Wednesday, November 19, 2003
The Energy Bill
Since all the major newspapers are doing terrible coverage of the Energy bill that just passed the house and is probably going to be filibustered in the senate I thought I'd join in. I did see a single nice story from Solar Access, that at least got the piece of the story they were interested in correct.
http://www.solaraccess.com/news/story?storyid=5561 free registration required
Overall this bill is reasonable. In an ideal world we would switch to electric cars and produce all our electricity from photovoltaics. But in reality change takes time.
There is a tax credit for installing photovoltaics (solar electric) and solar hot water. It is up to $2000 for each, and is the first time there has been real support for solar on a national level. If I had some money to invest right now I'd buy me some Evergreen Solar stock.
There are rumoured to be tax breaks for energy efficient appliances, such as refrigerators.
There is support for coal, under the guise of "clean coal", which is like saying healthy cancer or low acid acid rain. Still, we do have a lot of coal, and it is a cheap source of energy. Hopefully we will start moving to renewable quickly.
Gasoline gets required percentages of ethanol. Ethanol is alcohol, usually produced from corn. The advantage of it is we don't buy it from the middle east, and we can grow more of it. Yes ethanol could be produced much cheaper from cane sugar, but our horrendous cane sugar tariffs are an entirely different subject. But as a slight digression ever wonder why most products you buy have high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener? It is because the corn lobby has kept congress imposing ridiculous tariffs on imported sugar.
Uranium makes a comeback as well, a new plant producing radioactive waste will be built in Oregon.
Finally a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope (Alaska, where my father used to work). Maybe after it is done there will be better price stability in heating our homes and in electric prices. I'm fairly disappointed they didn't decide to drill in ANWR, as I'd rather send my money to Alaskan's than to Saudi Arabians or Iranians.
http://www.solaraccess.com/news/story?storyid=5561 free registration required
Overall this bill is reasonable. In an ideal world we would switch to electric cars and produce all our electricity from photovoltaics. But in reality change takes time.
There is a tax credit for installing photovoltaics (solar electric) and solar hot water. It is up to $2000 for each, and is the first time there has been real support for solar on a national level. If I had some money to invest right now I'd buy me some Evergreen Solar stock.
There are rumoured to be tax breaks for energy efficient appliances, such as refrigerators.
There is support for coal, under the guise of "clean coal", which is like saying healthy cancer or low acid acid rain. Still, we do have a lot of coal, and it is a cheap source of energy. Hopefully we will start moving to renewable quickly.
Gasoline gets required percentages of ethanol. Ethanol is alcohol, usually produced from corn. The advantage of it is we don't buy it from the middle east, and we can grow more of it. Yes ethanol could be produced much cheaper from cane sugar, but our horrendous cane sugar tariffs are an entirely different subject. But as a slight digression ever wonder why most products you buy have high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener? It is because the corn lobby has kept congress imposing ridiculous tariffs on imported sugar.
Uranium makes a comeback as well, a new plant producing radioactive waste will be built in Oregon.
Finally a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope (Alaska, where my father used to work). Maybe after it is done there will be better price stability in heating our homes and in electric prices. I'm fairly disappointed they didn't decide to drill in ANWR, as I'd rather send my money to Alaskan's than to Saudi Arabians or Iranians.
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