U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Receives $2 Billion From Japanese Banks 185
kkleiner writes "The Bank of Tokyo has invested $2 billion into Cape Wind, the 130-turbine wind farm that is inching closer to becoming a reality. The project is vying to the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. after a decade-long campaign mired by red tape in order to receive approval. Proposed to be installed in Nantucket Sound, the wind farm is estimated to have a capacity of 468 megawatts."
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, in the United States... research and development cut. NASA budget shrunk. Science and engineering degrees from new graduates at all time lows. And at least one state (Tennessee) has recently tried to pass a law to make our educational system an actual Hunger Games by witholding food assistance from poor families with students who do poorly on state-administered exams.
Thank you, Japan, for investing in us... because we sure as hell aren't.
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:2, Interesting)
How high is "super high"?
Does this apply only to homeowners or to all rate payers?
Are these rate payers allowed to vote for the people who make the laws?
Are the rate payers who's votes align against the "super high" rates allowed to benefit from whatever benefits accrue?
Are the rate payers who's votes advance this scheme subject to the same detriments as you are?
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:2, Interesting)
Because we're spending it all on:
1) Blowing other people up.
2) Ridiculously high health care costs that would decrease immensely if the right would stop cock-blocking us on universal health care.
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the argument is that the subsidies for fossil fuels are distorting the market, then $ per megawatt-hour is the correct way to compare it. If you and I are both selling lemonade, and I get a subsidy of $0.01 per glass, and you get a subsidy of $1 per glass it's pretty clear which way the market is distorted.
That I happen to sell 10,000 glasses for a total subsidy of $100, while you sell just 10 glasses for a total subsidy of $10, is beside the point from a market distortion standpoint.
You are assuming the fossil fuel industry is a monolithic and static entity. There are new methods of extracting fossil fuels and more efficient ways of combusting them constantly being researched and developed. They get a large share of the subsidy dollars because most of our energy infrastructure is designed to run off of fossil fuels. So decreasing their cost has a proportionally larger benefit for our overall economy than decreasing the cost of a little-used technology (putting aside the issue of externalized costs due to pollution). Once renewables drop in price to the point where they're providing the bulk of our energy, they will get the bulk of the subsidy dollars. The point of the subsidies isn't to try to be "fair" to the little guy. It's to accelerate development of promising new technologies which will most benefit the economy.
Speaking of which, I don't see a problem with renewables currently having a poorer return per subsidy dollar than fossil fuels. The petroleum and coal industries were probably subsidized up the wazoo when they were first starting out. Nuclear certainly was. We are investing heavily in renewables now not because we're expecting an immediate return on that investment. Rather we see a long-term benefit of switching to these technologies, and wish to accelerate their development into an economically viable alternative. So there's nothing wrong with renewables getting more $subsidy/MWh. In fact if you look only at new fossil fuel technologies like clean coal (which I think is a terrible idea), the $subsidy/MWh is probably similar to that of renewables.