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Banned
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It always ends up to one thing, honey, And I can't think of right words to say...
<i>Cat Stevens</i>
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C-R-O-N-Y-I-S-M, driven by ideology: FEMA...Katrina, Disaster relief....Not !
SYNFUEL, Energy Independence.....Not !
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/...ps_energy.html
Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.
It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.
We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.
We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.......
.......<b>The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.</b>
These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.
Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.
<b>These are the goals we set for 1985:</b>
--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.
--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.
--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.........
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AP
Dateline: WASHINGTON, June 30
Publication title: New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jul 1, 1980. pg. D.1
President Carter signed legislation today encouraging development of synthetic energy sources, declaring that ''the keystone of our national energy policy is at last being put in place.''
In a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, the President said his energy policy - two-thirds completed with the signing of the new bill -''gives us the weapons to wage and win the energy war.''
The scope of the synthetic fuels program ''will dwarf the combined programs that led us to the moon and built our interstate highway system,'' he said.
$92 Billion in U.S. Spending
All told, the program could mean eventual Government expenditures of $92 billion by 1992, although initial funding authorization is for about $24 billion.
President Carter's aides had originally contemplated a July 4th ceremony in which the President would have signed the Energy Security Act, as the bill is formally known, and another bill creating an Energy Mobilization Board to assign priorities to energy projects and place some on a ''fast track.''
But a House vote on Friday to send the second bill back to a House-Senate conference committee denied President Carter that opportunity. All but nine Republicans voted against the measure.
The President, in remarks prepared for delivery at the signing ceremony today, said: ''The fight for energy security is not a partisan fight. I ask members from both parties to complete our energy agenda in the same spirit of cooperation that has brought us the success which we are celebrating today.''
He urged Congressional leaders to turn out legislation establishing an energy board that would speed up approval of energy projects while respecting environmental concerns.
The synthetic fuels program, the energy board and the already enacted tax on oil companies' ''windfall'' profits that stem from oilprice decontrol make up the three legs of President Carter's energy program.
''The new Energy Security Act will help the American people to conserve even more and industry to produce more energy,'' President Carter said. Oil imports, he said, dropped 12.9 percent in the past year, gasoline consumption fell 8 percent and total oil consumption was down more than 9 percent.
President Sees 70,000 New Jobs
''This legislation will help create at least 70,000 jobs a year to design, build, operate and supply resources for synthetic fuels plants,'' he said.
On Thursday, the House voted 317 to 93 for the Energy Security Corporation, a concern created to encourage energy projects not now economically feasible.
Through the use of loan guarantees, purchase agreements and Government production it would encourage turning coal into gas and extracting oil from shale.
Its initial funding would be $20 billion, to produce the equivalent of two million barrels of oil a day by 1992 -slightly more than 10 percent of current consumption........
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Robert D. Hershey Jr.
Publication title: New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Apr 8, 1981. pg. D.2
WASHINGTON THE winter heating season is behind us, petroleum imports are down sharply, the industry is awash in gasoline and there is now talk of a peace treaty between Iraq and Iran, two major OPEC producers that have been engaged in undeclared war since September.
Perhaps this helps to explain why the Reagan Administration and some members of Congress seem so relaxed about the United States energy situation. Others, however, are appalled by what they regard as dangerous complacency about energy supplies when there is a chance for the first time in several years to do something significant to improve supplies.
Could the Republicans be relying too much on the undoubted virtues of the free market in an area where private enterprise cannot be expected to work so well?
Take, for example, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is widely held to be essential to the strategic and economic well-being of the Western alliance. In the nearly six years since it was authorized, the United States has managed to pump only 121.5 million barrels of crude oil into the five underground storage sites in Louisiana and Texas, enough to replace this country's imports for three weeks.
The new Administration has declared the Strategic Petroleum Reserve a high priority. In practice, however, it seems to be more concerned about the costs of filling it than the potential security risk of not filling it as fast as possible.
