Thursday, July 29, 2010
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Dwarf Support for Renewables
A report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance details international government energy spending on biofuels and renewable energy.
Fossil fuels are the backbone of economies worldwide, so governments spend a lot to support them. A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says altogether governments spent between $43 anf $46 billion on renewable energy and biofuels last year, not including indirect support, such as subsidies to corn farmers that help ethanol production. Direct subsidies of fossil fuels came to $557 billion, the report says.
This disparity raises the question--if the report is right and fossil fuels require so much backing, can they compete with renewables without government support? After all, some renewables--such as sugarcane based biofuels and some wind farms--can already compete with fossil fuels. Without the huge government subsidies for fossil fuels, wouldn't they be eclipsed by renewables?
The answer, for now, is no. So far renewables just can't provide enough fuel and power to displace fossil fuels. The infrastructure to make and distribute them isn't adequate, and many renewables have shortcomings that can make them difficult to work with--solar panels, for example, only generate electricity when the sun is out. If the fossil fuel subsidies disappear, gasoline and electricity prices will increase. That will help renewables compete, and increase in scale, but it will take years--likely decades--for them to reach levels high enough to replace all fossil fuels.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
They always channel and pigeonhole the debate towards the so called "free market competition", and the "fair playing field". Meanwhile they masterfully hide from the public all the direct and indirect subsidies their industry gets. What a fraud!
gabrielg01
07/29/2010
Posts:492
How about we start right now and tip the economic scales away from fossil fuels and toward renewables? Don't we want to free ourselves from shipping boatloads of cash overseas for oil and from the problems created by burning coal?
Make renewables more profitable, fossil fuels a bit less profitable and the rate of installing wind, solar, geothermal, and storage will accelerate.
Remember, fossil fuels now provide a huge amount more of the power on our grid than do renewables. Giving fossil fuels even a 1% subsidy cut would free up enough money to boost renewables subsidies by huge percentages and cause investors to rush to renewable projects.
(Then we'll get all that money back later in lower health care costs, cheaper utility bills, a livable future for those who follow us, and being able to tell the oil countries to kiss our grits....)
Bob Wallac...
07/29/2010
Posts:69
I wonder how much of our military expenditure in Iraq has been counted in this article? If only we had spent all that on alternatives, whether fuels, solar, wind or just upgrading the grid where would we be today?
But if we do alternatives what are we going to use to black top our roads?
flyingmons...
08/03/2010
Posts:17
Until that time there is limited infrastructure, and a lot more reseacrh into best practices and methodologies of rolling out large scale services needs to be done.
Don't get me wrong they could make petrol immpossible to buy tomorrow, but the world would complain. Hence a sustainable pattern of take-over is required.
The world is in a double recession, caused by the banking industry and housing market...should be 1 house per home-owner and renewable markets and they can remove this recession problem for good.
Unfortunately it wont happen and our next recession will be in 8-10 years after this one, as usual.
I resent prices constantly going up like the next person, and while we have been blaming big companies for the worlds failing for sometime I dont see that changing.
We are in a greed is good, free market.
How else can you get Macdonalds and fast food companies to become immune to prosecution for selling a product that is frankly bad. While associating childrens advertising with a big fat greasy burger.
How else can you get software manufactures becoming immune to prosecution when there software is buggy and losing people there life savings when they use it.
How else can you get a banking industry that charges 100%+ of the money they give to you in payment for a house you cant afford, becuase they put the same rates up so you cant. Knowing they get to resell the house again later... They after all know all the figures...when they put it up they know the precise people who it affects... Becuase i would in there place.
How else can greedy home-owners purchasing a few thousand houses (or 2+) and then rent out entire areas and charge what they like while the government sits back and says good on them.
How else do you get the service industry giving you bigger and bigger bills every year because non-renewable fuel is running out.
How else can your paypacket stay the same year after year, while companies force most of the working world to accept less than the minimum wage, knowing you cant do jack about it if you dont have a union.
