Our country is quickly sliding down a slippery slope. Not too long ago, we were the leaders in renewable energy – wind, solar, biofuels. Today, not only have the major technological advancements come from overseas, our manufacturing facilities, entrepreneurs and investors are going, or have gone overseas as well.
Where are they going? Brazil. India. China. Why? Because these countries have the winning recipes for success: cohesive energy policy, long-term incentives and private investors. These are the exact three things we do not have in America.
We have other problems. We have states like California, that purport leadership in green policies and renewable energy, who make it nearly impossible to get permits for projects to meet its “green” initiatives.
Yesterday, Martifer Renewables Electricity dropped its plans to build a 107MW hybrid solar-powered biomass plant in California. The reason? After nearly 2 1/ 2 years, they have yet to obtain permits. Another company run out of California due to difficulty in obtaining permits, Blue Fire Ethanol – a next generation bioenergy company.
It may not be too late to head back up the hill but there are some things that must be done. First, we need to move forward on key legislative policies supporting renewable energy. For example, tax credits must be extended for the long-term, not one-to-five years. (BTW – oil has been receiving tax credits for over 100 years.) Our policies, the Renewable Fuels Standard, Farm Bill, any future electricity renewable standards, and climate change policy, etc. must work together for success, not work against each other as they do now.
Second, banks must start lending and private investors need to step up and begin funding projects. Last month, one of the country’s most famous billionaires, Warren Buffet, along with Bill and Melinda Gates publicly encouraged the country’s 400 billionaires to give away $600 billion dollars to charities. Unfortunately, nowhere in this call to action was the need to support renewable energy projects and green jobs right here in America. This oversight is a gross disservice to American citizens who helped them become billionaires.
I am going to make a bold prediction. In terms of biofuels, the next two decades will belong to Brazil. China and India will take ownership of wind, solar, biomass, and other products like biochemicals and plastics.
If you don’t want my predictions to come to fruition, then our country, under the leadership of its citizens, must take action now.
0 responses to “America’s Slippery Slope of Support for Renewable Energy”
The “hope” is that the federal government (especially the federal government), the banks, and the billionaires in the U.S. will do so. The “change” is that since a couple of years ago, all of this has been falling apart. We are supposed to “hope” but are left with nothing but unwanted “change” for the worse. One political party has dominant control (they passed Health Care along party lines)…and the Presidency.
Does this website mean anything?:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/CleanEnergy/?source=OM_LB_google_Energy-search_Obama&gclid=CPjr8-2z3aICFQxubAodDhxkwQ
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
…Insert cricket chirping sound here…
More Americans and people of all countries are now studying the work of ‘Bucky’ Fuller ( R Buckminster Fuller), considered one of the first environmentalists, and perhaps the most important human being of the twentieth century he was dubbed “Grandfather of the Universe” by John Denver.
I notice that almost every news item, blog post and commentary about the problems facing our survival are focused on the ‘content’, or the stuff that they believe is important and why it is better or worse than other stuff.
Have you noticed how that makes little is any difference to the direction we’re headed in?
Every cloud has a silver lining … and biomass, biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal energies are natures way of helping us become successful, and we are starting to see that I propose.
One of Fullers quotes is “You can’t make money and sense at the same time, they are mutually exclusive.” and yet much of the renewables / clean energy and sustainable living industry is focused on trying to make a buck.
‘Bucky’ had faith that if he was “on track” and making sense then the Universe would look after him … and although he did go through tough times, during the last 30 years of his life his income averaged over $300k a year. He passed on in 1983 and today that $300k would be equivalent to around $1m a year.
The “context” that he operated inside of was ‘abundance’ … that there was more than enough of food clothing and shelter to provide for every human being at a very high standard of living … in fact he said we were 4.7billion potential billionaires however we were not aware of it yet.
Today we are over 7billion potential billionaires and perhaps will reach http://10billionbillionaires.org before we do realize it. The issue to go to work on is NOT making changes to the content (whether we should have more solar, less this and that) but go to work on the CONTEXT of life on planet Earth today. For over forty years now (since 1970) the context has been one of “abundance” and yet our media, our NEWS, and our commentaries still come from the premise of ‘scarcity’ which is a lie, and as long as we continue in that, all we can have is more scarcity.
Your Healthy Planet.com (http:yourhealthyplanet.com) is a starting point for operating inside of an ABUNDANCE context … the result of which can only be more for everyone, which is how nature works. As long as we respect her, and as long as we give back more than we take nature will flourish, and so will we.
Bluefire made a big promotion of bashing Ca and coming down here to Ms to “get’er done.” They got their guvmint money, and that’s the last we heard.
Ca is the Country’s leader in Renewable Energy. They are getting 15% of their electricity from Renewables, and will be getting 20% by 2013. They’re not interested in financing scams, and projects that can’t work.
It’s time for the ethanol producers to quit whining, and start investing a little money in blender pumps, and other “point of sale” investments.
Biofuels Digest is promoting a Green Victory Bond, which basically is a government bond that helps to finance new biofuels projects.
20 projects, $25 million awarded to each.
Clean, simple, no over the top government crap to gum it all up.
Who gets the money?
A panel of 7 judges selects from a 50 page max business plan submitted by all potential companies.
That’s it.
The bond holders are us, Americans, rather than foreign countries like China and Japan who continue to buy up our debt and make us beholden to them.
Anyone know of a politician with the courage to try to make this reality?