In its budget last month, the Reagan budget makers proposed spending $3.8 billion for the petroleum reserve in 1982, an amount that would support a barely respectable fill rate of some 230,000 barrels a day, up from the current 150,000 barrels a day. Lately, however, the Administration has retreated in the interests of saving money. The Republican-controlled Senate Budget Committee eliminated $3 billion of this sum, expressing the hope that the money could be found from other sources, and the Office of Management and Budget did not object.
Several possibilities for raising the money have been suggested.One was that of the budget director, David A. Stockman, to have the Government sell special oil ''bonds'' to private investors, a proposal vetoed by the Treasury. Another proposal came from Senator Nancy L. Kassebaum, a Kansas Republican, who would require companies that import large amounts of oil in effect to lend them, with rights of retrieval, to the Government's strategic oil stockpile.
In the area of synthetic fuels, the Administration seeks to place more reliance on the free market than did the Carter Administration. Direct Energy Department subsidies have been knocked out and the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, before providing loans or other guarantees, is expected to require equity investment by privatesector sponsors substantially higher than the 25 percent mandated by law.
In general, commercialization of proven technologies is to be done by industry alone, with the Government only supporting basic research and development for which an economic payoff is so uncertain or distant that it would not otherwise be undertaken. The Administration wants especially to make sure the Government does not spur construction of multibillion-dollar so-called white elephant plants that might someday require direct Federal help, perhaps bailout.
It is quite possible, however, that an American synthetic fuels program must run the risk of failures. A few white elephants would at least show that the country, by building a synthetic fuels capacity, had had some effect in restraining price increases by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. And a sufficiently high price for world oil would allow even the least economic plant to remain competitive.
Similarly, the Energy Department's budget for conservation - in energy matters, the term conservation usually means raising efficiency, not doing without - has been largely gutted on the assumption that rising prices will prompt people to insulate their homes or take other conservation steps in their own best financial interests.
But what seems to be missing, critics say, in the Administration's approach in all three areas - the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, synthetic fuels and conservation - is an appreciation that there is a strategic element in energy that should transcend budget cutting or an uncompromising commitment to the marketplace.
Of course the market will work, though the energy market is particularly imperfect, but over what period, at what economic and social cost and at what risk to national security?
In addition, the critics add, United States policy makers need to distinguish between the country's dependence on foreign oil, the nowdeclining amount imported from unstable foreign sources, and its economic and military vulnerability to almost certain supply cutoffs during this decade. America's present emergency rationing plan is generally acknowledged to be unworkable.
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Science News; 8/1/1981, Vol. 120 Issue 5, p68-69, 2p
UNITED States. Congress
Government policy
SCIENCE NEWS OF THE WEEK
The Reagan administration presented its "reformulated energy-policy guidelines" to Congress on July 17. So as not to be pinned down by something "static and unresponsive," its strategy consists of a philosophy rather than an actual blueprint or action plan. And that strategy represents a clear shift from the last federal energy plan, one developed by Jimmy Carter (SN: 7/21/79, p. 38).
Whereas Carter's plan proposed major new federal initiatives -- such as development of a synthetic-fuels corporation and solar-development bank -- Reagan instead proposes pulling the government out of the energy development scene to the full extent possible. Rather than setting specific objectives and guidelines -- such as the Carter goal to develop a domestic capacity to produce 2.5 million barrels of "alternative fuels" per day within the next decade -- Reagan would for the most part let market forces determine both national fuel-use patterns and. which technologies deserve development support.
Even the goal to reduce oil imports -- once Carter's highest energy priority -- has undergone significant moderation. "Achieving a low level of U. S. oil imports at any cost is not a major criterion for the nation's energy security and economic health," the new Reagan plan says, because "even at its current high price, imported oil in some cases is substantially less expensive than available alternatives." Therefore, federal policies will strive to avoid "distorting" market forces "through indiscriminate subsidies for alternatives that cost more than imported oil now and offer no short-term to midterm likelihood of being economically competitive."