How else can you get governments saying unions are bad, when without one people have no rights, or one right only...the right to leave.
Only in a really bad nightmare would i do this to an enemy. Welcome to YOUR Home.
mattgroom
07/30/2010
Posts:198
So why should all this money be Union when over 75% came from people with nothing to do with unions . Never mind the MOB ties,rather not look after all why care when your money goes to DC with the other thieves . Look at the people working in Detroit . They are killing America not helping . Unions are needed in certain cases but those cases should not be allowed to be extortion machines .Unions don't try to help all they are just part of the problem pervading America & the world , Me, Me ,Ma and sometimes mine & screw everyone else .
1mikeyob
08/02/2010
Posts:2
A solution is obviously energy storage (vanadium redox, pumped hydroelectric, heated salts, batteries (A123 Systems), etc) but there's another, equally capable and almost more attractive for its environmental friendliness: Gasification of MSW, sewage and other waste streams.
Pyrolysis of our waste offers a steady consistent power to even out the ebb and flow of other renewables. It turns waste into energy; it allows for a sort of recycling of the near-inevitable by-products of civilization; its cost effective (profitable even), reduces landfill, and promotes recycling of other (less cost effective yet still) recyclable material... as these materials would naturally be filtered in the pre-processing stream, removed and sent off to be recycled... the remaining waste hydrocarbons to be gasified for their energy leaving a small fraction of the original product to be returned to landfill if not sent to other plants for further processing.
Plasma arc gasification also works for the heavy metal containing streams (also easily removed in the sorting process) which would drastically reduce the amount of materials necessary to be mined to begin with.
Also, in your last paragraph you say that there isn't adequate infrastructure in place... you come back and say that one could be built as subsidies are ended and renewables become more competitive (as you state that in the case of wind, they already are) but...
I know this one goes a little counter some of the other comments, as well as an implied suggestion of your post altogether ...
Instead of calling out the (inefficiencies and imbalance in the) subsidies such that they are ended... shift them. If there was a adequate (yet minimal) period put in place, (say 3-5 years?) for the market to prepare, you could put in place a 10 year transition for this shift to happen.
My idea would be that, after an adequate 'heads-up' and preparation, the first year subsidies to fossil fuels are reduced by 10% from year 0 to 90%, as that 10% is shifted to renewables. The second year, 80% of what they were in year 0, and raised to 20% for renewables. so on and so forth until, at the end of the 10th year, renewables are getting 100% of the subsidies from fossil fuels, and fossil fuels possibly only the subsidies renewables were getting up to year 0.
For the following ten years, cut subsidies for both fossil fuels and renewables by 10% per year, shifting it to nothing (read: less taxes).
This way, after 23+ years, there would be a complete shift of fossil fuel subsidies to renewable subsidies, followed by a complete ramp down of subsidies altogether as the infrastructure is in place and only enough taxes necessary to maintain it are collected... which, even those should be factored into the price of the fuel itself as is.
Read: Coca Cola and McDonalds would still make plenty of money without our massive government subsidies for the agriculture and shipping industries that support them, as what are currently subsidies (taxes) would be in the citizens pocket to choose what to spend it on versus taxed from the citizen for the government to choose. The price may raise, but so would the money in the citizens pocket to purchase them... if they so choose. It would also put pressure on these companies to become (even) more efficient (than they currently are at raping our planet and us) so as to communicate to possibly even lower prices, relatively speaking, than what they're currently charging.
The less taxes charged means the more wealth the individuals in the society have, and the more they have, the more private investment they can choose to make into yet more advanced technologies to accelerate our productiveness. I would be willing to say that, had that actually been the case to begin with (as it was before this massive redistribution of wealth following the dot.com bubble), we would already have these <$1 per watt solar panels and super-dense, super-fast charging batteries in our plug-in hybrids and electric cars.
The holdup on the release of the technologies I've read about in this magazine (and others) for years is worth of an issue in and of itself, if not an entire section devoted to it in every subsequent issue.
