Posts Tagged ‘Government Subsidies’

Solar now enjoys a powerhouse set of assets that many industries spend dearly to acquire: explosive growth, wide and deep public support, and a base of authentic citizen advocates – many of whom aren’t in the industry but see it as a key part of America’s future.

Those assets have converted solar from a nice curiosity to a real long-term threat to the fossil fuel industries.

The coal and oil companies see that, and they are acting accordingly. Solar isn’t responding at nearly the level needed.

Roughly five years ago, the dirty energy lobby geared up to stop Congressional climate change legislation. The American Petroleum Institute announced that it was going to spend roughly $100 million a year on a “repositioning” campaign, and the coal industry did the same at about half that level.

That meant hiring dozens of lobbyists, front groups and public relations firms to move propaganda and cut into solar’s overall market position. You can see signs of this in the escalating, concerted attack on solar’s market position that’s being conducted through:

• Well-tested messaging about solar’s reliability, cost and readiness
• Disciplined, repeated message delivery through multiple media channels
• Extensive use of “experts” and front groups to form an echo chamber

Don’t take my word for it. My firm tracked anti-solar rhetoric on the editorial and opinion pages of the Washington Times, which has attacked solar 17 times in the past seven months.

This type of rhetoric was also on full display in three Wall Street Journal editorials (which you can read here, here and here) in a 55-day span. The themes are pushed even further by a recent quote from the Institute for Energy Research in this Bloomberg News story; an entire anti-renewables book by the Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce; and the e-book from the Cato Institute that equated scaling the clean economy with government waste.

How can solar and other renewables possibly push back against the fossil fuel industries, which have so many more resources to commit to the fight? We released a poll today that suggests an answer, particularly on the cost argument.

Our poll not only confirmed that solar’s support is wide and deep, but showed that 80 percent of Americans don’t know how much of their taxes are given each year to highly profitable corporations in the coal and oil industries.

When people learned that $10 billion of their money is given to the guys claiming they are “cheap” energy, just 8 percent wanted things to stay that way. In fact, over 70 percent said they wanted half or all of that money repurposed to promoting solar and other renewables.

One poll isn’t going to stop the fossil industries’ attacks, but it tells us that we shouldn’t shy from the debate on costs – we should see it as a strength.

We’re the cheap and abundant (in fact, infinite) energy source, not the fossils. If the fossil fuel defenders want to talk about how cheap they are, then they need to tell Americans why they depend on so much government welfare. If they want to say that solar’s policy support is somehow a sign of our adolescence, then we need to point out – repeatedly and aggressively – that 150 years of subsidies makes fossil fuels the oldest toddlers in America.

And, we should push policymakers to do what consumers and taxpayers want by overwhelming majorities – cut fossil fuel subsidies and replace them with expanded policy support for renewable energy sources.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard over the last several years: “We’re solar, everyone loves us.” That’s true, but it won’t stay true unless we make our case far more forcefully, aggressively and frequently. Industry players need to step up their advocacy game considerably, both individually and through greater participation in the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Despite our strong, shared interest, solar is still depending far too much on goodwill to get by.

A steady stream of recent stories continues to undercut the dirty energy lobby’s claims of “cheap and abundant.”

First up, “Study: World’s ‘Peak Coal’ Moment Has Arrived,” offers up yet another study on how Big Coal is running out of mountains to blow up and cheap coal seams to mine.  Instead, production of this dirtiest fuel will begin a “long, steep decline” next year, despite coal industry propaganda to the contrary.

The next day, The New York Times quoted Former BP chief executive John Browne, now a managing director of a private equity firm dedicated to renewable energy, complaining about his old industry’s permanent hand in the government cookie jar.

“No politician can stop subsidies to fossil fuels overnight, but I think governments could be leveling the playing field a great deal faster,” Browne said. He cited estimates by the International Energy Agency that show highly profitable dirty energy companies get over $500 billion in welfare a year – more than 10 times the amount spent on subsidizing renewable sources. Browne also pointed to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as “a reminder of the significant local risks to extracting fossil fuels.”

The week ended with a Reuters story on the stark realities around the pie-in-the-sky notion of carbon capture storage (CCS). A refinery in Norway now estimates it will cost $1.02 billion, nearly nine times as much as planned, to build a CCS facility. Never mind the fact that all these boondoggles will capture is carbon, not the dozen plus other toxic pollutants from burning coal.

