Fossil Fuel Subsidies Dwarf Support For Renewables 172
TravisTR sends word of research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance which found that direct subsidies for renewable energy from governments worldwide totaled $43-46 billion in 2009, an amount vastly outstripped by the $557 billion in fossil fuel subsidies during 2008.
"The BNEF preliminary analysis suggests the US is the top country, as measured in dollars deployed, in providing direct subsidies for clean energy with an estimated $18.2bn spent in total in 2009. Approximately 40% of this went toward supporting the US biofuels sector with the rest going towards renewables. The federal stimulus program played a key role; its Treasury Department grant program alone provided $3.8bn in support for clean energy projects. China, the world leader in new wind installations in 2009 with 14GW, provided approximately $2bn in direct subsidies, according to the preliminary analysis. This figure is deceptive, however, as much crucial support for clean energy in the country comes in form of low-interest loans from state-owned banks. State-run power generators and grid companies have also been strongly encouraged by the government to tap their balance sheets in support of renewables."
No Surprises Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:4, Insightful)
The fossil fuel industry has a lobbing campaign that dwarfs that of renewable energy. 'nuf said.
Ah, yes, it's all about the lobbyists. It can't have anything to do with the scale difference between the renewable energy industry and the fossil fuel industry.
You know what REALLY pisses me off? I, as an individual, get close to ZERO subsidies! Where's my $40 billion? I demand equal treatment!
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You know what REALLY pisses me off? I, as an individual, get close to ZERO subsidies! Where's my $40 billion? I demand equal treatment!
Without subsidies your electricity bill would be larger.
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Subsidies aren't magic. They come from taxes. Without the taxes which support this subsidy and the associated bureaucratic and overhead waste, my electricity cost would be higher, but my total household cost would be lower.
wrong (Score:2)
The debt is LARGER.
Deficit is all people talk about and often confuse with the debt. The total debt is higher but when we had a "surplus" instead of using that to pay down the debt, the public thought we were in the green again !?#@!
You can't ignore your mortgage because you stopped going in the hole every month!
As far as this national debt blabbing its hype - because it was a non-starter before 2009. During WWII the deficit was much higher; although, we had a real GDP back then. Also, the total debt was lo
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We haven't had a surplus in the Federal government since 1956. That particular surplus went from 1955-56, and totalled $4 billion before we went back to spending more than we take in taxes.
No, Clinton and the Republican Congress didn't have a surplus, even once, in spite of what either side would have you believe. The closest they got was $18 billion in the red in Clinton's last year
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As far as this national debt blabbing its hype - because it was a non-starter before 2009.
Yes, this was an amazing thing. The Republican rhetoric was very much talking about fiscal responsibility and balancing the budget... right up until a Republican president had a Republican majority in congress. At that point, with amazing suddenness, the Republicans stopped talking about fiscal responsability, and the Republican president didn't see any expenditures that didn't look just fine to him. Talking about the debt was-- as you say-- a "non-starter." In fact, I even heard the Republicans say tha
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So, do you think that you have more money to spend when you lend yourself money and then pay that money back to yourself with interest? I didn't think so.
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Clinton reduced expenses alright. He closed down many military bases. Several programs were either shut down or reduced in scope (remember the Strategic Defense Initiative, NASP, one thousand ship Navy).
During his time some things were closed though they shouldn't have like the IFR, or AVLIS. His predecessors showed a similar myopic view by shutting down Synthetic fuel research. It would have been nice to have any of these technologies available right now!
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Clinton reduced expenses alright. He closed down many military bases.
Well, to be fair, of the military bases closed by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commissions, the 1988 and 1991 closures were done while Reagan or Bush were in office, and it's not really fair to credit Clinton with the 1993 BRAC, since it was already well in process when he took office in January 1993. So, really the only base closings you can credit Clinton with were the 1995 BRAC.
One of the few times that a process that is inherently partisan (every congressman wants to keep the base in their d
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The debt is LARGER. Deficit is all people talk about and often confuse with the debt. The total debt is higher but when we had a "surplus" instead of using that to pay down the debt, the public thought we were in the green again !?#@! You can't ignore your mortgage because you stopped going in the hole every month!