The Reagan plan seems coy about discussing specifics, though actions by the new administration offer strong clues as to how this philosophy is being interpreted. Reagan proposals would cut direct federal support for solar technologies, alcohol fuels, biomass and urban-waste systems $2.2 billion over the next five year's. The plan says steadily increasing oil prices, precipitated by the complete decontrol of oil and oil-product prices on January 28, can be counted on to encourage private investors to finish developing the more viable of these technologies. The same goes [or five major synthetic-fuels development projects -- including the SRC-I and SRC-II plants.
Energy conservation programs will also see retrenchments. Over the six-year period ending in 1979. household energy consumption fell 14 percent, commercial energy consumption (per square foot) dropped 18 percent, and industrial efficiency (measured in output per unit of energy consumed) rose 12 percent. As a result there is little heed for the government to continue most energy-conservation demonstration programs, the administration says. Private investors have been given sufficient incentives to step in and take over. At least, that's the justification given for withdrawing federal support for programs such as those to develop high-efficiency consumer products, advanced automotive engines, efficient industrial processes and electric and hybrid vehicles.
Regulatory reform is one of Reagan's highest priorities. This administration has already revoked regulations involved with oil pricing. The energy-policy statement adds that another 75 of the remaining 150 individual rulemaking activities pertaining to energy have been targeted for modification, recision or withdrawal. Details are to be spelled out later.
Finally, "efforts to step up domestic energy production are too important," the plan says, "to be frustrated by inadequate access to the mineral wealth of our own land? Therefore, leasing policies will be changed to "guarantee" that energy resources on federal lands -- an estimated 60 percent of all U.S. energy resources -- will be explored and produced at a pace consistent with national needs, environmental concerns and the public interest. Environmental and economic impacts of these changes could prove substantial. For example, those announced last month increase the pace and acreage of lease offerings for oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf. They also permit all tracts in a given region to be covered, for the first time, by a single environmental-impact assessment.
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editorial
New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Sep 10, 1981. pg. A.30
Synfuel fever: remember the bandwagon that started late in the Carter Administration, while angry motorists waited in line for gasoline? Politicians and columnists embraced synfuels as a way out of the nation's energy problems. American ingenuity and managerial skill would take abundant resources like coal and oil shale and convert them into badly needed liquid fuels. Reliance on imported oil would diminish, giving America firmer control of its fuel prices and its foreign policy.
The fever led Congress to create a new Synthetic Fuels Corporation and give it the grandiose goal of stimulating production equal to two million barrels of oil a day by 1992 - more than a third of the amount of oil America now imports.
Well, conditions have changed quite a bit since then. Decontrol of oil prices and a stumbling economy have cut demand for energy. Oil imports are way down. And there is a new President whose free-market instincts are jarred by Government subsidies to energy industries. The need for synthetic fuels has not disappeared entirely. But the temporary oil glut and the new political clim ate provide breathing room for a more cautious and rational approach.
President Reagan has given mixed signals on the subject. He allowed the Energy Department to grant loan guarantees and other support to three large synfuels projects, over the objections of Budget Director David Stockman. <b>Yet the President's energy plan projects greatly reduced synfuels production - only 500,000 barrels a day by 1990.
The new target seems much more realistic. The Congressional goal of two million barrels a day would require about 40 new plants, at $3 billion each, in the next decade, sorely taxing the nation's engineering and industrial capacity. Mr. Reagan's more sensible projection would require only 10 new plants.</b> That means much less chance of creating white elephants. And it should allow for more careful consideration of environmental problems, including how to dispose of enormous quantities of shale rock waste and how to provide the enormous quantities of necessary water.
