Thursday, January 08, 2009
As new details of the stimulus package emerge, a debate continues about its merits.
By Kevin Bullis
| Cylindrical solar cells, which can be arranged in rows to make solar panels, are particularly suited for generating power atop commercial buildings.
Credit: Solyndra |
This morning, president-elect Obama offered some details about his proposed stimulus package, one that leans heavily on creating jobs via clean-energy-related projects. One notable project is a smart grid, which will be needed if the United States is to depend on intermittent sources of energy like solar and wind for a large share of its electricity. (See the cover feature in our current issue.)
Some of Obama's remarks:
To finally spark the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years. We will modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. In the process, we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced--jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.
To build an economy that can lead [to] this future, we will begin to rebuild America. Yes, we'll put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges, and schools by eliminating the backlog of well planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects. But we'll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy. That means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation.
Meanwhile, economists debate whether clean-energy jobs are the best way to stimulate the economy.
Here's Robert Stavins, an
economist at Harvard, as quoted in the New Yorker.
Let's say I want to have a dinner party. It's important that I cook dinner, and I'd also like to take a shower before the guests arrive. You might think, Well, it would be really efficient for me to cook dinner in the shower. But it turns out that if I try that I'm not going to get very clean and it's not going to be a very good dinner. And that is an illustration of the fact that it is not always best to try to address two challenges with what in the policy world we call a single-policy instrument.
In one argument, subsidizing green energy could actually lead to increased energy consumption overall, without much benefit in terms of jobs.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
Brandon
bjones54
01/09/2009
Posts:2
RD
01/09/2009
Posts:95
Thank you for making me aware of new evidence to support resisting this boondoggle which we can ill afford.
Jsfrance51
01/10/2009
Posts:1
smithsomian
01/20/2009
Posts:36
taflach
01/11/2009
Posts:1
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14friedman.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=Typewriters&st=cse
larryrose11
01/12/2009
Posts:6
bjones54
01/09/2009
Posts:2
I find it wonderful that the stuff that we are made of (carbon) and the stuff that pollutes the world (carbon), will be solved with such things as nanotubes (carbon). It makes a great story, yes?
Just think when we are saturated with clean, cheap, energy; there will be very few problems that we can not address. You could desalinate and pump water to every part of the world that wants it; just to start. IN Five years we or someone else will be there.
StupidPeasan...
01/11/2009
Posts:19
Supporting the creation of local green energy sources will improve the trade balance as well as create a new industry and vision in this country which is sustainable and actually has positive side effects.
macrumpton
01/11/2009
Posts:1
Most things that are right or wrong are intuitively so (like freedom and justice). Dumping tons of crap into the air and water does not seem like a smart thing to do; especially when there is money to be made doing it better. So what gives?
I think there are entrenched industries and investments that naturally resist change. They have convinced many people, and themselves, that we are not being given the whole story. This makes a person doubt what is said by good science. Also, political sides have made statements that they are now afraid to change. All this slows what can be done.
Yet, As I read Technology Review, I have so much more than hope; I have certainty that the solutions are at hand!
Both sides of the issues have many valid points. The marketing of good science needs to refine it's message, and move away from political type language. If there is opposition to something like global warming findings (which there is). Then the public needs to hear it clearly in press reports (which it doesn't) so that they can be addressed clearly in a scientific way. People believe (and are told) that reports are biased (and they are). This causes good science to be ignored. It's just poor basic Marketing of Communication that these problems continue longer than they intuitively should. We must not be afraid of clarity.
All is as you would expect.
StupidPeasan...
01/11/2009
Posts:19
Stavin's analogy is wrong - A high unemployment rate combined with deflation mean that resources are not scarce - they are underemployed. In this environment, typical tradeoffs implied by scarcity are relaxed. It's a lot easier to do multiple things at once - labor, commodities, and money are cheap (for now).
In terms of payback, the current prices of fossil fuels do not come close to covering the true costs when one counts externalities. Coal is a disaster on all fronts. Oil is not as bad, unless you count the fact that we're shipping hundreds of billions of dollars in resources to hostile nations in order to buy it. ANWR doesn't have that much oil, and oil shale/sand is an environmental catastrophe (and expensive - as much as $70 per barrel to extract). Nuclear may have fewer externalities, but the true infrastructure costs are possibly higher than renewables. Wind is actually very cheap, but limited - even so, we haven't come close to hitting those limits. All wind really needs is low-interest loans. Federal investment in low interest wind-energy loans is a cost effective way of delivering massive benefits.
Critics of other alternatives - solar, bio-solar, geothermal - focus on costs _today_, not after technological improvements and economies of scale that are rapidly making an impact. This is like comparing the internal combustion engine of 1915 to the IC engine of today. And the advances of the last decade occurred in spite of woeful federal neglect.
As to greenhouse gas issues - of which CO2 is only one - no one doubts the Earth has been warmer in the distant past and concentrations have been higher. The only issue is whether we want our world to become that in the next 50 to 100 years. Coastal communities will be drastically affected, disease vector patterns will be altered, mountain ice used to provide summer water supplies will diminish, storm insurance is already rising, etc. etc. Life on Earth will survive - it's really about the quality of life.
kkarty
01/12/2009
Posts:1
(As far as oil is concerned the reality is that no new refining facilities have been built in decades. Regardless of refining you will still have a shortage. The demand curve from India and China and the global market will see to that - and those countries are not so negatively affected by the economic meltdown as the US at the moment - so they have currency to pay).
The price of electricity from coal will continue to be cheaper than that from green sources because the infrastructure was amortized a long time ago. So industry is going to continue to buy energy from non-green sources....
...unless consumers speak up.
If someone for instance developed a Web 2.0 app that lived on, say, Facebook and presented information on every product on your supermarket shelf with the real price to the environment measured as a product carbon footprint, then people would have the opportunity to comparison shop for truly green products.
Then we would have a truly green consumer revolution that manufacturers and governments would have to pay attention to. Then and only then will there be change.
Until then unfortunately the contrary arguments result in a lot of hot air (adding to the increasing level of CO2 that we all want to combat!)
Perceptric
01/13/2009
Posts:1
Joe_W
01/13/2009
Posts:1