Have you seen these feel-good info-graphics about the scale of American manufacturing? The huge pictures of piles and piles of cheeseburgers, coke/pepsi cans, barbie dolls, and Chevy emblems.... the volume we produce (and consume.. and then throw away) is massive. Honestly, unfathomable for a single mind to wrap itself around. Look at how much weight Walmart carries in the industry when they have even GE trembling in subservience as they (Walmart) order them to include RFID tags on all incoming pallets. Walmart alone could create a shift in the industry so large and so fast, all others would copy or die due to inefficiencies.
As Mr Wallace said, tip the scales just a little bit and the whole process will accelerate.
Vailhem
07/30/2010
Posts:4
Tony Sadownichik
International Head of Research
Greenpeace International
Tony Sadow...
07/30/2010
Posts:1
Greed is one reason big oil gets such a bad rap, but unlike most things in life, greed does not discriminate. Christian or Muslim, Republican or Democrat, Capitalist or Socialist, White or Black, Man or Woman- all have greed or corruption in their histories. Clean energy will be no different. Perhaps 100 years from now, these green companies and co-ops will be the bad guys. One day they may have power over our lives controlling what we pay to heat and cool our homes, drive our cars, and power our cities. They too will become big business and another generation will be there to bash them. We may even go to war over the rare earth materials needed to make some clean energy. Some of those materials may damage our planet because of improper usage. Just a thought.
Until then, we'll need to have hope that a Da Vinci or a Tesla or Einstein is out there somewhere making a discovery to make clean energy completely viable and writing articles like this unecessary.
KGC
07/30/2010
Posts:6
1) We are not going to be able to produce enough affordable oil to satisfy all those who wish to burn some. Prices will rise as the less wealthy are forced out of the market. Gas at $10/gallon - you got plenty of extra money for those times?
2) Burning oil and releasing all that previously-sequestered carbon into our atmosphere is rapidly creating a world in which it will be very difficult for humans to live.
Eventually (if we continue to release CO2) it will become impossible for more than a handful to live and they will have to live in "biospheres". Welcome to life on Mars.
It's not about being biased. It's about being realistic and trying to figure out how we save our bacon....
Bob Wallac...
07/30/2010
Posts:69
And AMAZINGLY the costs for these are still reasonable (as long as nobody includes the hidden overhead).
mkogrady
07/30/2010
Posts:295
I have never been keen on using up another country's natural resources and damaging their environments while we have our own fuel we can harvest right here. In my opinion, that is not ethical nor is it appropriate. The oil industry in general is an unsightly one, and perhaps if this harvesting had been done closer to home, we would be farther along in cleaner technologies.
Anyone who has lived in a big city, or used a parking garage, or run a car or generator in an unventilated space knows that the soot and fumes of burning fossil fuels is unhealthy and unsustainable. I would not jump to the conclusion that the earth is warming rapidly soley due to fossil fuels, but I do believe that these fuels have an adverse affect on our health and that should be enough.
Clean energy is the next logical step as long as it's not just a dog and pony show. A 40 mile electric Chevy Volt is not what I would call game changing. I realize that we have to start somewhere, but as a previous reader commented, we are a wasteful society. What happens to all of the first generation tech two years from now? If we truly want to change our future, we need to change the way things are made. Products need to be made so they can be easily and cheaply upgraded and recycled without disposing of the core. How much money has Apple made by producing a new phone every year? You can't even change the fan on a laptop without completely gutting it and when you're done, it's almost cheaper to buy a new one. Why is that? It's wasteful so someone can make a buck.
KGC
07/30/2010
Posts:6
Nothing that I can think of in the sense of how ICEs consume petroleum. We can recycle the metals and make the other components from organics.
And we can harvest the energy without consuming anything as well.
Bob Wallac...
07/30/2010
Posts:69
Given regular battery replacement and routine minor maintenance, most electric cars bought today will probably be still on the road a decade and some a generation from now. Note that the batteries themselves will be recyclable, for third party re-manufactured replacements, you'll pay the same kind of core charge you'd pay for an alternator.