Unfortunately, it is not yet clear whether the Synthetic Fuels Corporation is equipped to do the needed analysis. <b>It got off to a rocky start in its first year, operating without a confirmed board and with only a fifth of its authorized staff. The General Accounting Office has criticized its guidelines for evaluating projects as vague and inconsistent. And the evaluation staff will apparently be kept small;</b> it currently has little competence on the worrisome environmental issues.
The synfuels fever has, thank goodness, broken. But those defects need repair if the corporation expects to nurture a sound synfuels industry.
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Fading Dream: Without Big Changes, Synthetic Fuels Corp. Seems Likely to Perish --- Even Its Supporters Deplore Program's Management; Main Problems: Political --- The White House Saves Face
By Andy Pasztor. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 9, 1984. pg. 1
........Today, even supporters of the government-backed Synthetic Fuels Corp. are bitter over a dream turned sour: The four-year-old effort to reduce U.S. reliance on imported oil is dead in the water. Although opponents contend that costly alternative-fuel projects don't make sense in the face of today's oil surplus, the problems that have bedeviled the Synthetic Fuels Corp. have been primarly political, not economic. The corporation has been crippled by months of political bickering, allegations of financial scandal, an exodus of senior officials and general industry apathy.
As a result, dozens of once-promising synfuels projects have been scrapped or delayed by confusion. Last week the House voted to cut the corporation's spending authority to $8.25 billion from $13.25 billion, but the White House wants the Senate to reduce spending by an additional $4 billion, leaving synfuels with $4.25 billion. Few in government or business stand ready to defend the record of the corporation, which seems likely to perish without new leadership or policy changes.
Edward Noble, the corporation's chairman, says he sometimes feels that he is sitting on a "ticking bomb." The corporation is at the mercy of "an industry that's not ready and half the Congress that doesn't want me here," complains <h3>Mr. Noble, who is a conservative Oklahoma businessman and a Reagan appointee.</h3>
With only two members, the board he heads lacks the quorum needed to conduct routine business. <b>Nominations for the other five places are stalled because of internal administration disputes and arguments between the White House and lawmakers over the program's future.</b> "I'm as anxious as I can be to go home," the exasperated chairman told another House panel in June. "Maybe more so than people are to send me home."
The critics, meanwhile, are stepping up their attacks and steadily gaining the upper hand. Veteran Republican Congressman James Broyhill of North Carolina, for example, used to be an important -- although grudging -- supporter of the program. But after analyzing the assistance earmarked for faltering projects, <b>he now accuses Mr. Noble of running "the biggest program of waste and abuse I've ever seen," and adds: "I think it's high time to bring it to an end."</b> A majority of the House is cosponsoring a bill to keep the corporation in limbo until Congress reasserts tighter management controls and decides how much aid should be doled out.
<b>Such proposals are a far cry from the bipartisan groundswell that created the synfuels program in 1980.</b> That was in the wake of the revolution in Iran and the accompanying fear of widespread fuel shortages in the U.S. At the time, lawmakers optimistically predicted the corporation would become a unique "investment bank," able to cut through red tape to quickly help produce hundreds of thousands of barrels of synthetic fuel daily from coal, tar sands, oil shale and other unconventional sources.
The idea was praised as a model of cooperation between the public and private sectors; others hailed it as "America's ace in the hole" for achieving energy independence. Today those hopes have been dashed and the corporation, in Energy Secretary Donald Hodel's words, is "absolutely moribund." Hobbled by bureaucratic delay, it has provided only a total of $740 million in aid to two relatively small projects. The board hasn't met since the end of April, and nobody takes the ambitious production goals seriously any more.
Some of the difficulties reflect radical market changes outside the government's control. The unexpected combination of stable world oil prices and excess crude-production capacity has made most synfuel projects uneconomical. Deficit-conscious legislators running for reelection don't look kindly on subsidizing plants to turn out synthetic products at prices as high as $67 a barrel when crude oil costs $29 a barrel.
