National Clean Energy Summit: Business Leaders Encourage Cheap, Renewable Energy

Las Vegas: Representatives from Google Inc. and General Electric Co. said Tuesday that widespread use of renewable energy in United States would be possible -- if it were cheaper.

Renewable energy options will remain "boutique" industries unless their costs are cut to make them competitive with coal and other widely used power sources, said Dan Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm.

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Related:

::Read Treehugger's synopsis of Bill Clinton's 10-Point Energy Plan
::Read about T.Boone Pickens' clean energy address

Comments

[rivrgrrl]

Now we will watch and see who follows up their words with action and who slinks off into the background.

The smart ones will get in on this, it has the potential to be the stimulous that gets our country out of the ditch the neocons drove it into.

Clinton got us out of the messes left by Bush I and Raygun; Obama will get us out of this one, and the green revolution will help him do it.

[UnbiasView]

The words "cheap" and "renewable energy" are 2 words that do not belong together yet, they are much more expensive currently. Hopefully it will change quick but the battery capacity isn't there yet.

[KillTheMessenger]

The words "renewable energy" and "battery" should never be used in an argument about energy infrastructure. To do so just smacks of complete ignorance of the technical facts.

[alvdh1]

Dan of Google and Bill of Clinton,

Please stop going to corporate sponsored conferences to spew the corporate mantra on how to make wind and solar cheap. None of you have credible solutions. Solar and wind are already cheap.
What makes them seem expensive compared to coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear is because they have no externalized cost to the environment or society. If the true cost of the above conventional sources of energy were reflected on the utility bill or at the pump, then solar and wind would be cheaper and not need any subsidies.

All four sources of energy are subsidized from the well or mine to the pump or meter on your house. Couple this to the externalized cost of environmental degradation and the social costs paid though shortened life spans and higher health insurance premiums, then they would be more expensive than solar or wind. How do we best make these alternative energy cheap?

1) Create regional Independent Service Operators (ISO's) similar to New York and California. Under my scenario, they would purchase excess capacity from residential and business producers at full market rates eliminating the need for subsidies through tax credits.

To be Continued in a reply!!!!

[alvdh1]

2) Create uniform, national grid interconnect rules so there is a standard by which the entire country will follow. None of the Net Metering Laws are effective because they were written the by the utilities and implemented by the Public Utility Commissions as a barrier to the wide spread adoption of alternative energy. Please see the 2007 Report called " Freeing The Grid". The report clearly spells out the meddling of the utilities in the process of gaining access to the grid.

Of the 38 states which have net metering laws, none of them receive a grade of "A" when it comes to the interconnect rules. New Jersey and Arizona receive "B"s. 11 states receive "C"s and the rest receive "D"s and "F"s. Minnesota and Wisconsin actually pay you for the excess capacity put into the grid, but their interconnect rules recieve a "C" and "F" respectively.



The uniform, national interconnect rules should facilitate the use of alternative energy and this can be done by creating approved metering equipment standards and certification of the installer of the equipment.

To Be Continued in a reply!!!

[alvdh1]

3) Immediately adopt Time of Day Pricing for electrical use to level load demand on the nation's utilities. If you use electricity during peak demand periods it is going to be more expensive. Utilities have to build up for peak demand periods and this is not only energy inefficient, but it produces more air pollution to meet the demand as opposed to running the power stations at level production. California utilities already have Time of Day Pricing.

4) Immediately provide a $10,000 one time line item tax credit for residential efficiency upgrades of lighting to LED lighting, weatherization and heating/AC upgrades. This tax credit will be funded with a carbon tax on the consumption of fossil fuels. 2 cents per kilowatt hour of electrical use and 2 cents per gallon of gas. The energy savings from the upgrades will and payroll taxes from new jobs offset the carbon tax.

To be continued

[KillTheMessenger]

"Las Vegas: Representatives from Google Inc. and General Electric Co. said Tuesday that widespread use of renewable energy in United States would be possible -- if it were cheaper."

OK... so it is all about cost, then. We want to have a healthy planet, but we will take a dying one if it is cheaper.

Cool. Sends quite the message.

Another thing to consider is this: if we can make 100% of our energy cheaply with renewables, how are we going to prevent people from using 100% MORE energy by keeping the cheap coal fired plants on while consuming every little bit of renewables in addition?

Sadly, the problem can not be solved with cheap energy. It needs to be solved by making energy so much more expensive that people will conserve. And then we don't really need cheap renewables.... expensive ones will do just as well.

[WASanford]

Killer, I hope you realize that our using energy is not the problem. The problem is that the way we are getting and using it is putting carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. This is making our oceans acidic and as carbon dioxide is a green house gas, warming our climate.

I think we should work to make every household energy independent and off the grid. If we can do that, we won't need those coal burning power plants. We will have a cleaner environment and once we've amoritised the cost of the equipment, energy will be essentially free.