Obama Awards Nearly $2 Billion For Solar Power 514
crimeandpunishment writes "President Obama says it's time to heat up solar power, and he's willing to spend a big chunk of federal money to do it. Saturday the president announced the government is giving nearly $2 billion to companies that are building new solar plants in Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. The president says this will create thousands of jobs and increase our use of renewable energy."
$20,000 per home? (Score:5, Insightful)
Abengoa Solar, a unit of the Seville, Spain-based engineering company, will receive a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to build a solar-power plant in Arizona that will create 1,600 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs, according to White House documents released in conjunction with Obama’s address.
The power plant will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and generate enough energy to power 70,000 homes, Obama said.
1.45billion to power 70,000 homes.
That's $20,000 per home?
More (solar) power to his elbow... (Score:2, Insightful)
Good: I'm in favour of vastly increasing the proportion of solar in the energy mix.
Rgds
Damon
Re:In other news (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
The defence budget for the current war is around 480 billion dollars per year, so it's the equivalent of two day's budget for the war to be spent on something that may eventually reduce the number of wars.
Money well spent, all drunken sailors should be so wise.
Re:$20,000 per home? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More (solar) power to his elbow... (Score:3, Insightful)
And why isn't the government paying my electric bill? I don't live in any of those states.
Who did your state vote for in the 2008 election?
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because BP spending $27B for a one-time oil spill is money much better spent than $2B in a long term strategy which might prevent such future catastrophes... and even that pales in comparison to the loss of life and incredible expense of continued efforts to do whatever it is that the U.S. is doing deployed in oil-rich countries.
Don't blame the current administration. The previous administration takes a lot of blame, but going much further back there were errors all along the way which could be easily forseen. The truth is that there are a lot of people who simply don't give a F- as to what happens to the people who are going to be living with the results 20 years from now. The bad decisions which made people wealthy 20 years ago are being paid for by the people today. And the bad decisions of today won't be paid for another 20 years.
I swear that there are some people in this world who simply disagree with political policy because they didn't vote for it, and form their opinions about what affects their immediate well-being. Choosing not to see the problem doesn't make it go away, it just makes it all the harder to deal with for the generation which will inherit the problems 20 years from now.
If you think that $2B on solar is a waste, what do you think a better policy is for a sustainable future? Solar is not the answer... but it's part of the answer.
Re:Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
I heard laying one brick would not a house build, so I gave up.
After a week of binge drinking to drown my sorrows, I finally went home only to find my neighbor's brick house completed. To this day I couldn't figure out how he did it; magic faeries wished the house into existence perhaps?
Re:Can somebody say (Score:2, Insightful)
Subsidizing non-economical power generation is not money well spent. If anything they should have given an extra 2 billion to NIF or the DOE's Gen IV Nuclear Energy Systems Initiative(which is only requesting 200 million for 2010).
Re:Can somebody say (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, you started it:
How exactly does invading countries of mostly peaceful Muslum people make them less likely to do such things.
(with solar power... just to stay on topic)
Re:Can somebody say (Score:2, Insightful)
It MAY reduce the number of wars! This is the same sort of rationalization that addicts make. In this case it's a government that is addicted to spending money (on a foolish 'solution' in this case). It seems to be their answer to every problem.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
Follow the money. From your wallet, into the gas pump, and from there onwards.
Eventually some of it ends up going to terrorists.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
America doesn't need so much oil so the US doesn't prop up pro-US tinpot dictators in oil rich countries.
The people in those countries then don't get shit on so much by the US and so are less likely to be pissed off and violent towards the US.
Re:Limits of executive power (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind that Spain's experiment with subsidizing solar power is one of the causes of their looming fiscal insolvency.
And now to break out that classic Slashdot trope: Citation needed.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:3, Insightful)
I think we should be spending more on alternative energy YEARS ago unfortunately the problem is that the Obama administration has show no fiduciary responsibility spending on EVERYTHING under the sun (no pun intended) with no viable funding stream to pay for it - they spent $3B on the cash for clunkers program for heavens sake !
Re:$20,000 per home? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, that is exactly how it works. Solar power customers can predict with very high certainty what their future electric bills will be, because the costs are known. Coal generated or natural gas generated power customers, OTOH, can only hope that their electric bill won't skyrocket due to fuel scarcity or carbon emissions laws.
So no, solar power isn't free. But it is reliably priced.
What we're NOT paying is equally important (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot something. For unemployment, you have to have been employed, and as such, paying unemployment *Insurance* premiums.