At the same time, the program's credibility has been undermined by persistent and much-publicized personnel problems. <h3>With the blessing of the White House, Mr. Noble brought in a group of former business associates and longtime friends to help run the program. But some soon were in hot water because of allegations of ethical violations or a lack of political savvy and management skill.</h3>
Victor Schroeder, for instance, quit under fire last August as the corporation's president and chief operating officer after congressional critics accused him of trying to steer government business to political supporters. Mr. Schroeder denies doing anything improper but says he decided to step down from day-to-day control after three other directors publicly accused him of mismanagement. The former synfuels president still works as an executive of one of Mr. Noble's private companies, and he remains the only director besides Mr. Noble now serving on the government corporation's seven-place board.
In February, after a nationwide search for a successor, the $135,000-a-year president's job went to Victor Thompson, an Oklahoma bank executive and another of the synfuels chairman's oldest friends. But the appointment only gave lawmakers an even more inviting target.
Two weeks after Mr. Thompson accepted the government post, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged that Utica Bankshares Corp. of Tulsa, Okla., overstated its earnings or understated its losses by a total of more than $12 million while Mr. Thompson served as chairman and chief executive of the bank holding company. Mr. Thompson wasn't named in the administrative complaint and had severed all connections with the bank just before the SEC released its findings. Nevertheless, angry congressmen began demanding to know why Mr. Thompson hadn't mentioned the SEC investigation before he took the synfuels job.
More bad news was just around the corner. During a late-night meeting with synfuels officials April 26, a badly shaken Mr. Thompson dropped a bombshell. He acknowledged that in the fall of 1982, while serving as a synfuels director, he tried to sell stock in his financially troubled bank to Belton K. Johnson, a San Antonio, Texas, oilman who at the same time was seeking hundreds of millions of dollars of federal synfuels aid for a proposed tar-sands project.
Mr. Thompson insists he didn't attempt to "link" the possible private transaction to his official position or the project's chances of obtaining federal help. The Johnson family interests never purchased any of the bank stock, and their synfuels proposal still is pending. Nevertheless, the appearance of conflict of interest was the last straw for some critics of the beleaguered program.
The Justice Department began a criminal investigation of the matter that is still continuing. Mr. Thompson abruptly resigned as president and a director of the synfuels corporation, contending that the attacks on him were unfounded and motivated by "election-year politics."
Synfuels opponents quickly used these personnel problems against the program. Rep. Howard Wolpe, a Michigan Democrat who is leading the fight against the Synthetic Fuels Corp. in the House, says the resignations "turned out to be a boon to taxpayers." Otherwise, the corporation might have been able to function "in relative obscurity" while obligating billions of dollars "to help projects that aren't ready and don't deserve such help," he says.
The problems also focused White House attention on the corporation. "The stupidity of such behavior shocked everyone," a top administration energy official recalls. <b>"We knew the program couldn't go on embarrassing the president."</b>
<b>Without consulting Mr. Noble, the White House announced a proposal to eliminate $9 billion of the corporation's remaining $13.25 billion in funding.</b> Unless Congress goes along with the cuts, presidential aides contend, the current legislative impasse will continue and pending projects will wither away. "We're trying to salvage the corporation almost as an adjunct to a research program," Secretary Hodel says.
Not surprisingly, the budget battle caused morale at the corporation to plummet. Friends say Mr. Noble seriously considered resigning as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. chairman. A handful of the corporation's most senior attorneys and technical officials, who are responsible for negotiating with project sponsors, already have left or are threatening to bail out. Training replacements for them will take months and further complicate the negotiations.
"People aren't waiting around to see what eventually happens in Congress," says a former top corporation policy maker. "Virtually everyone has resumes out. Everyone who has an option is leaving," he adds, even though the corporation's salaries are high by government standards. (Eleven senior synfuels officials earn more than the $72,600 a U.S. senator makes annually.)