As far as this national debt blabbing its hype - because it was a non-starter before 2009. During WWII the deficit was much higher; although, we had a real GDP back then. Also, the total debt was lower back then... but then now we monopolize the new gold standard: the US dollar -- that is until it gets so weak that it loses status or more nations allow OIL to be purchased in euros. We may have gone off gold, but we realistically traded it for OIL we didn't have but was sold in dollars...
When the government borrows money from a private corporation (the FED), whose motto is "more profit" the government loses with greater losses in the long term.
The national debt would be more controllable if the government printed its own currency, backed by precious metals, and borrowed against itself at 0% interest.
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Not sure how my comment is flamebait.
Bush 2 increased the national debt from ~$6T to ~$11T.
http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm [skymachines.com]
Second only to Reagan, and just ahead of his father in terms of percentage increase.
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I'm sure subsidies are somewhat wrapped up in the $13Trillion in US national debt. Most of which was brought about by the Bush 2 administration who had direct ties to the oil industry.
There is no debt. Fractional reserve banking is based on fiat paper with no hard currency backing. Go ahead and believe the FED stooges,they will be laughing all the way to their bank while you sit in a cave near a smokey camp fire. Mommy I'm hungry.
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It just needs to put it to good use.
The operative words being - to good use -. When bankers take peoples houses, when industries put people on the street for more profit overseas human capital sounds like slavery. China and India seem to have cornered the market on that account. When people can just be thrown away like so much trash, there appears to be a fundamental flaw in the business model. Gold is not the only precious metal. Any metal that has an intrinsic value in industry is a candidate. Money today is used for achieving power and wea
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Re:No Surprises Here (Score:5, Interesting)
What people don't seem to understand is the motivation for US subsidies. The US government wants to encourage as much domestic production as is reasonably possible, and they don't want a government entity to have to produce it (like countries with nationalized oil industries do). The only way to do this, therefore, is to make it more attractive for oil companies to extract oil that would otherwise be uneconomical. "Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid", as the link above calls it, is I believe the main way the US government supports the oil industry.
If these royalties reductions weren't in place, many of the wells in America would simply be uneconomical. The stripper wells mentioned by someone before wouldn't stand a chance, and collectively they account for 18% of US production (according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]). Without deep water credits, much of the gulf production would be an economic non starter (and gulf production is about a third of US production). And the overriding thing that people ignore is that 50% of zero is less than 5% of something. If you force a stripper well producing 2 barrels a day to pay a regular royalty, you're not going to bring in more money for the government, you're going to force that well to be plugged and abandoned, and it's probably never going to be economical to redrill it. Both the government and the industry loses.
It is expensive to extract oil in America's increasingly depleted fields, particularly compared to the younger and much larger oil provinces of the middle east and elsewhere. Because of this, the US government grants the oil industry here better incentives than in those countries to try and keep them in America - simply put, they allow the companies to keep more of the oil they produce. Maybe Americans are no longer comfortable with that deal, but they must remember that hiking royalties will significantly lower US production and will necessitate greater imports from unsavory places.
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's "uneconomical" to drill that for as much as 2 million barrels of domestic supply, wouldn't you think this is a big incentive to increase development of alternative sources of energy?
The reason these subsidies irk a lot of people is because the same conservative "grass-roots" "think-tanks" and the Chamber of Commerce that are all about letting the God of the Free Market control everything would howl with outrage if these subsidies to oil companies were to be cut off or even reduced.
There's no where near a concerted effort to develop alternative energy in the US, despite environmental disasters of enormous scale, including a million barrels now dumped into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. Yet, any time alternative energy is mentioned, you'll hear scoffing and arguments such as "Alternative energy is never going to replace energy" or "If it was going to happen, it would have happened already" or "Solar energy can never be useful because it wasn't useful ten years ago".
What they're really saying is "Nothing's going to replace fossil fuels until we find another source of energy that will enrich the same corporations and to the same extent that are currently getting rich from fossil fuels". If there was a way that BP or Exxon could get hugely rich off of solar energy, solar energy would have replaced fossil fuels decades ago.
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You can have a disaster happen with any other form of energy. Imagine a wind turbine blade snapping off and hitting someone [google.com]. Or the pond wastes from silicon processing (it is cheap to wash them off with sulfuric acid) which are polluting large parts of China as we speak. The reason for getting alternative energy is not the environment. If it was about the environment we would all be using nuclear power by now, which has been the safest in terms of kWh produced. Or we would have already upgraded uranium sep
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Right. And you could have someone driving to work at the solar energy plant and he drives into a train carrying poisonous gas and it would also be a disaster.
