Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
jobs it creates in the community—in sales, installation, maintenance, and a myriad of
other areas—won't be offshored and will be readily available to them. This creates true
independence and gives us the liberty we deserve.
Yet,currently,theRepublicanPartycomposesthebulkofadvocatesforthefossil-fuel
industry.Thismostlycomesfromtheprofessional political hacksaroundtheparty.Take,
for example, Grover Norquist, lobbyist, conservative activist, and one of the strongest
opponents of clean energy, who has focused his bullying sights on the Renewable Port-
folio Standard (RPS), one of the most effective positive energy policies in the United
States. To Norquist the RPS is the new, skinny, but increasingly popular kid in town, and
Norquist seriously wants to crush him before he grows up into a federal clean-energy
standard or RPS equivalent being considered by Congress.
In an op-ed on the politically influential blog
Politico.com,
Norquist and a colleague
regurgitated some oft-made claims of the fossil-fuel lobby: that clean-energy require-
ments in some states were costing jobs and money, that legislators would be wise to re-
peallawsthatrequiresomeamountofcleanenergyintheirelectricitysystemtolevelthe
playing field (as though pitting nascent clean-energy technologies against the behemoths
of the fossil-fuel industry would be a fair match), and that subsidies for the renewable-
power industry are a waste. In the games surrounding energy policy, the latter is one
of the greatest fudges of all—the idea that fossil-fuel businesses don't receive subsidies
while the clean-energy businesses do. We'll dive into the details of the many and varied
subsidies we provide for all manner of energy systems later, but for now suffice it to say
that
everybody
in the industry gets some and King CONG gets the most.
In a rational conversation, we would be looking perhaps at a cost/benefit analysis and
trying to calculate the value of solar energy versus, for example, coal-fired power to de-
termine whether legislators should support mandates for renewable energy. Fortunately,
many of our legislators have not listened to the likes of Norquist and are able to determ-
ine the facts for themselves, which show the benefits of clean energy, especially solar.
For example, in Colorado the RPS requirements to meet 20 percent of electricity
needs by 2020 will be achieved eight years in advance, that is, in 2012, and will save
customers $100 million in electricity costs while creating thousands of jobs and substan-
tial tax benefits. On the other side of the ledger, coal costs more than it creates in value,
according to a 2011 study in the
American Economic Review,
which estimates that in the
United States coal creates roughly $53 billion in damages per year—a cost that is more
than twice as high as the market price of the electricity. The estimate does not include
“external effects such as those that take place through water, soils, noise, and other me-
dia” or carbon dioxide and its effect on climate. When the authors added in estimates of
the cost of carbon dioxide pollution, they found the gross estimated damages caused by
power plants to be more than 30 percent higher.
