A War Over Solar Power Is Raging Within the GOP

mdsolar sends this quote from an article about the politics of solar energy: "Clean energy technology has always been an easy punching bag for conservatives. Propelled by growing strain of global warming denial within their party, Republicans in Congress have proposed to slash funding for renewable energy programs in half this year, and mocked the idea of a green economy as “groovy” liberal propaganda. Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets or gamble taxpayer dollars on renewable-energy loans to companies like Solyndra, the Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees. The assumption has always been that, without heavy government subsidies, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power would never be able to compete with fossil fuels. But something funny has happened to renewables that major power companies and their Republican allies didn't see coming. Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US, according to the renewable energy research group Greentech Media. The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Once considered a boutique energy source, solar power has become a cost-competitive alternative for many consumers, costing an average $143 per megawatt-hour, down from $236 in the beginning of 2011. Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers. And as more people turn to rooftop solar as a way to reduce energy costs—90,000 businesses and homeowners installed panels last year, up 46 percent from 2011—the issue is pitting pro-utilities Republicans against this fledgling movement of libertarian-minded activists who see independent power generation as an individual right. In other words, the fight over solar power is raging within the GOP itself."

Ironic this...

[mlts]

The GOP allowed solar -production- to be kicked over to China. First, the solar companies were complaining about Chinese intrusion attempts, then China started dumping panels on our shores for cheaper than it cost US makers to buy the rare earths.

However, the split is going along two lines of two GOP platforms. Dislike for government versus respect for Big Oil/Big Coal. Solar allows people to be fairly independent [1].

Solar also scales well. One can have a one watt panel to keep a vent fan spinning on a RV's roof, or a multi-megawatt array powering a city like Austin.

Solar is also fairly easy to deploy. Got a clear line of sight to the south? Might as well slap a few panels up, add a grid-tie inverter, and have a lower power bill, or if in a more rural area, have the power feed into a battery bank for complete off-grid use, or even a combination of both with some outlets in a house on utility powers, others feeding from the batteries. Same thing if one has a carport. Might as well have the flat roof do something.

As for price, solar panel prices have gotten to a point where it becomes a "why not?" as opposed to a "why bother?" This is especially true in the RV industry.

[1]: Almost. Good luck having a modern building in the southern US without air conditioning unless one is content to deal with high humidity.

Libertarian does not equal conservative...

[thomasinx]

Just to point it out... Just because a few very vocal groups in the GOP are claiming to be libertarian, that does not mean that libertarians are GOP. The interests of the two groups do not align very well, so a conflict such as this is only to be expected.

Re:Fucking rednecks

[kruach aum]

Solar power is a source of energy that does not affect the climate the way burning fossil fuels does, which is what it has "to do with global warming."

Re:Libertarian does not equal conservative...

[0123456]

Quite the opposite, in fact. Libertarians tend to be socially liberal and financially conservative. They'd neither subsidize solar, or put road-blocks in its way.

Re:Paragraphs

[TubeSteak]

Slashdot summaries have always been a wall of text.
You're not new here, maybe you need new glasses?

Re:Why subsidize?

[jbmartin6]

AH, nvm Ill read up on it myself http://www.nei.org/corporatesite/media/filefolder/60_Years_of_Energy_Incentives_-_Analysis_of_Federal_Expenditures_for_Energy_Development_-_1950-2010.pdf [nei.org]

Re:Fucking rednecks

[i kan reed]

i.e. it has as much to do with global warming as not stabbing you has to do with murder.

Solar doesn't have to be PV

[Anonymous Coward]

Many states can use the cheap solar hot water systems, costing $3-5k professionally installed, less than half that if you're not scared of plumbing. It's not all about generating electricity, spinning meters backwards or off-grid storage.

Some countries around the Mediterranean have laws that all buildings have to have solar systems to heat domestic water. They're different designs from ours, looking somewhat clunky and like the old USSR hodgepodge satellites, but they're effective.

Here in FL, every other cookie cutter house has a pool solar system, but very few have domestic hot water panels, even though they're cheaper and take up far less roof space, and save having to have the 50 gallon tank powered all day every day. I find this very bizarre.

Our house (2 adults, 2 kids) hot water is purely heated from the sun bar the 10-14 days of the year when I have to switch on the power to the tank due to extended cloud coverage. We also have pool panels, but to get the benefit of extending the pool usage period, we have to have the pool pump running a lot longer, which uses a fair amount of power.

Shouldn't pick winners/losers...

[fahrbot-bot]

Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets ...

Okay. Step 1: Cancel all subsidies / tax breaks [thinkprogress.org] and tax loopholes for the Oil Companies. Sure they're *only* about $2-4 billion / year, but it's a start. (Note: Reason.com - slogan "Free Minds and Free Markets - thinks these are okay [reason.com]).