Most of their investment has been in patents on solar and wind power technologies. Gee, I wonder how that's gonna turn out.
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We should just let the "free market" work and BP will come up with a solution that will put them out of business.
Can you point to one single technological advance that has occurred since 1900 that was thanks to the "free market"? (note: this is a trick question because there has never been such a thing as a "free market". Not on Earth at least.)
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>In 1960, when John Kennedy said "We're going to the Moon" there was no technology that was gonna take anyone there, right now. "Right now" is not what R&D are about.
If we wait until we're not reliant on fossil fuels to start serious development, "right now" is never going to come.
That's what the fossil fuel industry is counting on. Then, they'll step in with some
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Are fat government subsidies on top of hundred billion dollar profits "shitting on"?
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The taxes paid by the FF industry...dwarf the subsidies they receive, however.
Any evidence to back this up? Or are you just guessing?
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The taxes paid by the FF industry...dwarf the subsidies they receive, however.
Any evidence to back this up? Or are you just guessing?
There are more tax deductions for corporations than for individuals, on top of subsidies. Break the political-corporate financial bond, if you can, and there may be some equity (don't hold your breath).
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:5, Insightful)
The fossil fuel industry shows profits in the hundreds of billions.
And they still expect to be paid by the government to convince them it's worth their time to make hundreds of billions.
I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. And the same people who believe the free market should determine everything about our lives also believe those subsidies to oil companies are absolutely necessary. And a remarkable number of those people are the same ones who will tell you that we absolutely must continue to pay huge cost overruns and ridiculous markups to military contractors, because otherwise, they might not want to make all that great hardware with which we fight our glorious wars.
Oh, and absolutely no negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, because otherwise they won't want to do the research and make the pills that earn them hundreds of billions in profits. And although CEOs must be free to negotiate hundred-million dollar salaries because that's the free market at work no workers must be allowed to collectively negotiate their salaries because that would HURT the free market. Got that? CEO's negotiating = Good / Workers negotiating = Bad
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The issue is that there is basically no way companies focused solely on stock market performance will do massive investments. Especially not on long term projects which may show limited returns compared to, you know, hedge funds, buying gold, or building houses no one wants to buy. Check out the major US auto manufacturers. The only one which has managed to stay reasonably in shape is still family controlled to a large degree.
As for the military contractors, it has been painfully obvious that the main is
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So it's the government's fault for not making contracts that are lucrative enough for the military contractors.
OK.
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:4, Informative)
Without subsidies your electricity bill would be larger.
And that would be a good thing. It makes sense that the people who use electricity should pay for electricity.
This is known as a "market economy," and it encourages things like efficiency, and matching the supply to the demand.
There's some sense to subsidizing an emerging technology: encouraging the fledgling technologies in hope some of them will grow could result in a large payout further down the line. There's no sense in subsidizing the giants.
...In the case of the major oil companies it's very dubious that they should still get handouts, but some of the tax breaks have been useful to small operators...
And only a trivial percentage of the tax breaks actually go to small operators, because the big operators have much more money to lobby with; and also much more money to pay lawyers to find the loopholes to enable them to qualify for the subsidies intended to support small operators. (Much like farm subsidies, actually-- the bills that are passed because they will be "supporting America's family farms" actually end up supporting the huge factory operations.)
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to know why they include military expenses as a "subsidy" for fossil fuels. We don't have to use the military to get oil from Iran or Iraq - we could buy it from friendly countries like Canada, UK, Russia.
Also renewable energy like solar cells, hydroelectric, and so on need military protection as well (from invasion or terrorism). So the military expenses should be on that tally sheet too, but they conveniently left it off.
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it helps to spin the story to express the viewpoint which they would like you to believe and they hope that most people will not dig too deeply and just accept them at their word.
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We don't have to use the military to get oil from Iran or Iraq - we could buy it from friendly countries like Canada, UK, Russia.
My guess at the neocon rationale: What happens when Canada, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Russia start to run out?
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Well that is logical. It makes more sense to drain countries like Venezuela and Arabia and Iran dry of oil, while you leave your own reserves untouched. Then circa 2050 you can sell your North American oil for big bucks.
