Why Green has Such a Tough Time in America

Every time I discuss solar on the East Coast I know that the objections are lurking. I never lead with “Green”. It has to make business sense or no one will listen. What amazes me is that even when I show an overwhelming competitive advantage to producing clean energy and eliminating a variable cost, many business owners still resist. My favorite objection is: “I can’t go solar because everyone will think that I am a Democrat!”. Granted we are in a recession and many companies can’t use the tax credits but these same people will put in double paned windows that take 72 years to recover their cost.

Look at where DoE resources go.  They are focused on labs (i.e. fundamental research) and driving end consumer demand.  US funding of commercialization is limited because there is a fundamental belief that this is best serviced by capitalism.  However, capitalism doesn’t always work and while our technologies collect dust (in published research papers) waiting for a capitalist; Korea, China, etc. are happy to make our research a reality.  We need to rethink how we drive innovation in US energy.

Good food for thought.
Seems to me the US excels at bringing new computer hardware and software to market.
However those skills and processes don’t work so well for green. See
http://geoffreyfoulds.wordpress.com/

Sorebird, if oil and coal were so great they wouldn’t need billions in subsidies on top of monopolies that have a stranglehold on innovation and competition.  The only place in amerika where monopolies don’t control the energy supply, rural farm coops, you’ll find wind and solar installations going like gangbusters.  You are absolutly right that we need to level the playing field to allow competition, you just have facts and your history completely wrong.

You are spot on. There’s such a big gap here between those who worship green and those who don’t. And then to make things complicated, the conservatives - ahem, Republican in Congress - are so locked up with opposing any idea that touches the subject of climate change, environmental, etc. What they don’t realize is we’re in competition with other countries in the world. Hello globalization. Maybe they don’t understand that. Lawmakers in Congress are responsible in mapping out the foundation for the next generation with consequences that will stay here for generations to come. I would like to suggest that they go and check out the progress of other countries in the world, to see it with their own eyes. So they understand what we’re competing with. To scale things up, we need to talk in business sense. Change the language we communicate, instead of using enviro terms, let’s use dollars and sense. Just my 2 cents. http://dewita.biz

We pay .09 kwh for power in FL,  run the air conditioners all day and can’t go out side because the sun’s so intense we’ll spontaneously ignite.  It’s brilliant.  Put a ginormous tax on hydrocarbons and watch everyone become stylishly green.  Case in point - nobody wanted to buy a rolling hybrid cockroach until gas was 4 bucks; financial pain is a great incentive.

Reason no. 4 (Fossil Fuel lobbying) should have been reason no. 1 ... and 2, 3, and 4.  It explains a lot.

See Renewable Energy Catches on in Red America in OnEarth magazine.  It is patently not true that Red people don’t care about renewable energy.  They are just very careful not to be coercive about it.  Go to a Republican caucus in Oregon.  You will find as many Priuses and other efficient vehicles as at a D meeting.  This article on Kern County is a case in point.  While D’s are trying to mandate and subsidize, R’s are doing an inventory, finding the good sites, contacting the owners until they find those who want or need to get RE on their properties, lining up the permits, and getting the base installed.  You are going to look up, and ask how that happened if you are not paying attention.

“During the fiscal years of 2002-2008 the United States handed out subsidies to fossil fuel industries to a tune of 72 billion dollars, while renewable energy subsidies, during the same period, reached 29 billion dollars. Conducted by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the research shows that the US government has heavily subsidized ‘dirty fuels’ that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.

The funds provided to renewable energy sources plunges further when one takes into account that of the 29 billion dollars, 16.8 billion went to subsidizing corn-based ethanol, an energy source that numerous studies have shown is not carbon neutral and has been blamed in part for deforestation in the tropics and the global food crisis. The remaining 12.2 billion went to wind, solar, non-corn based biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production.

Of the 72 billion dollars given to fossil fuels, 2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage. The rest of the funds went to oil and coal.”

Red people have no problem being coercive about hydrocarbons.  Don’t you remember the chanting and stomping at the Republican National Convention?  One day it was “Drill baby drill!”  the next day it was “Clean Coal! Clean Coal!” Red people think history and science can change just because they say so (and blue people aren’t much better). We see where unrestricted drilling has taken us. We also know that there is no such thing as clean coal.  How about taking a rational look at the future, the present, and the past ... stop chanting and start thinking.

You might think that the Deep Water Horizon mess might do something to finally change attitudes - this is the part of the US that is most wedded to Big Oil, and now is being most adversely affected by it.
  of course, Exxon Valdez didnt change much, and decades of conflict with the Middle East havent either…

Honestly, I think it comes down to the penalization of going green.

For example when the gas prices hit $4 here people started honestly looking at, purchasing and demanding more fuel efficient vehicles. Of those that couldn’t they cut back on usage. This caused a dramatic drop in demand in turn a dramatic drop in revenue from taxes on such gas usage. Now government can’t have that so they proposed new taxes and or increased current taxes. This pissed of the people, “You wanted us to cut back now you what us to pay more for this. No.”

Look at water conservation.  All my life I’ve been told to not run it as much, uses more efficient appliances, switch to low flow systems.  Now my local municipality is raising rates AGAIN to compensate for the loss of revenue due to lack of usage and to pay for over extended projects.

Then there’s the “Smart Grid”.  In it proper form, used as a tool to help improve distribution, maintenance,  BASIC control of the grid and to help customers understand and improve their usage, is great.  But as you touched on its being used as an excuse to not build new and more efficient power generation plants to compensate for demand and to control how and when you can use power.  Which is not what the people want nor will they accept.

Making my standard of living less costly and more efficient is fine. But giving it up to make someone else feel better or preventing others form obtaining it is simple wrong.
When going green gets past the actual and perceived penalty, then it’ll be accepted.

Green will be accepted when the masses are educated and the economic benefit is tangible.  Goods like aluminum, steel and cardboard are recycled because is make economic sense to do so.  When consumers demand homes that are super insulated and energy efficient the building industry will changed.  When a true electric vehicle is produced at an acceptable price consumers will buy them.  When solar panels provide the appropriate payback consumers will buy them and the utilities will have to be bailed out by the government when they fail.  There is a joke among water conservationists who want to get off the water/sewer grid - it will cost the last remaining grid user $1 billion to flush his toilet to cover all the fixed and variable costs of delivering that last gallon of water!!