Before losing its quorum, the corporation made tentative, legally nonbinding decisions to grant a total of $6.8 billion in aid to eight additional projects. The status of those proposed loan guarantees and price supports isn't likely to be resolved until next year. By then, no matter what Congress decides, the uncertainty "cannot help but kill many potentially good projects," asserts Congressman Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat eager to see synfuels funding flow into his state...........
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Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 25, 1986. pg. 1
There was some confusion at the General Service Administration last week over whether solar panels initially installed on the White House roof by Jimmy Carter would be restored after some roof repairs are completed. But Reagan spokesman Dale Petroskey finally gave the answer. They won't be. They hadn't been very effective at their designated task, providing the mansion with hot water. Energy savings were "negligible," Mr. Petroskey said. The panels will be given to the National Park Service for some unspecified use. How about putting them in the Smithsonian as a reminder to Americans that any number of futile methods of solving the "energy crisis" were attempted before the right one, price decontrol, was finally adopted?
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Sean Kelly
Column Name: THE FEDERAL PAGE
A SECTION
The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Aug 2, 1991. pg. a.23
A piece of White House history has found a home at Unity College in Maine. Thirty-two solar panels that were installed by Jimmy Carter in 1979 to help heat the building's water system will be used by the college as a source of reusable energy.
The solar panels were removed by the Reagan administration in 1986, when the White House roof was undergoing repairs, and were never reinstalled. Instead, they were stored in a General Services Administration (GSA) warehouse at the Navy yard here, where they collected dust until Peter Marbach, a development official for Unity College, saw a recent Greenpeace photograph of them in an environmental magazine.
"When I saw the photograph, it hit me that I should attempt to obtain these solar panels for Unity," Marbach said, explaining that the nonprofit, private college of 400 students focuses its curriculum on environmental studies.
He said the college will use the panels "to provide hot water needs for the activities building," the largest building on campus. "We hope to have them installed and fully operational by the end of the summer."
In his quest to obtain the panels, Marbach wrote to Carter. The former president responded in a brief note that he would be pleased to see the solar panels in use again.
It took only two months for Marbach to be awarded the solar panels by the GSA. "Pleasantly surprised" by the cooperation, he recently drove from Maine to collect them.
GSA apparently was not as supportive of efforts by Greenpeace to obtain the panels. The environmental group had been pursuing them since last August to heat a shelter for homeless people.
"For the last five years, they've been dust collectors rather than solar collectors," said Greenpeace spokesman Peter Dykstra. "There was clearly politics played against us in our inquiring about the fate of these solar panels. The fact that {GSA} quickly and eagerly unloaded them on Unity College - we're very pleased that Unity College got them - but that says a lot about the politics that's played even on the pettiest levels of energy policy."
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http://www.unity.edu/sustainability/carter.htm
One little-known and unique fact about Unity College is that we are the current home of the famous “Jimmy Carter” Solar Panels.
.....We placed 16 of them on our cafeteria roof in 1992, and used them to provide hot water for 12 years. The remainder was placed in storage, although one or two have occasionally been used for student experimentation. And of course, students have always been interested in and concerned about the system.
We would like to retire these panels from active use and instead preserve them as historical artifacts.........
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MILES CORWIN
CARRIZO PLAIN, Calif.
PART-A; Metro Desk
Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext). Los Angeles, Calif.: Jul 26, 1991. pg. 3
While American troops were fighting a war, in part to keep oil flowing from the Middle East, owners of the largest solar energy plant of its kind in the world began dismantling the facility, panel by panel.
Today, about 20% of the panels at the Carrizo Plain solar power plant have been sold. While the plant remains in operation, workers continue to remove the panels because the company can make more from selling them than from selling electricity.
"We all think it's pretty strange, that after having to fight a war over oil, we're still selling off these panels," said Scott Altenburger, plant manager, as he walked through the warehouse where workers were packing panels for shipment. <b>"You'd think now . . . people would be more interested in developing a domestic energy source."