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Could have bought it from Iraq, too, instead of trying to keep them from exporting it. Everyone else was doing it, but apparently America didn't wanna be one of the cool kids.
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Re:No Surprises Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but the oil companies do like the cheaper higher grade stuff from the Middle East. Why in the world else would we be so involved in the Middle East decade after decade while refusing to intervene in places that actually ASK for our help?
Every country needs protection from invasion and has a military to deal with that. None of them spend anywhere near as much of their national budget on it as we do. If all our military had to do was protect us from invasion, they wouldn't be dropping so many of those million dollar smart bombs today. You seem to be desperately clutching at straws here.
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We've been involved in the Mideast since World War 1. It had nothing to do with oil, but as part of the anti-Germany campaign. Then we withdrew and returned again during WW2, and we never bothered to withdraw. Instead we decided to become Israel's ally and protector.
And now we're "stuck" there. Even if we discovered our way to run our cars on hydrogen, we'd still be involved in the Mideast because we stupidly stick our noses (and bases) where they don't belong (Mideast, EU, Russia, Japan, China).
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While it's hard to say exactly how much goes into it, the US has protected the interests of business both overtly and covertly.
Iran was about oil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état [wikipedia.org]
Guatemala was about bananas (and communists). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d'état [wikipedia.org]
When Brazil was making overtures to Cuba, US reduced aid. A military coup eventually happened and the US immediately recognized the new government and loaned them money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]
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Except we don't just buy oil. We spend $TRILLIONS keeping the global oil production set up the way it is, enforced by our military. Then we buy it in the market we create with that military. So we do both. Meanwhile, our constant wars (and wars by proxy, eg. in Israel) keep the market prices high, though the cost to the producers themselves is low.
The cost of protecting renewable energy is very small. The military/intel budget would need to be only $150-200B annually for everything ($200B / everything), but
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Ah, so Joe Stripper Well Operator in Oklahoma should be paying more in royalties (or closing down his well, the more likely course of action) because even though the lower royalties mean it stays open and the government _gets_ more money than if it closed, we're going to call that "subsidies" and say he's not paying his fair share of the military costs involved with us buying the oil from Iraq instead of Oklahoma...
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Your convoluted argument says:
1: I said operators should be paying more in royalties.
2: If oil producers paid more royalties, they'd go out of business.
3: The government collects more money when it collects less money.
First, I never said operators should be paying more in royalties. All I said was that, contrary to the post to which I replied, the oil industry does indeed consume a vast amount more military budget than alternatives do. Which was obvious, but the comment to which I replied tried the usual sm
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Before Gulf War I George HW Bush said that protecting Kuwait was in our vital national interest. What was that vital national interest? What is the vital national interest that had US troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc before 9/11?
We already only get a small amount of oil that is actually shipped from the Middle East. However, since oil is a global commodity interruption in the flow from any of the major exporters would have global consequences, as we've seen whenever there's been a hint of confl
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Maybe it's because the Military uses boat-loads of fossil fuel during it's operations, especially naval, air and air-mobile ops. Still it seems hookey to include military ops as a subsidy for FF industry. It also seems that organizations coming from a political or an advocacy point of view play fast and loose with the definition of subsidy.
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THAT, dear reader, is WHY "military expenses" are considered to be a subsidy for fossil fuels.
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They are lobbying to use dwarfs as the next renewable energy source?
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They are lobbying to use dwarfs as the next renewable energy source?
Yes. Yes they are. It's a small operation, but some find it entertaining.
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No, the way I read the headline, fossil fuels are providing a subsidy provide renewable energy for dwarves. I didn't realize they were incompatible with existing renewable energy, but I suppose high winds at windfarms, or large waves at wavefarms, might sweep them away more easily than full-sized people...
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Iran's government owned oil company doesn't lobby their government. That's where 1/5th of the subsidies are from - essentially price breaks for the Iranian people from the Iranian government oil company.
Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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To help the now-wealthy to become yet more wealthy, or help all of humanity to avert climate disaster and live in a cleaner environment? Hmmmm decisions, decisions ...
Now here's the challenge. What policy actually would do what Voline wants?
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Leader of Senate: All fellow members of the Roman senate hear me. Shall we continue to build palace after palace for the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and build decent housing for the poor? How does the senate vote?
Entire Senate: FUCK THE POOR!
Leader: Good.