However, the batteries in a 2012 Volt running in 2030 will be just as good as anything on a car on a showroom floor. They'll be in the same bolt-in form factors as the original, but they'll have up-to-date core electrical storage technologies with electronic interfaces to ensure they'll work with the computerized control systems.
If ultracaps get out of the lab, we might have a battery pack that will last the full life of the car and have substantially the same performance it had when it was installed.
My real point is that the stuff it'll take to keep a modern electric car running for decades is stuff that fits just fine into the existing car repair and car parts chain store ecosystem. It's going to be just about all 'bolt-in' or 'plug-in' replacement, and there will be plenty of third-party vendors offering improved replacements as technology improves.
Once the car is expended, the metals and plastics can be recycled by the usual methods, though best practices means making easy recyclability a criteria for plastic selection.
But if a car's still running well and looks OK, recycling it is a non-issue.
alizard
08/02/2010
Posts:1
That unless we play fair,
And stop polluting the air,
The human race could soon be extinct.
luddite
07/30/2010
Posts:82
So, your justification for keeping the status-quo is that that is the way the status-quo currently is. Nice circular logic. The oil industry must love you.
oiuytfdz
07/31/2010
Posts:1
So what if the oil industry gets $600 billion in tax subsidies if it is also generating over a trillion dollars in tax revenue for the government. There's a net generation of tax revenue for the US gov't.
The argument against corn ethanol (and some other government sponsored energy technologies) is that the US gov't will end up spending more in subsidies than it will ever generate in the future.
We need to provide start-up funds to those technologies that can provide net revenue generation after a set amount of time. And right now, corn ethanol will not do this.
Devere
07/31/2010
Posts:28
The only reason I bring this up, is that this is seldom if ever discussed as a solution to be utilized in concert with the wind and solar.
baddude43
08/02/2010
Posts:1
Where this is leading to we can easily see at the Gulf of Mexico, in Nigeria, in Indonesia and other crude-oil-rich countries. (I call them: cruel-oil-rich)
We shoud not waste our time with using and harvesting "built-in" resources from the earth (as they are part of our natural environment, like the air that we breathe)
Instead, we should starting analysing the energy situation as it is today and will stay so for hopefully another millions of years:
The only way, how to survive, is to use smart technology to harvest the immense solar radiation, which is reaching our planet day for day, hour for hour, second for second.
What a smart source of energy. ...At this time, it is "only" used to make natural biomass and heat our planet to an average temperature.
Forget the tiny amounts of electricity, made by wind power or photovoltaics, that is not the point.
Every day we are not starting real, big-scaled initiatives into this direction is lost irretrievable.
I feel sorry for the US American people, (and the rest of the word...) that nobody wants to understand this; and why they start agian to march in the wrong direction.
And wonder, why this is the case.
Arno A. Evers
Starnberg, Germany
www.hydrogenambassadors.com
More:
http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/background/earths-energy-balance.php
The earth energy balance represents the balance between incoming energy from the Sun Sand thermal (longwave) and reflected (shortwave) energy from the Earth. The energy released from the Sun in one hour would be adequate to cover the energy needs of the entire world population for one year. However, when the radiation reaches the Earth, most of it is reflected back to space by the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the atmosphere and at the Earth's surface etc. Only 0,005% of the 5,6 • 1024J emitted by the sun per year is converted into mechanical energy by humans.
--
Arno A. Evers FAIR-PR
Achheimstr. 3 • 82319 Starnberg • Germany
tel.: +49 (0) 8151 998923 fax: +49 (0) 3212 9989243
e-mail: arno@hydrogenambassadors.com
www.hydrogenambassadors.com
Order Arno's new book here:
The Hydrogen Society...more than just a Vision?
http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/order/order.php
Go to where the Market is!
Arno A. Ev...
08/13/2010
Posts:1