Generally we frown on insurance policies that try to take the money and run.
For some reason, though, that seems to be exactly what the Republicans want the Feds to do with the UI insurance programs.
Re:Nuclear (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not just build more nuclear plants? Nothing speculative about them at all.
Of course.
But we need a mix of energy sources. Is there enough fissile material being produced to power the entire nation? What about disposal? Our Sun bombards us with an obscene amount of energy. It would be stupid not to grab it.
We Americans need to get away from this magic bullet mentality of one thing will solve all our problems. And we need to get away from this mentality that we're going to turn off the oil spigot overnight and live in clean green energy and be at peace for ever and ever.
Oil subsidies (Score:5, Insightful)
Subsidizing non-economical power generation is not money well spent.
That argument will hold no water until the oil industry stops getting their subsidies.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, so you want us to steal the UI benefits from the people that paid for them, and use them to give corporations an excuse to give their CEOs bigger raises?
Re:Is that a lot? I'm not sure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Estimates vary widely, depending on who you ask and who is paying those people to give that answer. With nuclear it depends on if you count that you have to monitor the waste for 1 million years or if you just dump it in a hole and forget about it. Most people assume you can forget about it, or reprocess it later to recoup some of your costs.Here's one estimate [sourcewatch.org]:
The cheap price for coal and gas may or may not count the cost of dealing with they myriad environmental and health problems associated with them, such as acid rain, mercury contamination, coal miner occupational hazards (~120,000 coal miners have died on the job since 1850), global warming and associated climate change, water quality degradation due to mountaintop removal, wars in foreign countries to protect oil interests (Iraq, Niger delta), etc. etc. etc. Contrast that to solar power where the only point that real environmental degradation is being done is during the synthesis of the cells (and recycling at EOL) rather than over the entire lifespan as in coal.
The answer here seems to be that solar is more expensive up front, but should benefit society because of the lower environmental and health concerns associated with it. Note that this makes fiscal sense for the federal government to make these loans because more often than not, it is the taxpayer who pays for the clean up of environmental damage or health risks, not the power company.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevermind that Spain's experiment with subsidizing solar power is one of the causes of their looming fiscal insolvency. Let's follow them down the path to ruin. Yay!
Spain has a debt to GDP ratio of 50% as of 2009 - that's about what ours was. They just suffered a massive real estate bubble and suffered badly from the oil shock of 2008 since they have no fossil fuel resources. Do you really think even twenty billion euros is a drop in the bucket to the increased cost to their economy if oil prices skyrocket again?
You're penny wise and pound foolish. If your livelihood depends on a resource that can easily bankrupt you, then you should probably borrow every dime you can to get off of it. At lease they have the sense to invest in something that will actually reduce their dependency on the oil addiction instead of prolonging it with two intractable wars.
This conservative rhetoric has reached the point where investment in America is considered unpatriotic. Employment for Americans is somehow irresponsible. I guess when everyone is living in a trailer on a diet of beans and processed corn you'll be happy?
That should make for an excellent pitch for investors. Come build a business in America! We're all illiterate and we have no infrastructure!
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
No, subsidizing clean power generation is money well spent. Putting said hardware into the hands of greedy corporations so that they can turn a profit on it at our expense is not. The government *should* be spending money on solar, but it should be subsidizing it in the same way that it subsidized hydroelectric power a few decades back---by creating a nonprofit organization like TVA to be responsible for the production and delivery.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:2, Insightful)
Afghanistan, who harbored the 9-11 terrorists, in not an oil producer. Their main export to the west (their 'cash crop') is Heroin.
Solar power (of any type) is a red herring (Score:1, Insightful)
The biggest problem is consistent production. You get less power when it's cloudy and none at night.
You can fix this by:
1. Building huge batteries which use all sorts of expensive (if you want efficiency) and toxic chemicals.
2. Putting in super conducting lines so power can be shared across regions (but this is expensive and can't scale to address the loss of power at night)
Right now the cleanest forms of consistent power are geothermal and (despite the stigma) nuclear. That's where we need to be investing our money.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure that if the politicians set up yet another 'Non-profit' the union bosses and lobbyists for varied interests would manage to climb up it's ass and make vigorously certain it would remain permanently and vigorously non-profit.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine how well off we'd be if we spent 480 billion per year on solar power, and only 2 billion on foreign wars.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
You can stand down, wingnut.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
they spent $3B on the cash for clunkers program for heavens sake !
A program that by most analysis was a success. It got people buying cars which was the main point of that, keep dealerships and their employees in business, get old vehicles off the road.
