National Green Energy Council Receives Response from President Obama
Today, Ralph Avallone, the president of the National Green Energy Council, received a response to the very specific letter he had written to Barack Obama in which he urged the president’s support of green technology and renewable energy, and the “green jobs” they will create. Avallone notes:
“My letter … has facilitated nothing but a generic response. Most unfortunate….”
To which I respond:
Ralph: Speaking for all of us, I appreciate your effort. And yes, that’s unfortunate, though not at all surprising. I think we’ve seen ample evidence that the federal government – all three branches, btw — is stuck in neutral with respect to energy policy. We support whatever notions bring in votes, whether it’s as destructive and toxic as coal, or as unsafe and financially untenable as nuclear. Where we feel we need to, and that we can get away with it with our constituencies, we pay lip service to renewables – though we’re terrified that we’re doing so at the risk of being ridiculed from the right as socialists or tree-huggers.
There are some people who believe mainstream candidates’ promises to tear into the nation’s problems (of which energy, obviously, is only one) with passion, objectivity and honesty. There are people who believe in the Easter Bunny, too.
If you’re looking for spine and integrity, I’m afraid you’ll need to look elsewhere.
I’ve posted in prior blogs abt this, but need to repeat something I once was told by a Prof of Economics in Ohio after I gave a 20-minute presentation to PUCO on improving home energy codes. After the PUCO had seem unimpressed with my proposals to cut a third or more of the energy use from every home in Ohio, the Prof (whom I had not met before) took me aside and told me that Ohio typically devised its energy policies based on potentials for tax collections, considering both income taxes on affected workers and sales taxes on products and commodities. I was shocked, having never thought about that. After all, the day’s event was supposed to be about energy codes, not taxes. And I had delivered a crisp and clear presentation precisely about energy.
Ohio has a progressive income tax, going up in rate as income rises. The Prof told me there was more incentive for Ohio to focus any energy programs and policies on expanding higher income jobs. He said this is why there’s more focus on promoting expansion of higher paid utility, coal, geothermal and solar jobs than, say, insulators, window replacement workers or caulkers who make relative lower wages.
After I moved to KY, I read a speech by the KY governor in which he said he offered incentives to Toyota to locate its hybrid Camry plant in KY because technical electrical workers were typically paid far more than regular automotive assembly and repair workers. Remembering the Ohio prof, I immediately thought of KY’s income tax being progressive. Unlike Ohio, KY also has an annual property tax on personal vehicles, so I also considered that a hybrid Camry owned by a Kentuckian would bring in more annual vehicle tax because it is a higher-cost vehicle.
This may sound cynical, but I’ve been designing, consulting and teaching in the energy sector since 1983. After that long, certain things begin to repeat. Consider the “Bush tax cuts” which Congress in DC recently fought to renew. Did anyone notice the energy efficiency tax credits in the “Bush tax cuts” were cutback and capped substantially low while the tax credits on solar, wind, geothermal and high-tech biomass projects were left uncut and uncapped? Once again, I remembered the Ohio economics prof. This incentivizing act of the highest cost stuff involving the highest salaried workers certainly seems to be a repeating thing our governments like to do. It certainly explains one part of our current problem.
Another part of the problem is we’re losing sight of so many of the original objectives and dreams which got people like me into this sector. The earliest books I read about energy efficiency, conservation and renewables were about cutting or avoiding as much use of conventional energy as possible. I recall some of those early books about houses with $100/year heating bills. Some were about people trying to live ‘off-the-grid’, trying to design as if zero negative environmental impact was not only possible but important. Sure, the market interest was tiny. Those of us who were attracted to this idea were not overwhelmed by super-high energy costs. We were not trying to create new high paying jobs or increase tax revenues. We did not elevate one way to reduce conventional energy use over any other. We did not lobby our governments for subsidies. We were not even politically savvy. We were simply fascinated and enthralled by the idea of ‘getting off the grids’ from the standpoint of becoming more independent, ecological and responsible for ourselves.
Maybe as important, the people I met in the 1980s who were early owners of energy efficiency and renewable energy companies were often pioneers in their own lives. I often point to the publishers of HOMEPOWER magazine as good examples of this. In my own case, I was drawn into super efficiency and renewables while cutting energy use substantially and installing renewables in my own home and business. Even today, my home uses about half or less the conventional energy of similarly sized homes in my area. I walk the talk.