Just noting from the Think Progress article:

Last year, the five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — earned $118 billion profit at a time when consumers paid record-high gas prices. This haul follows after a year the companies earned a record $137 billion profit.

Re:Why subsidize?

[Mike Van Pelt]

I grabbed a copy of this the last time it came up on Slashdot -- mostly, the same sorts of tax breaks for cost of doing business that most companies get, except the oil companies in most cases get less (not more) of it than other companies do.

The biggest is what's called the Domestic Manufacturing Deduction. It's a 2004 tax change meant to encourage companies to manufacture in the U.S. It allows companies of almost any type to deduct from their taxable income up to 9 percent of profits from domestic manufacturing. Under the rule, oil and gas companies were classified as manufacturers, but their deduction was capped at 6 percent.

This provision alone is expected to save the oil and gas industry $18.2 billion over the next ten years, or 42 percent of the $44 billion total.

The oil industry feels unfairly singled out. "It can't be good for some and not for others or it is just a punishment," says Stephen Comstock, the tax policy manager at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry lobbying group.

Another subsidy, established in 1913 to encourage domestic drilling, allows oil companies to deduct more quickly all of the so-called intangible costs of preparing a site for drilling.

To accountants, intangible costs are costs for things that have no salvage value when the well runs dry, including clearing land and pouring concrete. Ordinarily, a business would have to deduct these costs over the life of the drilling site. Instead, small, independent drillers are allowed to deduct all of these expenses in the first year; major, so-called integrated companies like ExxonMobil can deduct 70 percent in the first year.

The break is worth $12.5 billion over the next ten years.

Comstock compares the oil industry's ability to write off the cost of preparing a well to other companies' ability to write off research and development costs. Other tax experts say this is clearly a subsidy.

A rule dating from 1926 that establishes how oil companies can depreciate the value of their wells allows drillers to deduct 15 percent of the well's revenue from its taxable income per year. This is instead of a more traditional depreciation scheme in which the cost of the well is depreciated over the well's life. The tax break was created in part to simplify accounting, so companies wouldn't have to guess how long an oil or gas field would produce in order to calculate how to depreciate it. It can be a boon: The total of the deductions over the life of the well can sometimes be bigger than what the company actually spent on the well.

This provision was eliminated for major oil companies in 1975, but it continues for independent producers. The break is worth $11 billion over 10 years.

Royalties that companies pay foreign governments for the oil they extract are not deductible from U.S taxes. But often the industry is allowed to claim royalties as foreign taxes, which are deductible. Obama and Senate Democrats call this a loophole, and want to close it. Obama doesn't include this in his $44 billion proposal, but Whitney Stanco, an analyst at MF Global, calculates that removing this benefit could cost the industry $8.5 billion over ten years.

Re:How does this story play in Arizona

[amicusNYCL]

People here want solar. Like the article mentions, there was a vote this week to raise monthly costs of solar users here in AZ. The public utility wanted an increase of $50 - $100 per month and spent $3.7 million on an advertising and lobbying campaign (in addition to the money they always contribute to the entirely-Republican-staffed committee that regulates them). After the vote, regulators approved a $5 increase per month. People here realize that APS is trying to stifle solar, and this is arguably the best state in the country for solar production. People want solar, and the regulators understand that (despite being Republicans).

Re:Why subsidize?

[sneakyimp]

STFI, lazy! http://www.nei.org/corporatesite/media/filefolder/60_Years_of_Energy_Incentives_-_Analysis_of_Federal_Expenditures_for_Energy_Development_-_1950-2010.pdf [nei.org]

Re:Begun this solar war has...

[i kan reed]

Except that's attributed to Gandhi(who likely never said it at all), when it actually came from a American union leader, Nicholas Klein, who never actually won the strike he was pushing.

Re:Why subsidize?

[Elder Entropist]

At the time, Solyndra's CIGS thin film technology was a smart idea with standard solar panel polysilicon running at $400 per kilogram and China cutting global access to their supplies of rare earth elements. Had those conditions continued, the company would have been very profitable. Hindsight may be 20/20, but nobody in those days was predicting polysilicon dropping to under $30/kg, China relaxing its rare earth access and subsidizing its own solar exports to dump under cost of production. Certainly Solyndra attracted its share of private financing as well as the US Government's.

Re:Why subsidize?

[Carnivore]

Here, let me Google that for you:

http://ecowatch.com/2013/06/12/coal-companies-receive-taxpayer-subsidies/ [ecowatch.com]
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/13/463874/top-three-ways-that-american-taxpayers-subsidize-dirty-coal-development/ [thinkprogress.org]
http://www.cato.org/blog/clean-coal-subsidies [cato.org]
http://illinoistimes.com/article-permalink-12589.html [illinoistimes.com]

You can make numbers say aything you want.