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But until such policies get introduced, it looks like I'll remain a poor slashdot virgin
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Save millions of lives now with combustion generators, or save millions of lives plus every coastal city 100 years from now with more renewable energy plants and research?
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The solar cell keeps working for 20 or 30 years whenever the Sun shines. With a combustion generator you're buying fuel all the time plus they require a much higher level of maintenance than a solar cell. The question is what is your total cost over the life of the project.
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Where is the study? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be interesting to see how the fossil fuel subsidy number was calculated. Even assuming the calculation is accurate, I'm not sure I buy the argument that renewable energy would be more economically viable than fossil fuels if not for government intervention. The article ignores taxes on fossil fuels, which I'm sure would dwarf any subsidies.
Re:Where is the study? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much money is paid for the right to DUMP pollution in the air in the burning? Nothing. We have a couple of 100 fires in old coal mines that the company that created the mine does not have to stop (too expensive). Both pollutions are HUGE. And how much is paid to offset it? Nothing by the power companies.
How much money is paid by Power companies for the right to send out mercury? The vast majority of mercury that is emitted by man is from power plants. In fact, out here in West USA, nearly all of the mercury in our waters come from power plant emission, or in a few areas, from old mining tailings.
The money that BP will pay for the gulf is but a fraction of the damage that it caused. Exxon paid very little of the clean-up in Alaska. And Nigeria has large amounts of environmental damage, all caused by oil companies that do not care about spills.
In addition the taxes that will be paid on the oil that will likely be sold elsewhere (such as Alaska oil) is a pittance compared to how much we are stealing from out children.
Finally, the thought that we burn oil is just amazing to me. Oil truely is one of the worlds wonder chemicals. It permeates our society in every aspect. Yet, we throw away the majority, and really do not pay but a fraction of the real costs of burning oil and coal. It is time to stop this for our national security.
Re:Where is the study? (Score:5, Informative)
A quick search found this $557 billion is primarily from China, Venezuela, Egypt Iraq and Iran consumer subsidies. When the government owns the oil company the subsidy is not making the owner rich. It might help the less well off more than the better off through reduction of gas costs but study results seem mixed.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-07/ending-fossil-fuel-aid-will-cut-oil-demand-iea-says-update1-.html
The number $557 came from the IEA
http://www.iea.org/files/energy_subsidies.pdf
Re:Where is the study? (Score:4, Insightful)
The taxes on oil primarily are taxes on gasoline and diesel for consumer use - as farmers know, industrial use is not so much. The taxes on coal are a joke. I googled the words "taxes coal" and came up with this news story from Tennessee, 2008:
"The state coal tax is currently set at 20 cents per ton and has not been increased since 1984.
As introduced, the bill would have set the tax at 4.5 percent of gross value, which Jackson said is the same rate charged in neighboring Kentucky. Members of the Senate Tax Subcommittee suggested the levy was too high at an earlier meeting and presented an amendment Tuesday that calls for a two-step increase to 3 percent." ...while that $557B comes to about 14% of worldwide spending on oil & coal, based (roughly) on the Wikipedia articles.
I'm sure that on the whole, more is taken from than given to the fossil-fuel industries, but the subsidies, as another poster mentioned mostly in Asia, mean that world-wide, the "pressure" on the whole industry is much lighter than most would assume.
It's not that renewables are economically viable in any situation where the fossil-fuel industries don't have to pay for their externalities; it's a way of highlighting that far from bringing in those externalities in the form of a tax or fund or cap or any other restriction, we are taxing their use at all, very lightly.
The moment all the subsidies stop and something like $50/T (C) is imposed on digging or pumping carbon out of the ground (and $50/T is paid to those who put it in), the game is pretty much up for fossil, save where gas/kerosene/diesel are the only way to go for high-energy density (aviation, remote cabins).
Subsidies are not just there because of lobbying and power, though - subsidizing cheap energy is a great economic stimulus in general, which is why you find it in new, growing, developing economies especially. Which is the heart of the warming issue: if "saving the world" involves telling a couple of billion Asians to spend an extra generation in poverty, is it worth it?
Re:Where is the study? Iraq, Afghanistan... (Score:2)
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If its cost is cheaper than building levees around New York, Miami, and all the other coastal cities that'll be underwater in a few decades, then yes, it's wise!
