Solar Decathlon returns to Washington

This October, for the fourth time, the Solar Decathlon will fill the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, putting Solar front and center at a time when those in the Capitol building ought to be passing a major bill to benefit the technology. 

For both those reasons, it would be an excellent time for you to visit Washington DC:  a time when you can see how some of the best and brightest young minds can integrate solar power with real living environments, and a time when you can visit your Congresspersons and insist on a bill that enables that very thing to happen in the nation at large.  (You can find tips on making personal visits to your Congresspersons here).  (more…)

No Respect for Clean Energy Money

“I don’t get no respect” was comic Rodney Dangerfield’s most famous line.  And if the great stand-up guy were alive today, he could be delivering that line while playing the role of renewable energy.  Because in some areas of government, funding for clean energy is being used as a handy pot of ‘mad money’ to bail out other funds.  No respect there. 

The Obama Administration has diverted one-third of the $6 billion allocated to the DOE Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program to the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program, which has proved so popular that it was in danger of running out of money.  The rationale of the Administration and Congress is that DOE will not be able to spend that part of its funds before the end of the year, so will not miss it in the short term.  And White House staffers have assured concerned clean energy supporters that the Loan Guarantee Program fund will be replenished by that time. 

Even so, the action bespeaks a certain lack of respect for an issue that was described as vitally important by Obama this time last year.  It reminds this writer of the time, years ago, when he found a shortfall of several hundred dollars in the cash register of his retail operation.  As he discovered the discrepancy one of his employees explained, quite ingenuously, that since he was short of mortgage money that month he had, naturally, used his employer’s money to make up the difference.  There did not seem to be, with him, an ethical dilemma at work over the issue of respect.     (more…)

And you thought the town hall meetings on health care reform were bad…

We’re used to railing against the use of corporate cash as a determinant of Congressional behavior, but we think the use of faux-grassroots groups (now being known, appropriately enough, as ‘astroturf’ groups) to sway politicians may be equally disruptive to the democratic process.

This somewhat cynical* phenomenon is being enthusiastically copied by the oil & gas industry from the playbook of Big Health, as an American Petroleum Institute (API) memo recently leaked to Greenpeace USA showed.  According to Greenpeace, the memo asks member companies to round up current and former employees, among others, to attend ‘Energy Citizen’ rallies across the country posing as unaffiliated citizens.  Companies will, in many cases, provide transportation and food for attendees from their labor force, who, we anticipate, are expected to speak out against the Congressional energy bill.

And why, exactly, do we find this trend so offensive?  Aren’t corporations entitled to express the concerns and opinions of management to members of Congress, just as citizens and voters are? (more…)

Summertime, and the living is easy

…and members of the U.S. Congress have left Washington for a few weeks’ living in their home districts.  Trouble is, they didn’t finish the job before they left.

The House of Representatives spent a good part of the year taking a good idea (the President’s target of 25% of electricity from renewable sources by 2025) and doing a bad job with it:

- Their bill, the Waxman-Markey ‘ACES’ bill, (bill number HR2454) calls only for 20% renewables by 2020, while the Senate’s version –  the ‘ACELA’ bill (bill number S1462) –  only looks for 15% by 2021!

- In response to the Obama-Biden requirement that all carbon emission allowances be auctioned to fund clean energy development and help citizens cope with energy bills, the ACES bill gives away some 85% of carbon emission allowances to polluting industries, while the ACELA bill ignores climate altogether.

- Neither bill creates uniform net metering or interconnection standards for retail and commercial customers, leaving us – still – without a national framework for distributed generation within which a healthy solar market can flourish.
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