But a lack of government support for renewable energy during the Reagan and Bush administrations, the elimination of tax credits and falling oil prices have created serious problems for solar companies. Last week, Los Angeles-based Luz International Ltd., one of the nation's prominent solar energy firms, laid off 350 workers-about half its permanent work force-and postponed construction of a solar plant in the Mojave Desert.</b>
While the entire solar industry is suffering, solar projects that provide electricity to utility companies have been particularly hard-hit. California is one of the few states that has these large-scale projects, and the state Public Utilities Commission is exploring rate increases for alternative energy producers. But the rates may not be high enough to save some of the projects.
In order to stay in business-and replace the solar panels that have been sold-Carrizo plant officials said they need three times the current rate.
The plant is selling a reduced amount of electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric. But if conditions for solar energy do not improve, the Carrizo plant-about 60 miles east of San Luis Obispo-will end up selling all of its panels within five years, then shut down, company officials said.
PG&E pays the plant a rate based on the current cost of oil and natural gas. But oil and gas prices have plummeted during the last decade, creating less demand for solar energy.
It is unfair to force solar companies to compete with traditional energy producers, said Scott Sklar, director of the Solar Energy Industries Assn. Government subsidies to oil companies-including generous tax breaks for exploration and drilling-are not included when determining the true cost of oil and natural gas, he said.
Other hidden costs, Sklar said, include pollution, acid rain, spill cleanups and even military spending to keep shipping lanes open in the Persian Gulf. As a result, he said, the cost of oil is artificially low.
"If the oil companies were taxed for some of these things, it would at least level the playing field and make it easier for us to compete. . . ," said Mike Elliston, a co-owner of the solar plant. "Right now there's no financial advantage for us to produce energy that has no thermal pollution, no noise pollution and no air pollution."
The Carrizo plant was built by Atlantic Richfield Co. in the early 1980s, when the oil company was making a major effort to secure alternative energy sources. Arco had counted on the price of oil climbing to more than $60 a barrel at the end of the decade, said Albert Greenstein, an Arco spokesman. Instead, it is about $20 a barrel.
"We could see the writing on the wall . . . and solar remained a small niche market," Greenstein said. "Without tax credits and government support, these kinds of facilities aren't practical anymore."
Arco sold the company and a smaller solar plant in the Mojave Desert in 1990 to a group of investors who formed the Carrizo Solar Corp. The company determined that it needed a price of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour from PG&E to make a profit, Elliston said. But because oil and natural gas prices are low, PG&E pays only about 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The PUC, which sets the state's utility rates, is considering higher rates for "clean power producers," as early as next year, said Tom Thompson, a senior engineer for the commission.
"We'd like to keep this plant together," Elliston said. "But if we can't get a high enough rate, we'll have to sell off all the panels . . . and the rest of the equipment might end up as scrap metal."
The company has sold about 15,000 panels in the last year-out of a total of more than 100,000-for about $1,000 a piece, Elliston said. Some of these panels are damaged because of a faulty design, but they still are about 80% effective, and most have ended up on the roofs of rural homes throughout the country and in Central and South America.
<h3>Although it is partially dismantled, the Carrizo plant still provides enough electricity for several thousand homes.</h3> The 177-acre facility, located in a remote valley, is an arresting site-endless rows of gleaming solar panels atop rotating bases that follow the sun, surrounded by vast stretches of farmland.
This is a photovoltaic plant-the largest in the world-which uses specially treated silicon wafers to convert sunlight into electricity. Luz International, which operates nine solar plants that provide electricity to Southern California Edison Co., employs a technology that uses the sun's heat to generate steam that turns electrical turbines.
<h3>Large-scale solar projects have fallen upon hard times since the days of the Jimmy Carter Administration, when the federal solar energy budget was at a high of $680 million.
