The Conspiracy Against Renewable Energy

By John F. Miglio

I hate to use the “C” word, but there is no other way to say it. There is a national conspiracy to prevent renewable energy from becoming the primary energy source in the United States.

And who are the conspirators? The usual cast of characters: the fossil fuels industry, which continues to rake in exorbitant profits on oil and gas while it refuses to make any significant investment in renewable energy, even in the face of global warming; the members of the mainstream news media, too craven to cross their corporate masters by doing any serious coverage on the viability of renewable energy in today’s market; and the members of Congress, too addicted to the big bucks they receive from Big Oil and other traditional energy sources to create any sweeping renewable energy legislation for the good of the country.

The truth is, if it were not for this unholy trinity of greed, cowardice, and bribery, all of us would already be living in solar or wind powered homes and driving electric cars to and from work.

Here are the facts:

1) According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the amount of solar energy that hits the surface of the earth every hour is greater than the total amount of energy that the entire human population requires in a year. Another way of looking at it is that roughly 100 square miles of solar panels placed in the southwestern U.S. could power the entire country.

2) The Department of Energy also states that all U.S. electrical energy needs could be met by the wind in Texas and the Dakotas alone.

3) In 1977, the Office of Technology Assessment published a nonpartisan report that concluded that if the federal government offered substantial tax credits and incentives to speed up the mass production of renewable energy technologies, these technologies "could be made competitive in markets representing over 40% of U.S. energy demand by the mid-1980s." At that rate, they would be competitive in almost all markets today.

4) The technology to produce photovoltaic panels and modern wind turbines has been around for decades, and thousands of Americans already have installed these renewable technologies on their homes and businesses, cutting their energy bills by significant margins. Recently, a New Jersey resident named Mike Mercurio installed both an array of solar panels on his roof and a wind turbine in his back yard and cut his energy bill from over $300 per month to about $10 per month.

This immediately begs the question: If we have the renewable technology at hand and we know it works, why don’t we use it in place of heavily polluting energy sources like oil, gas or coal? And why have so few people installed solar panels or windmills on their homes and in their backyards?

The primary reason is because the cost of renewable energy is still relatively high compared to fossil fuels, although the gap is closing as the cost of natural gas and oil continues to climb. For example, the price to install an array of photovoltaic panels on the average home-- notwithstanding some modest tax incentives and rebates from the government-- is anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000. At this price, only those who are well off can afford to have solar panels installed on their homes.

Of course, anyone with half a brain knows that once a product is mass produced, its price per unit plummets. But in order to facilitate this process and make it happen over a period of years and not decades, the federal government (with help from the states) needs to institute a massive, full-scale national renewable energy program, something equivalent to the Marshall Plan, something that would transform our entire society within a decade.

It can begin this process with a four-point plan: 1) Mandate tight pollution standards on the fossil fuels industry and stiff penalties for not abiding by them. This will get the carbon-based boys to start thinking about divesting some of their money into renewable energy. 2) Impose high CAFE standards on auto manufacturers and stiff penalties if they don’t implement them post haste. This will get the bright boys at GM to start thinking about electric cars in a big way. 3) Implement a windfall profits tax on oil companies and remove tax incentives to the entire fossil fuels industry. This will create billions of dollars that can be used to promote renewable energy. 4) Offer generous tax credits and incentives to the renewable energy industry to facilitate mass production of its technology and equally generous tax credits and incentives for homeowners to buy it.

If Congress made this four-point plan a reality, it would literally reverse the brain-dead energy policy that has been in effect for the past 27 years, ever since Ronald Reagan, Big Oil’s Bad Boy, strutted into office, decimated Jimmy Carter’s renewable energy program, and created energy bills and tax policies that favored the fossil fuels industry at the expense of renewable technology.

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