[james_shoemaker]

Did you even read the article you linked to? Most of those subsidies take the form of things like allowing corporations to deduct expenses from their taxes (much like any other business). One of the supposed subsidies to the oil and gas industry cited in the report is government heating assistance for the poor.

Re:The public Internet is NOT a government project

[rsclient]

You're rather cherry-picking your data. Solyndra made a big bet: that the raw cost of the silicon in solar power would be important, and that a remarkably cool manufacturing technique to use a lot less would have a ton of value. As it turns out, that's not how the industry went: silicon costs dropped faster than anticipated, and the manufacturing costs of the Solyndra didn't.

We weren't "picking winners and losers" here: we enabled a big bet. Big bets don't always work.

And the internet was absolutely funded for years by the public purse to develop all of the major technologies and to make the same set of "big bets" about the valuable and non-valuable aspects of internet communication. Private people only became interested because of that investment.

And part of the investment was the "picking a winner". The key to the internet is that it worked across multiple vendors. If we hadn't have done that, there would be an ATT network, an IBM network, a Unisys network, and so on. The government chose a winner (cross platform) and a loser (per-company networks).

Re:Fucking rednecks

[SuricouRaven]

China and the EU are in an on-and-off trade war over photovoltaics. China is heavily subsidising production there in order to churn the panels out so cheap, European manufacturers cannot match them - thus effectively securing a production monopoly which can later be leveraged. Taking a loss now to secure a strategic advantage. The EU is not happy with this.

Oil companies aren't subsidized.

[GPS Pilot]

If you want to assert that oil companies are subsidized, you must first offer some valid and specific criticism of this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/01/02/oil-gas-tax-provisions-are-not-subsidies-for-big-oil [forbes.com]

So far, nobody has been able to tell me where David Blackmon got his facts wrong.

Re:Fucking rednecks

[SuricouRaven]

Not including the occasional war fought to secure access to supplies.

Re:Fucking rednecks

[Smidge204]

Also not including the cost of health care associated with pollution.

=Smidge=

Re:Fucking rednecks

[dlapine]

The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid. As a consumer, the other options you mention are things I can't do. Sure, solar is more expensive per KWH, but at least it's doable for lots of homeowners.

Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday. Thus, making the claim the Republicans (even with a minority in the Senate) can be held somewhat responsible for lack of progress in the area seems reasonable.

Re:Oil companies aren't subsidized.

[Wookact]

Sure I'll be glad to refute your industry puff piece. How about a detailed explanation here: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/americas-most-obvious-tax-reform-idea-kill-the-oil-and-gas-subsidies/274121/ [theatlantic.com]

Here is another article comparing the subsides between oil, coal, nuclear, ethanol, and renewable. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0309/Budget-hawks-Does-US-need-to-give-gas-and-oil-companies-41-billion-a-year [csmonitor.com]

Here is another article, look mine has actuall sources: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/news/2011/05/05/9663/big-oils-misbegotten-tax-gusher/ [americanprogress.org]

Here, even the FLIPPING HERITAGE FOUNDATION, the extreme right wing think tank disagrees with you.

Oil Subsidies That Should Be Removed

First, let’s take a look at oil subsidies that are obvious and unnecessary. Congress should eliminate the following subsidies: Government R&D. The Department of Energy (DOE) has spent taxpayer dollars on oil research and development, including funding for unconventional oil, gas, and coal. Although President Obama’s FY 2012 budget request significantly cuts funding for the Office of Fossil Energy, decreasing its size by $417.8 million below the FY 2010 appropriation, it does not go far enough. The only funding in this area should maintain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for which the President’s budget requests an appropriate $121.7 million. Eliminating all other fossil energy funding would save $399 million.
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Tax Credit. Oil producers receive a 15 percent tax credit for costlier methods and technologies, such as injecting liquids and carbon dioxide into the earth. Many EOR processes are no longer in use, and the tax credit applies only when the price of oil falls below a certain level.
Marginal Well Production Credit. Marginal wells produce 15 or fewer barrels of oil per day, produce heavy oil, or produce mostly water and fewer than 25 barrels of oil per day. The marginal well production credit is another safety-net tax provision. This is another preferential tax credit that Congress should repeal.

Applied research of any kind—not just oil research and development—is better left to the private sector. The private sector should not be subsidized because of market conditions, as happens with the so-called safety-net tax credits that kick in if the price of oil falls below a certain level.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/whats-an-oil-subsidy [heritage.org]

Re:Sucks to be them.

[thatshortkid]

Holy shit dude, please name one person that was NOT a democrat that wrote, worked in it, or voted for it?

Mitt Romney.

science or technology

[h00manist]

It would be more useful to talk about the science, technology, economics on the issue. The politicking is killing the country.