The jury keeps coming in and saying the same thing – dirty energy isn’t cheap, and it’s not abundant. It’s just heavily propagandized and even more heavily subsidized. We again challenge the “cheap and abundant” crowd to join us in saying that dirty energy lobbyists need to be kicked off welfare. If they are cheap and abundant, then it shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Even by its own, basement-floor standard on hypocrisy and selective omission, the recent Wall Street Journal editorial tisk-tisking Senator Harry Reid for raising money from renewable energy companies is laughable. The WSJ can’t say enough bad things about smart pro-renewable policies, but completely omits the hundreds of billions of dollars given to highly profitable, mature dirty energy companies – by politicians who raise money from those industries.

The WSJ hasn’t lately called out all politicians for their energy company ties, such as the $1.4 million dollars Big Oil and Big Gas companies have given to Representative Joe Barton? Or the $2.6 million they have funneled to Senator John McCain? (Unfortunately for the American citizen, that list of relationships goes on and on….)

Perhaps they (read Rubert Murdoch) have their own relationship with Big Oil and Big Gas?

If we’re going to sing the free markets mantra, then can’t we muster the outrage at giving ExxonMobil our tax money? The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s ideological soul mate, the Cato Institute, can’t seem to do that in its online book on government waste. We just got done reading it and despite railing against pro-renewable policies, there’s not a word about kicking oil and coal companies off welfare.

Why? Maybe it’s because, well, the Cato Institute is a front group used by dirty energy companies for propaganda help. It makes sense then that the same PR firms doing work for the dirty energy lobbyists would coax the Wall Street Journal into the same line that somehow government support is an indication of maturity.

If that’s the case, then when (as we’ve asked before) do oil and coal grow up, and lose the teenage acne? They’ve only been around for over a hundred years.

Americans love solar energy and 92 percent of them are demanding greater access to it.

It’s hard to get that many Americans to agree on anything – let alone something as politically charged as energy. And yet, solar energy generates that kind of support.

Americans understand that solar is a solution to many of the problems facing us today. Solar reduces pollution. It reduces our use of finite energy sources. And it reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Despite these real and immediate benefits, the solar industry continues to face restrictions on its growth. Some local governments have enacted time-consuming and/or expensive solar installation procedures. Yet other limitations are imposed by neighborhood associations who are supposedly concerned with solar “aesthetics,” while completely ignoring the dozens of power lines lining their streets.

While these types of regulations are counterproductive to solar’s growth, the biggest obstacle to the solar industry is the billions of dollars in subsidies Big Oil and Big Coal continue to receive from the federal government.

For almost a century, dirty fuel companies have used tax credits and other public funds to grow their coffers and political reach. But today, the finite resources they’ve been pulling from beneath the earth are diminishing as quickly as their toxic carbon footprint is growing. As this year’s mining and drilling accidents have shown us, the past and present course of tax subsidies, aggressive digging and unintended environmental consequences have now reached a very scary point.

A shift must be made.

The solar industry recognizes this and is ready with needed solutions. The Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) has launched the Solar Bill of Rights Campaign, a grassroots movement working to educate Americans about solar energy and provide the answers to our energy needs.

Driven by frustration created by the climate bill collapse and the continued pressure by dirty energy industry lobbyists, Americans are no longer remaining silent. Over 30,000 of us have signed the Solar Bill of Rights in the past few weeks, creating a growing movement for energy change. Later this fall, SEIA’s president, Rhone Resch, will march the Solar Bill of Rights into the halls of Congress and demand the roadblocks to solar’s growth be lifted.

Be a part of this important moment and add you name to the Solar Bill of Rights today. Help change the destructive course we are on and create the kind of future we deserve.

Wall Street Journal editorial page stands in line of pundits and editorial pages to talk about how renewables and solar are “costly” and “not ready.” This nonsense comes from the heavily subsidized and destructive coal and oil industries.

Tom Rooney of SPG Solar pushes back with a great piece on Renewable Energy World:

“Solar is not a cause, it is a business with real benefits for its customers … Today, around the world, more than a million people work in the wind and solar business.”

We think Mr. Rooney is dead-on, and said so at REW and here:

I look forward to these same pundits, all of whom have long-expressed concerns about government spending, vigorously calling for ending the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, tax breaks, pollution forgiveness, and research grants that coal and oil annually enjoy in the U.S. and abroad.

Those century-old energy sources are comprised of some of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world. Do they really need our tax money to get by, especially when Americans want deficits cut and renewable energy supported?

And, if government support is a sign of supposed “immaturity,” at what point do the coal and oil companies lose the teenage acne and grow up?

Let’s kick Massey Energy and ExxonMobil off government welfare, then have a conversation about whose technology is “costly.”

We need a lot more people in solar companies aggressively pushing back against dirty energy propaganda, which directly affects the market positioning and sales environment for solar.

Solar Fred has called for much the same thing.