Re:Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, a drinking analogy is not a bad one for U.S. energy policy.
An alcoholic binge drinker realizes that the amount they are drinking is making a big, negative financial impact on their lives. They have always done home brewing to try to keep the costs of their habit down, but the yield keeps declining (parts of their basement are already a large brewery, and they're out of room to expand, worse, the production volume is declining year by year for some reason). So, they have to buy more and more alcohol from the store and they're inconveniently fond of imported beer. More than half the beer they drink is now imported (~60%), and they consume a stunning 20% of all the beer available for sale in their entire community. Realizing the situation, they promise to their family, year after year, that they will cut back on the alcohol and find other alternatives. They provide financial incentives to themselves to drink less alcohol and more of the other stuff. They invest in alternatives (e.g., they bought some milk and put it in the fridge). Yet, year after year, they drink a greater and greater volume of alcohol, and it costs them more and more to do so. This goes on for about 40 years. Worse, one day the brewery in the basement blows up, and the mess and insurance costs to clean up the basement were absolutely insane (actually, that's misleading -- the brewery still leaking into the basement as we speak and the full costs aren't entirely quantified yet, but the basement is indeed a mess).
One day, the alcoholic decides to drink a small glass of water from the tap in addition to the 20 gallons of beer they expect to drink that day. It was difficult, but they feel confident they are on the road to kicking their habit.
Now replace the alcohol with oil and that pretty much sums up U.S. energy policy of the last 40 years or so.
To return to your analogy, the problem is: that brick *IS* all that's ever been invested in building your house compared to the scale of the challenge of constructing it.
Party on, USA!
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to think that we should not be spending money, but if not now, then when? We can't build solar capacity to take the burden off of other plants after plants start going offline for emergency repairs. We need that reserve capacity in place now. No, scratch that, we needed it in place a decade ago. And our power needs continue to increase, so we're going to need even more power plants. If we're going to build more generation capacity, why not build clean solar instead of something messier?
The fact is, our power production infrastructure is in sad shape. We get about one fifth of our nation's power from nuclear plants. Almost all of the nuclear power plants in the U.S. are operating near the end of their design lifetime or beyond it. It won't be more than a couple of decades before we're going to need *major* overhauls to *dozens* of nuclear reactors. If we don't have adequate power generation in place by the time that happens, our country is f***ed with a capital "F".
Further, solar power, unlike vegetarian Mexicans, is a resource that, once constructed, generally requires minimal maintenance to provide power for three decades or more. Compared with nuclear power, it is almost as cheap (and getting cheaper, unlike nuclear), produces no ongoing waste products to speak of, is far safer, and can be installed anywhere, not just far away from populated areas.
Solar spending just makes sense.
fusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar PV and thermal *is* fusion power. It works today, and can only get better with more adoption and economies of scale. The original solar PV panels cost over ten grand apiece and weren't near as efficient as we have today! Now it is a few hundred, and they are better.
Solar PV is good for joe homeowner, solar thermal is good for making larger commercial generating plants. We have millions and millions of rooftops sitting baking in the hot sun that could be covered with panels, and millions of acres of desert that could have mirrors and towers.
You want fusion, let the engineers start building it,(I suggest 100% tax credits for actual deployment as opposed to a carbon tax to jumpstart cleaner power adoption better) the scientists can keep playing around with laser magnetic plasma bubbles at their leisure. If you want the power though, today, all we lack is building the stuff and getting it out there.
And no threats of war over who gets access to solar power, as opposed to oil or fission or man made fusion power. No embargoes, no acrimonious debate, no inspectors needed, nothing. It's the most peaceful energy source we have that actually works now, and it scales from running one small house to a whole city. This is stuff we have *now* that could be used a lot more.
Not sure if you can slap a dollar sign amount on what "peaceful" is worth, but you sure can see the external costs and threats with other sources of energy like oil and fission and coal and so on, along with the not barely hidden environmental costs. Fission power is the largest threat we have to global war today, because nations threaten each other with the weapons. If you can make fission power, it is a short step away from fission weapons, as such, too dang dangerous if you ask me. I don't care if a fission reactor can make a lot of "hot", because it is in the headlines daily that we could go to a larger war over who has access or "permission" to develop the tech.
This doesn't exist at all with solar fusion power. There should be a global trillion dollar massive push for solar, just to help eliminate the threats of war over fission power level tech. This is no joke, we are *this close* to a much larger major middle eastern war over fission tech, and that in turn WILL impact oil prices once it starts, and it looks worse and worse daily.