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If its cost is cheaper than building levees around New York, Miami, and all the other coastal cities that'll be underwater in a few decades, then yes, it's wise!
What will it matter what happens in a few decades to the sea level if the US goes into economic collapse in the next 3-10 years or even sooner, which we are in danger of currently even without adding more stress to our economy? If that happens, there won't be any government enforcement of environmental protections...or much of anything else, for tha
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Oil is subsidized where there's a lot of it, like arab countries.
Article is very low on details (Score:2, Interesting)
Yup; Needs to change (Score:2)
My suggestion has been, and will remain, that Obama/Congress need to change these subsidies to not favor any one company or arena, but to ta
Re:Yup; Needs to change (Score:5, Insightful)
Being against neo-cons, does not mean that I am in favor of Obama or lefties. I oppose the neo-cons for their total disaster that they created. However, if you even read this post or others, you will see that I am also calling Obama/dems to task for their in ability to change things. Or their UNWILLINGNESS to do the right thing. ANd I separate the neo-cons (reagan and W minions) against the republicans (lincoln, goldwater, truman, etc).
But hey, cowards like you, do not see that. YOU are the problem.
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Relative (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Relative (Score:5, Interesting)
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Isn't anything bio+energy bad? (Score:2)
I mean.. coal is bio-energy. Oil is bio-energy. The remnants of bio-mass that never made it to the sky, but whose carbon dioxide instead was stored in the ground by nature herself, process commonly known as "natural sinks". How can it be healthier for the planet to burn off bio-mass before it even gets a chance to sink or be "filtered" through various other life forms? I would have thought the production of bio-mass in sum cause as bad outlets of CO2 as oil. Not to mention the harm it does to various specie
Re:Isn't anything bio+energy bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe off point, but with my wife we used to joke: if the color is green, it must be healthy.
Last year we went to a vineyard in France, where the owner explained he had not applied for the "Bio" label because he used modern selective fungicides, thus his soil is alive. The "Bio" use copper sulfide at such quantities as to completely eradicate the microbial life from their soils. I prefer not to think what they drink from their wells. As agricultural engineer I think this case of "Bio" is entirely harmful.
Bio-energy probs in a nutcase (Score:2)
It's all solar in the end right...just converted to chemical energy. I've read up on the intricacies of bio-fuel and on the whole I'm against it. The trouble is the long term environmental impact of land based fuel crops is horrendous...and all we get is a net neutral in terms of CO2...suck it out of the sky...put it back in.
Algae offers much in terms of land use but little in terms of the CO2 neutrality problem. Much more research needed; don't believe the hype.
I'm for the establishment of a fully electric
Figures don't lie -- but liars figure (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're a greenie, you'll like this rah-rah study. Maybe you need some re-energization.
However, if you're not, maybe you'd like to know exactly _how_ true numbers have been distorted:
Dollar-wise, the biggest distortion is to consider road maintenence and building as a subsidy. This is slippery, since the substantial fuel taxes were justified and accepted by the voters on the basis they would pay for roads. Most places, the road funds are in surplus and contribute to general revenue, not draw from it.
Another large item in the US, but totally unaccounted is the oxygenated gasoline regulations. In many areas, the (obsolete and ineffective) legal requirement is for gasoline to contain 2% oxygen, earlier met with MTBE (which doesn't biodecompose fast enough) and now met with ethanol. In addition to the $1.50/gal direct subsidy, this legal requirement puts a demand floor under deathanol. How much is it worth? Who knows, but probably a large fraction of the direct subsidy.
Accounting for electricity is tough -- renewables use the same grid, and so anything is common. But renewables have poor reliability characteristics, so regs like equal buy/sell price actually are an uncounted subsidy. They certainly require more standby generation.
Fun with statistics (Score:2)
Oh, and let's not forget that they are including bogus "subsidies" such as military costs in the equation.
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Because US military alone was budgeted 663 billion in 2010 (though spent something like
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If you want to *encourage* something, you need to MASSIVELY weight the equations EITHER FOR OR AGAINST. A policy of "weighting" (via subsidies) things equally is literally a waste of money, while *appearing* to do something for renewable (look see how much money we spend subsidizing it)?.
