tax incentive

Maybe. From my seat as a journalism and environmental science student at the University of Idaho, things are not looking too great for wind power. While the wind energy industry has seemingly flourished here in parts of the Pacific Northwest (as seen in Beyond the Light Switch’s wind segment), with wind turbines populating once vacant stretches of land, a recent article in The Denver Post revealed that developments like this might come to a crashing halt.

The increased production and assembly of wind turbines in the U.S. over the past 10 years are partially the result of production tax incentives (PTC), a program whose future may be in jeopardy.

Created under the Environmental Policy Act of 1992, PTC has promoted growth in renewable energy industries and supplied many Americans with jobs in sustainability-related areas. PTCs currently offer a 2.1 cents/ kilowatt-hour tax credit to qualified wind industries and other renewable energies like biomass, hydroelectric, and geothermal – with the U.S. currently sporting a total of 38 states with utility-scale wind turbines. The PTC program is currently up for renewal, but deliberations in Congress may tie it up for good. The Denver Post reported that the $1.4 billion program (extended over 10 years) has already failed three times in the Senate.

Here Allison Sherry of The Denver Post quotes U.S. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, "It's nuts…it's like Congress will get around to it when Congress is ready to work on it, but that's cold comfort for people getting laid off across the country and the state of Colorado." Sherry adds that cutting this program now would be way more damaging than it would have been 10 years ago because of the industry’s recent and rapid growth. But opponents of the program’s renewal are less sympathetic...

 A February article from The Wall Street Journal offered an example of such wind-opposing sentiment here, “The wind industry simply cannot continue to rely on the American taxpayer," said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), who is currently pushing a bill that would cut many energy-related credits from the tax code. "Each time it comes up to a year of expiration, they say, 'If we just get a few more years our technology will mature and we will become more competitive.' It's time for them to figure out how to do that."

Director of Stanford University Atmosphere and Energy Program Mark Z. Jacobsen’s response to this issue is related more to the health benefits of switching to renewable energy sources versus fossil fuels. A Beyond the Light Switch video interview posed the following question to Jacobson: “If energy from renewables is going to be more expensive, why should we consider our energy mix at all?” Jacobson answered, “This is a really twisted incentive system where we pay people to cause environmental damage, and so as a result they can freeload off the health of our citizens. And at the same time we complain about giving subsidies to renewable energy industries that are effectively eliminating those air pollution health problems and deaths.”

For decades, the advance of distributed solar power in the United States has seen its share of setbacks. Distributed solar, as opposed to centralized (think big desert arrays like these), refers to solar photovoltaic panels—PV panels for short. In fact, just a few short years ago, headlines everywhere were warning investors of the impending burst of a 'solar bubble' caused by too much supply and not enough demand. While it's true that many solar start-ups have since fallen by the wayside, a new industry report by VLSI Research is seeing more than a light at the end of the tunnel—they're seeing the potential for a PV explosion.

According to weSRCH, who published the report, 2011 is slated to be a banner year for PV sales and investment. VLSI's market research states that PV sales are "expected to grow 24%, driving sales to in excess of $12B". Sounds like good news...and boy, did we need some good news. The recent financial crisis caused more than one hiccup for the growth of PV: in 2010, Spain (a global leader in solar installations) was forced to cut back their feed-in tariffs for solar. In the same year, the PACE financing scheme for solar installations in some U.S. states ran into some legal trouble of their own. According the VLSI, however, there’s a silver lining to be found here, too: "Looking back, 2010 was a record year for PV Manufacturing Equipment, beating the previous peak reached in 2008 by around 10%."

The report goes on to name companies like Applied Materials, Amtech, Apollo Solar, Komatsu, Jusung, GS Solar, and Meyer Burger as the big success stories of 2010. It also sites new manufacturing innovations as one reason for PV's surprising growth rate last year. What's interesting to note is that of the companies mentioned above, only Applied Materials and Amtech are based in the U.S. The others are from around the globe: South Korea, Switzerland, Japan, and of course, China. But this doesn't mean the U.S. doesn't stand to benefit greatly from 2011's 'sunny' forecast for solar sales—quite to the contrary...

Three decades after the one-two punch of Three Mile Island (1979) and the Chernobyl disaster (1986) decimated the public image of nuclear power, and the American nuclear industry is still working hard to win back the public's trust. Moreover—and as David Biello points out in Beyond the Light Switch—they’ve actually done pretty well so far. In the American Nuclear Society's own words, "The nuclear industry's commitment to safe packaging and security has produced a safety record that would be difficult to match."

The ANS website goes on to describe their success in further detail, specifically citing their safety record when it comes to the transportation of radioactive materials: "Over the past 40 years, about 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel have navigated more than 1.7 million miles of U.S. roads and railways.  Of all this travel, no radioactive materials have been released resulting from an accident or any other cause.  During this same period, there have been about 98 million kilograms of spent nuclear fuel shipped worldwide, with no record of any release of radioactive material."

And the public has taken notice. Stewart Brand, lifelong environmentalist and creator of the Whole Earth Catalog,  goes on record as a pro-nuclear convert in Beyond the Light Switch. Brand points to the growing threat of climate change as a major factor behind many former nuclear foes' reevaluation of nuclear power’s potential low-carbon benefits. It seems a lot of people are ready to rethink nuclear and—surprise!—the government is on board, too. In this week's State of the Union Address, President Obama singled out the efforts currently being undertaken by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to improve the efficiency of our existing nuclear plants.

Obama's praise of Oak Ridge was followed by the obligatory promise of breaking our nation’s longstanding dependence on foreign oil—check out this clip from The Daily Show for further [read: hilarious] contextualization. But Obama also stressed the importance of redirecting taxpayer dollars toward "tomorrow's" energy resources. This led to the other obligatory energy economy ‘shout-out’: green job creation. In this year's SOTU, President Obama set the new goal of generating 80% of America’s electricity from clean energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear…by 2035. An ambitious challenge, sure…but building that much nuclear generation isn’t going to be easy. Nuclear may now be considered green, but it’s still expensive to build, and strong federal support is going to be vital.

There's one other big problem standing in the way of a nuclear renaissance; remember how the nuclear industry spent the past 30 years working to try and clean up their tarnished image? 

Subsidies for renewable energy may be going away...again.

America's stormy love affair with renewable energy began in the 1970's, when President Jimmy Carter introduced subsidies for what were then termed 'alternative' energy resources. But the burgeoning wind and solar industries that grew under Carter were not fated to last long. Nurturing an infant renewable energy industry was not part of Ronald Reagan's presidential image, nor his platform. Beyond the Light Switch looks at this pivotal time in our nation's history as a means to understand the current state of our energy policy and energy politics.

Currently, the hopes of many long-suffering renewable energy supporters (and industry players) have been pinned on the Obama administration. And Obama did make good--by ushering in subsidies for renewables, known as the "1603 grants" (so-called for the section of the stimulus bill that created them). And just in case you were wondering what those grants actually do, today The LA Times was kind enough to lay it out for us--the 1603 grants "paid up to 30% of the cost of projects breaking ground by the end of this year. Renewable facilities generating a combined 4,250 megawatts (the equivalent of roughly four large nuclear plants) were supported by the program as of March, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; that output is doubtless far higher now. The grants have created thousands of jobs, and helped clean the air and wean the country off fossil fuels. But all that may be about to stop".

Sounds scary, doesn't it? Well, what's happening is...