enough to make a few billion, but then, our last really intelligent president was JFK followed by Carter. There is no number for Obama. Must have gotten lost with his original birth certificate. lol
https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/05/27/poindexter-in-chief-presidential-iqs-and-success-in-the-oval-office
rockman on Thu, 22nd Jun 2017 8:42 am
Sissy – Folks confuse IQ with common sense. I don’t know if Einstein ever had his Q measured but if you’re familiar with his personal life it’s obviously nothing to brag about. IQ also is not a measure of morality. For instance I’ve read that Stalin was rather brilliant. So intelligent he was able to kill millions much more efficiently the Hitler.
Sissyfuss on Thu, 22nd Jun 2017 11:07 am
Rockerpanel, there is also the concomitant EI, emotional intelligence which which is tied to upbringing and culture. A person with a highly efficient mind that was raised by toxic parents effects malfeasance at an exponential rate. Or maybe like me, he was just dropped on his head too many times.
DerHundistlos on Thu, 22nd Jun 2017 4:38 pm
“libertard, extremist liberal, liberal chaos, liberal corruption, moaner, Trump basher, slimy, prick friends, poor, rich, etc.”