Yet it is not uncommon today to meet owners of new EE (energy efficiency) or RE (renewable energy) businesses who are energy guzzlers at their homes and businesses, sometimes not even applying to themselves the applications and technologies they try to sell to others. As one recent example, I was asked to co-present at a solar event in SW Ohio last month. I arrived in my 40+ mpg vehicle. The young woman presenting on PVs, having been a medical equipment salesperson a few years ago before deciding to sell for a solar company, arrived in a behemeth SUV gas-hog which she parked right next to me! I operate an off-grid office, have solar water heating, passive solar and lots of daylighting in my home. My presentation contained perspective and insight from personal experience and enthusiasm. The PV presenter had no solar stuff in her house or business, no prior energy experience whatsoever. Her presentation demonstrated that too. She even told the audience that the local utility ‘stored their PV surpluses until they needed them later’, even though the local utility had no electric storage of any kind. I chatted with her afterwards, explaining this. She responded that she was just trying to make her topic simple for the audience. I did not tell her that if she’d have told me such oversimplification back when I was becoming interested in all this, I’d have walked out of her audience. I do not treat my audiences, clients and students as dummies. Energy is too abstract these days as it is.
I’m not that old, mid-50s. But I’m old enough to recognize that what makes up our American way of life didn’t happen over night. A lot of it is part of our culture, like the desire many youngsters have to get gas-hungry power machines for first vehicles. Like the desire many well-off adults have to own large fancy luxury homes and vehicles. The big problem we’re now facing is trying to encourage these folks, who have no current interest or idea to use or pollute less, to become “green” by buying into solar, geothermal, wind, etc. We’re trying to incentivize them without the aura of broader motivation which attracted people like me, my clients and colleagues, which focused us on low-use, low-pollution, high self-reliance outcomes more than how we got there. I’m amazed how much of our current lack of broad focus is actually producing anti-results, like more RE and more conventional energy dependence at the same time. As I once wrote in a SOLAR TODAY magazine op-ed, we should be measuring progress by how much conventional energy we reduce or avoid, not how many renewable energy projects we count or how high the subsidies can go.
I installed my passive solar, solar water heating and solar electric when there were NO SUBSIDIES or TAX CREDITS! I did it because it fit into my plan to reduce conventional energy use. Doubling insulations, replacing all lightbulbs, appliances and HVAC equipment with much more efficient stuff, getting rid of energy-hog desktop computers, laser printers and high-temp copiers at work, replacing them with the lowest energy-using stuff I could find… All these were done in addition to solar, with the primary goal to cut usage and demand for conventional energy. And I have saved lots of money since, even saved on how much PVs + batteries I needed to run my office. I didn’t take or ask for any money from the utilities or governments to do it. And I have many clients and know many other comrades who did the same. Now we are just shaking our heads as those who’ve done nothing by or for themselves are now asking for US to pay for their projects, whether via higher utility bills or taxes. I know many low-energy folks like myself who similarly are not on-board with the current RE movement simply because what it is today is not anywhere the same as we once knew and were part of.
One troubling matter in the current movement is how utilities are appearing so interested suddently in renewable energy. A Duke Energy rep in KY once told me his company would be against the forced phase out of incandescent bulbs unless it could make a profit from the sale of the more efficient replacement bulbs. Well, now his utility is subsidizing PVs! And making a profit doing it! It’s been written about in more than one venue how utilities add up the costs of their EE/RE/DSM programs, products and avoided kWh sales, add on a cost-plus profit rate, then put all those charges into the electric rates. I have no doubt that’s what Duke is doing, just as many utilities are doing around our country. One result is that EE/RE/DSM has gotten a lot more expensive than if home and business owners did this stuff themselves as we once did. These higher rates get paid even by the people receiving the subsidies for the new EE/RE/DSM.
Another result is that utilities can and probably do massage their EE/RE/DSM programs to make sure they maintain as much demand and load as possible. Indeed, while solar subsidies in Ohio once included off-grid solar applications in their territory, now they only apply to grid-tied RE applications. I recently visited http://www.srectrade.com and applied some scrutiny to the 15-year phase-in of Ohio’s “advanced energy program” where-in utilities must increase how much electricity they get from RE. Looks to me like Ohio expects growth in electricity use over the next 15 years to outpace the RE phase-in by something like 30 times. In other words, we get more RE but also a lot more conventional generation. This does not fit the goals and objectives many of us had back when President Carter said we used too much energy. It does not give us any hope of transitioning to a more sustainable energy future. Sure, it promote more “green energy” but “more green energy” is completely and wildly different from “less brown and black energy”.
It would be great if our movement would broaden its objectives and measuring criteria to focus us more on how to reduce what we don’t want and what we need to evolve away from. When reporting what we do, say accurately how much less conventional energy and demand is reduced or avoided, or how much less pollution will be emitted. Many will be initially shocked at how often nowdays none or very little of that is actually resulting. But it might help us to redevelop and strengthen our perspectives and goals back to where they began. We need to figure out how to live and work more sustainably. That’s a matter of changing our use-more culture, not just buying some different hardware.
Thanks for an idea, you sparked at thought from a angle I hadn’t given thoguht to yet. Now lets see if I can do something with it.