Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The Future of Solar Power
Some of the cleverer solar antagonists are framing solar energy as a “future technology.”
You may have seen ads about fossil-fuel companies “investing in solar for tomorrow” to
make themselves out as good guys, concerned about the environment but unable to yet
usesolar power.This wasalot ofthe content ofBP'sBeyond Petroleum marketing cam-
paign, even though it spent a factor of10times as much onnew oil and gas development
than on solar in the decade it ran the ads. And in 2011 it shuttered solar operations alto-
gether.
In other words many fossil-fuel interests are peddling the message that they care, but
in truth they're procrastinating. This “not yet” message cracks me up because they know
as well as I do that space travel and satellite technology are all solar powered and have
been pretty much since we first went into space. Solar is not a future technology but a
technology that's ready for us now—the people here on Earth who are concerned about
bills and our energy future.
Subsidies
Ah, subsidies: King CONG's favorite fight. And why? Because CONG wants you to be-
lieve renewable energy is being overly subsidized. Yet
all
energy is subsidized, espe-
cially the fossil-fuel industry. It is currently estimated that here in the United States oil
companiesarereceiving$7,610perminuteintaxbreaks—that's$4billionperyear.And
fossil-fuelsubsidiesareperverse,whilerenewable-energysubsidiesarebroadlyworking.
It'struethat there canbeproblems whenpoliticians pickfavorites, like Solyndra,butthe
most egregious problems are the now-permanent and accepted subsidies provided to the
fossil-fuel industry.
The US government's $50 billion-plus-per-year outlay for conventional energy
sources distorts the US energy sector by subsidizing mature companies whose business
modelsandcoretechnologiesworkwell,areinsanelyprofitable,andinmanywaysdom-
inate markets that are neither highly volatile nor even competitive. The other way our
government supports them is to continue to turn a blind eye to their externalities, or true
costs—whether that's maintaining a military presence in the Middle East (to secure our
access to oil) or tolerating the intense impact of conventional energy on human health
and ecosystems. We have already mentioned the threat to humans in terms of air qual-
ity effects and climate change, but conventional energy also degrades our environment,
whichhasanimmediate economic costintermsofdiminished resources (suchaswater).
All of these costs should be added in when we tally up the corporate welfare we give
these companies.
