Gov. Nathan Deal said he’s a free-enterprise person and doesn’t
want to subsidize renewable energy, but he maybe doesn’t know
that the state of Georgia subsidizes Georgia Power’s new nuclear
plants through an indirect tax, and that fossil fuels are far
more subsidized than renewable energy.
That plus the chickens.
Continuing
Gov. Deal: the good, the ugly, and the bad on prisons,
quoting again from
David Rodock’s interview with Gov. Nathan Deal
in today’s VDT.
If it’s true for the country, it’s true for south Georgia.
So moving ahead with solar will gain jobs.
David Worthington wrote for smartplanet 28 June 2011,
Google: delay on renewables will cost U.S. trillions, over million jobs:
Google has published an
analysis of the economic benefits of renewable
energy innovation. It has concluded that even a five year lapse without
a national clean energy policy would
cost the United States an aggregate
US$2.3-3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP gains and 1.2-1.4 million net jobs.
The study was about renewable energy in general, but:
Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio
speaks at 44:25
about
…the nexus between sustainability and job creation.
Every now and then, perhaps once in a generation,
there presents itself a moment, an opportunity,
for those cities that are willing to seize it,
to truly benefit the region for generations to come.
Here’s
the video:
We could do something like this.
We’ve already made a start with Wiregrass Solar.
At an event this afternoon at UT-San Antonio, Mayor Julian Castro
announced a suite of green energy projects that he said would position
San Antonio as the nation’s “recognized leader in clean energy technology”
and help fulfill his aggressive environmental goals.Most notably, Castro and leaders from CPS Energy, the city-owned utility,
pledged to shut down one of its coal-fired power plants 15 years ahead
of schedule. By 2018, the city would mothball the 871-megawatt J.T. Deely
Power Plant — a bold move in a growing state that’s seemingly addicted
to coal.
So what are they going to use for energy?
Noting that I was there on behalf of the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
which takes these videos and puts them on the web,
I recommended to the Industrial Authority board that they
put their agendas on the web,
since they give those away at the door
and they don’t contain any of the details that they’re concerned
about revealing to competitors.
Recalling that I had previously had the audacity to
read their own charter to them,
or at least the parts about the general good and welfare of the community,
I reminded them that some areas that had successfully attracted industry,
such as Raleigh, NC, Austin, TX, and Portland, OR had said what kinds of
industry they wanted.
Expanding on the example of Austin, TX, I noted that they emphasized
clean industry, music, and arts, and that helped attract the kinds
of knowledge-based workers that our local Chamber of Commerce wants
for knowledge-based jobs.
Then I noted that I had
complimented Mayor Fretti
Climate Progress points out that
a new Pew poll, “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology”,
shows that
Public support for alternative energy transcends political barriers:
71% of Americans believe “This country should do whatever it takes to
protect the environment.” And 59% believe that “strongly.”
Quoting from
Pew’s summary:
In light of this diversity it is interesting to note a couple of areas
where almost all of these groups agree. The first is on support for
alternative energy. Overall, the public prioritizes developing alternative
energy over expanding oil, coal, and natural gas by a 63-29 margin. And,
as shown in the chart below, seven of Pew’s eight active typology
groups support this position, including a whopping 40-point margin
among the Main Street Republican group. Only the staunch conservatives
(9 percent of the public) dissent from the rest.
Conservatives usually act like progressive ideas have no purchase in
“their” part of the political spectrum. These data suggest otherwise.
And no, conservatives are not the political type the south
has the most disproportional percentage of: those would be
Hard-Pressed Democrats and Disaffecteds.
And no, by “alternative energy”
people don’t mean polluting biomass:
63% of Americans say “EPA needs to do more to hold polluters accountable
and protect the air and water”.
What Americans want is clean renewable energy:
solar, wind, and hydrogen.
-jsq
Solar power is the fastest growing industry in the world,
and south Georgia is an excellent place for it to grow
and produce jobs, with plenty of rooftops and parking lots
for solar panels.
This is despite the misinformation
people with vested interests in other energy sources put out
about solar power.
After Dr. Matthew Richard
made some points about solar vs. biomass,
one of the members of the 6 December 2010 panel that
VLCIA spent more than $17,000 to assemble to defend biomass
responded that he was in favor of the nearby 300kWatt solar plant, but:
well, I’m going to interleave his buts with what he’s ignoring.
After last night’s Valdosta City Council meeting,
someone told me he thought all renewable energy sources
required subsidies, and that was the problem.
Well, I think the real problem is the much larger
subsidies to big oil.
Dan Froomkin wrote in huffpo
How The Oil Lobby Greases Washington’s Wheels:
Despite astronomical profits during what have been lean years for
most everyone else, the oil and gas industry continues to benefit from
massive, multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies. Opinion polling shows
the American public overwhelmingly wants those subsidies eliminated.
That’s at least $4 billion a year to big oil while Congress debates cutting
Social Security and Medicare and maybe shutting down the government.
According to the American Petroleum Institute (API),
Suniva’s
second solar PV manufacturing plant that Georgia couldn’t keep
went to Saginaw, Michigan,
where the editorial board of The Saginaw News lists it as
just one bullet item:
• Georgia-based solar panel maker Suniva is well along in its federal loan guarantee application so it can build a plant in Saginaw County.
So what is the big news that they’re editorializing about?
The Solar Valley is starting to snowball.
Amid the campaigning and squabbling on the Friday before last week’s
statewide election were two electric announcements promising a big buzz
for our region’s future.
Money & Company reports on 30 Nov 2010 that
Clean energy gets fewer subsidies, less investment than fossil fuels, report says:
Energy from fossil fuel gets 12 times more in subsidies worldwide
than sustainable energy, says a new report from the USC
Marshall School of Business.
Corporate welfare for polluters.
“Inertia in the form of myopia, misperception, and dulled motivation,
at the economy, firm, and consumer levels creates resistance to change
and constrains solution-seeking to incremental improvements of known
technologies rather than disruptive breakthrough innovations needed,”
they wrote in their executive summary.
Hm, that sounds familiar.
-jsq