For those of you objecting to this report (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, here is where you can get the study. [eli.org]
What this shows is just 6 years. It does not show the money that was originally put into many of these programs. For example, Nuke had LOADS of R&D done by the feds. Still does. And it still needs more (hopefully this time, the feds will not stop the IFR project that has been quietly started at UIUC; GD kerry for pushing it and CLinton for not having enough backbone to say no). And Coal had LOADS of fed and state assistance to get started. Free land; loads of pollution with zero clean up (see pix of eastern aChina to get an idea of what some parts of America was like in the 60's).
Even now, the subsidy that is being calculated in the above study has NOTHING about the air, water, and ground pollution that is allowed. If burning coal and oil had to pay for their pollution in all these areas, then they would quickly run to the top in terms of costs. WELL OVER Solar PV (which today is the current king of costs).
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Hate to rain on the parade, but if you compare that graphic to a breakdown of energy sources [doe.gov], it's pretty obvious renewables are getting a much larger subsidy per unit of energy produced. I dunno why people who make charts like yours insist on comparing numbers in such a skewed way. It's like claiming the Johnsons with a food budget of just $250/mo are somehow more frugal than the Smiths who have a food budget of $750/mo. Leaving out the fact tha
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Its just a way for the fossil fuel industry to keep going.
What's wrong with that? As I've said here before, there seems to be among some environmentalists a peculiar emphasis on behavior modification even at the expense of solving the problem. This appears to me to be an example of that thinking. If the fossil fuel industry (which really is more than just the harvesting and burning of fossil fuels) really can go carbon neutral, especially if they figure out how to recycle that carbon into biofuels, then why shouldn't they keep going? At some point we need to have
lol wut? (Score:2)
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Are you including the cost of Iraq? (Score:2)
If you include the cost of our presence in Iraq, the oil subsidy dwarfs imagination.
(And if you don't think our presence in Iraq is about oil, then I have a bridge to sell you that was highly subsidized by the city of London.)
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And an independent well operator in Oklahoma is benefitting from the US occupying Iraq, how?
All the US military presence abroad does is save y'all from the consequences of the nickel-and-diming-to-death that's been done to domestic oil and gas over the past twenty years.
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If you include the cost of our presence in Iraq, the oil subsidy dwarfs imagination.
You are aware that the US gets most of its oil domestically, from Canada, and Mexico? Most of the Middle East oil ends up in Europe and Asia, not the US. The US gets about 15% of all its petroleum from the Middle East, and about 4% from Iraq.
And in Iraq, the biggest share (about 80%, IIRC) of drilling rights issued to foreign companies went to non-US companies... If we're there for oil, it's for oil for other countries, not the US.
Dwarf support for renewables? (Score:3, Funny)
What about elf support?
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There are 3 separate taxes on petrol - excise which is like a 'sin tax' is about 60c, VAT is just over 20c and a ~5c 'carbon tax'. Ethanol isn't subsidised but has a reduced excise tax.
So you probably wouldn't be paying all *that* much for it if you weren't being taxed to the hilt
Re:One less counter-argument... (Score:5, Insightful)
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yeah... if only we could live in societies that did not need governance.
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Reread his post: 'tax credit subsidies that ANY business gets'.
For example there are tax subsidies you can get for building a 'green' office building. It might sound odd, but having piles of cash around, as well as offices all over the place the oil industry is in a prime position to build or remodel their offices to be green.
If subsidies like that are part of the study they shouldn't really be, as they apply to any business - Ford, IBM, Cisco, Pepsi, Sears, Walmart, JCPenny, the local toolshop, whatever.
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Germany has mandated that the electricity companies buy any solar power on the order of 70-80 cents per kwh
Not quite. Solar is reimbursed at 42 euro cents (~54 us cent). The law was just updated. The new rates are lower.
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So it's 5X, not 8X.
In reading I know that it used to be 1EU
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Subsidy dollars per GWh are the relevant units. According to the EIA, and browsing through dsireusa.org, we find that "renewables" currently get the greatest subsidies by far.
Mod parent up. This is like saying your next door neighbor give $20 per week total allowances to their children, compared to $5 per week you give your kids. Never mind they have 16 children sharing that $20...
Wind and solar get about 100 TIMES the per-GWh subsidy of oil and coal.
Others have also mentioned the taxes; ExxonMobil (that evil Big Oil company) pays about $3 in taxes/Government fees for every $1 in net profit the company makes. Governments make the lion's share of the money from Exxon pumpi