Would love to hear your response to the comments from your contributors about Calzada’s utterly discredited study. Turns out one of Spain’s few actual industrial success stories is the renewable energy sector.

Regards

At best we´d get a couple of articles in some blogs and that´s it.

For the US can´t cope with the fact that other countries are taking the lead on greentech.

That´s why the US for example insists in corn and other crap as ethanol sources instead of just going for sugar cane, which is a time PROVEN technology.

So let us do the old american thing: “If we can´t do it nobody else will!”

When the US takes its head out of its ass maybe it will be a world leader in greentech technologies and will not need to keep bashing projects abroad instead.

Look forward to seeing your responses to these critiques soon Jeff.

There’s another rebuttal of Calzada’s study at http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/letter-from-navarra-ministerapril-2009.pdf

I look forward to seeing your comments on these critiques of Calzada’s study.

It is loose change. We spend over a trillion a year subsidizing oil. Yes, trillion with a “T”. There’s absolutely no excuse for the US to be in the ME, other than to subsidize the oil mafia thru this trillion dollar insurance policy.

The solar and wind industries don’t compete in a vacuum. They compete in an environment where entrenched mafias have a lock on funding, politicians, and policy. I myself am a Libertarian, and would like nothing better than the elimination of the IRS and the federal gov. But until that happens, articles like the one above serve as a little more than propaganda pieces for the entrenched mafia and the status quo.

It is loose change. We spend over a trillion a year subsidizing the oil. Yes, trillion with a “T”. There’s absolutely no excuse for the US to be in the ME, other than to subsidize the oil mafia thru this trillion dollar insurance policy.

The solar and wind industries don’t compete in a vacuum. They compete in an environment where entrenched mafias have a lock on funding, politicians, and policy. I myself am a Libertarian, and would like nothing better than the elimination of the IRS and the federal gov. But until that happens, articles like the one above serve as a little more than propaganda pieces for the entrenched mafia and the status quo.

Car company bailouts and DOE low interest loans for car companies that can’t otherwise sell debt on their own are little more than stripping dollars out of taxpayer wallets. I wrote in opposition of the first and second round of car company bailouts and when the next round comes due in 2010 I will be of the same position.

Maybe a related problem is a “a billion or two” gets thrown around as if it were loose change instead of money that gets borrowed or taxed out of the economy? Maybe?

Well, let’s consider two of Ca’s neighbors, Nevada which gets 50% of its electricity from coal and Arizona which gets 43% from coal.

Suppose CA produces a surplus of renewable electricity and Congress puts a price on carbon release which drives up the cost of burning coal.

End result? Coal plants in NV and AZ shut down. Which is exactly what the whole world needs.

Possible? Well, using some quick and dirty numbers

Coal-electricity is $0.03 kWh

Wind-electricity $0.05 kWh (more like $0.03 kWh best case/best sites/newest tech)

First Solar has been able to install solar at $0.075 kWh (without subsidies).

It wouldn’t take much of a carbon pricing to move coal up to or above the price of wind.

And it makes no sense to run a coal plant full tilt boogie 24 hours a day and then sell only to peak demand hours. Solar at $0.20 kWh would be a better financial decision.

The subsidies the solar and wind energy industries receive are a tiny fraction of the subsidies and tax breaks the oil/nuke/NG/biofuel/coal energy suppliers receive. My contention is very simple. If we were to eliminate all subsidies, direct and indirect, I have no doubt that solar and wind would come on top. Perhaps, Jeff, instead of writing half truths and misdirections, you will address the trillion dollar subsidies the car/oil/military mafia receives vs the measly billion or two that the solar and wind energy industries receive.

And it has some interesting information on Calzada himself. Seems that he’s in the global warming skeptic/denial camp, has been funded by Exxon, and a featured speaker at anti-environmental organizations such as the Heartland Institute.

http://greeneconomypost.com/debunk-spanish-study-green-jobs-1582.htm

My point on solar (and wind for that matter) is twofold: the first being that governments have a marvelous track record of distorting the supply and demand curve with economically disastrous effects, and secondly that we can’t treat renewable production as a California only problem.

If on the latter we do as Simitian proposed, we would reject existing sources of clean renewable power generated in western states and BC. The idea that CA would be a net exporter of power isn’t plausible considering that are neighboring states already produce more than their domestic demand requires and with pricing essentially fixed producers would simply run below capacity because they can’t put power on the grid if there is no buyer to wheel it to.

California is right to put mandates on the CA market but they are dead wrong to put mandates that they acknowledge won’t be met and then attempt to act as the designated hitter for the market when it comes to determining where that power will be produced.

This is fairly non-static stuff. I actually wonder that CA energy policy is pretty effed-up for a whole host of reasons regardless of any comparisons to Spain. That said, the example of what happened to Oil prices in the 1930′s is instructive here. The big irony is that CA needs to address is it’s over-leveraged exposure to liquid energy–petrol for cars first. All this over-focus on the present power grid from Washington and Sacto is barking up the wrong tree.

Hey but you know my position. CA should drill for oil to create the capital to build rail. And I do think it should build some utility grade solar to support that. But at least this flow of capital could run from what’s in the ground already.

Spain routinely generate more energy from Wind than from Nuclear and Coal combined. I’d call that a win, IF your objective is energy independance.

http://electric-vehicles-cars-bikes.blogspot.com/2009/03/spain-sets-new-wind-power-record.html

You can’t realistically have every country and state manufacturing their own renewable hardware just to create jobs, that’s inefficient! And unless you export then then jobs are as short term as installing… someone has to be a customer.

Installing it is OBVIOUSLY short term work, but there will be plenty of it to go around (so long as idiots on Wall Street don’t crash the financial systems again).

The Hoover damn had plenty of Naysayers too I’m sure, but it provided plenty of work during a depression … and decades worth of FUEL-LESS ENERGY. Yet there aren’t many permanent jobs associated with maintenance on it…. that’s the nature of REWNEWABLE, you don’t have to keep digging fuel out of the ground.

Just a note… you’re gonna wear yourself out if you reply to EVERY comment.