The Ronald Reagan Administration displayed its distaste for alternative energy in 1986, when it stripped the White House roof of solar panels that had been installed during Carter's tenure. The next year, the federal solar budget dropped to a low of $98 million. And while Reagan was in office, most tax credits to encourage solar energy expired, including the 40% tax credit individual homeowners received for investing in solar heating systems.</h3>
Spending for solar projects has increased slightly under the Bush Administration. But the recent national energy strategy was centered on domestic oil production and nuclear power, and included few concrete incentives or tax credits to encourage solar energy.
"Everything now is based on the short-term point of view," said Sklar of the Solar Energy Industries Assn. in Washington. "You'd think that after the war, the government would re-evaluate its energy policy. But oil is cheap now, so everything else is being ignored."
And because of a lack of government support, America is losing its edge in solar energy technology, Sklar said.
"This is the VCR syndrome all over again," Sklar said. "We spend billions to develop the technological edge, and then let our international competitors make all the money off it."
"Acid rain, smog, pollution is something people are becoming more and more concerned about," Block said. "So we still think a clean energy source like solar has a strong future."
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The earlier <b>" Jimmy Carter working to weakening the USA"</b> TFP politics thread, motivated me, burdened as I am, with admiration for Carter, his vision for America's future when he was president, his response to foreign policy and foreign energy dependence challenges, and what he did about it, and what he left in place for the following administration to mismanage, misspend, and destroy, in their tenure, .....to find the articles that I posted, above.
If you search the internet with the term "synfuel", you will mostly find, the work of L. Brent Bozell III, because the reality of what the Reagan administration did to Carter's multi-pronged plan to achieve energy independence, did too much harm to America, IMO, to be known now, as it was reported at the time the deliberate dismantling of the Carter plan, was happening. The micro management that extended to the small, but symbolic detail of the Reagan administration's removing perfectly functional, energy conserving, and cost saving, solar panels from the white house roof, curiously, were never evident in Reagan's appointments and oversight of the management of the Synfuel program. Reagan intentionally destroyed Carter's plan for energy conservation and independence, and Bozell persuaded (manipulated......) too many of you into thinking that Carter was to blame.
Quote:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Pol...ophy/HL380.cfm
Imagine, if you will, a future wherein the media willfully support the foreign policy objectives of the United States. A time when the left can no longer rely on the media to promote its socialist agenda to the public. A time when someone, somewhere in the media can be counted on to extol the virtues of morality without qualifications. When Betty Friedan no longer qualifies for "Person of the Week" honors. <b>When Ronald Reagan is cited not as the "Man of the Year," but the "Man of the Century."</b>
The news and entertainment media will continue to effect the cultural health of America. If we succeed in our mission to restore political balance to this institution, future generations win benefit and thank us. It's worth fighting for, now.
L. Brent Bozell, III is Chairman of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia.
He spoke on January 21, 1992 at The Heritage Foundation in the Resource Bank series of lectures
Quote:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/bozellc...ol19990930.asp
Time's Slanted Century Polls
by L. Brent Bozell III
September 30, 1999
......I mean choosing “Endangered Earth”, as they did in 1989. Or their pick for Man of the Decade in 1990, when they might have selected Ronald Reagan, whose domestic policies gave our country its biggest peacetime economic expansion in history while his foreign policy drove the Soviet Union into the trashcan of history. Somehow the Gipper didn’t qualify; the award went to that other grand success story, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Now Time’s at it again. Visit their website to see their nominations for the Man of the Century. It won’t tell you too much about the most important people these past hundred years but it will tell you boatloads about Time magazine..........
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Sorry, Brent Bozell, a president with a legacy of spending us into 2-1/2 times the national debt that existed when he took office, just 8 years earlier, a spiteful president who mismanaged, via cronyism and then downsized and intentionally destroyed the valuable energy conservation and research climate and plan, bequeathed to this nation by his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, is not "man of the century", IMO, he doesn't deserve to be admired or even considered a loyal, fellow American, with a legacy as flawed as the one president Reagan, left us. |