If we had gone heavily solar thirty years ago, on a massive scale, just done it, we could have nipped this in the bud, and helped avoid it.
All our forms of energy have costs, money, waste, etc, but eliminating wars and threats of wars, *those* costs in terms of money and human misery, should never be overlooked in the larger and more long range picture.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, that's even better with an even brighter future if fusion ever (and it will!) pays off.
This is fusion power paying off. We're just using a bigger reactor than most fusion proponents expected.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
1. By reducing our dependence on foreign oil, so we aren't pressured to depose their governments and put in people the oil companies like better (e.g. the Shah of Iran). By the way, reducing dependence was originally a doctrine proposed by Henry Kissinger way back during the Nixon years, and endorsed by both Reagan and Bush 43 in speeches they made during their terms.
2. By giving us an alternative to Nuclear, so those Muslem suicide bombers YOU want to blame for the whole problem of war, don't use it to extend their bomb blast radius by three or four orders of magnetude. That's originally from the Carter administration, but endorsed by Bush 41, 43, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and plenty of other republicans before they found out Obama had written a college paper relating to the subject.
You're the one who has claimed that Muslem suicide bombers are a very serious problem, justifying a 480 Billion a year budget and a rapidly growing deficit, but that we don't need to worry about that very serious problem getting funds from what we spend on oil, or using some of the other alternatives against us. That's crazy talk - either they are a big problem or they aren't, but there's no possible middle ground where they are not a threat but worth spending 480 billion a year to counter.
The real point is you hate the president, nothing he will ever do will ever please you, and if you have to simultaniously quake in fear of those Muslem terrorists and think they are no big deal whenever he takes a rational step to deal with them, you are capable of the double-think required to preserve your hate.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
I served in the U.S. armed forces for 13 years, and am convinced the best war would be fought on a tropical island, using paintball or laser-tag weaponry, and allowing 15 minute breaks every two hours, plus weekends off. Winner gets whatever political point was being fought over but has to pick up the whole bar tab. If we spread it over several islands the Marines could play too.
Warning: We did have a US invasion of the USA once (Lee went north of the line into Pennsylvania, then a bit later Sherman went way, way south of the line, and finally, Sherman, Grant, and Sheridan all met up for the photo-op so everybody got to feel invaded at least a little, some a lot.), and that wasn't nearly as fun as either of our proposals.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion, the only long-term multi-generational solution is for the west (yes, that's you, USA) to fund education in Pakistan, Afghanistan and their ilk. If you educate the populace out of ignorance, then the Saudis lose their proxy-'warriors.'
Re:Can somebody say (Score:3, Insightful)
Now imagine how well off we'd be if we spent 480 billion per year on solar power, and only 2 billion on foreign wars.
Good point. Our new Chinese overlords would let us all sit in lounge chairs and enjoy our free electricity all day long!
Re:Can somebody say (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a fucking LOAN GUARANTEE. So shit can be built in the first place. It's a LOAN.
Governments issue LOAN GUARANTEES for loads of crap that otherwise would not happen. It includes nuclear power plants, coal power plants, oil drilling, etc.. Without loan guarantees you'd be sitting in a house with permanent brownouts and blackouts because no one would want to invest in 20+ year power plants with an uncertain market and unknown future interest rates.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
... because China is going to invade us with which navy, exactly?
If we spent twice as much as they do on the military, then yes, I might agree with your sentiment - we shouldn't cut spending, because maybe they might invade, who knows, but really that would be bad for business all around so they might not and anyway they don't really have the capacity to move that many people.
However, our military spending isn't just twice as much as China's - we spend TWENTY times as much as China. We could cut our military spending to one-tenth of what it currently is, and we'd still be spending more than any other country.
Re:Terrestrial solar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can somebody say (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly enough, none of the 9/11 terrorists were from Afghanistan...or Iraq for that matter.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
And, this is what Libertarians can't figure out about Keynesian economics. In bad economic times, it's pointless giving tax cuts to the wealthy big corporations because they usually choose to sit on their money (buying up gold for instance) and wait for things to get better (because they can afford to). The working and middle class take this money and spend it immediately.
The problem with our 2 stimulus packages is they were effectively trickle-down economic policy and not Keynesian economics. And, just as we should have known, the banks are sitting on the money waiting for things to get better [google.com].
Re:Can somebody say (Score:3, Insightful)
Expanding solar capacity will increase the for-profit funded research as well. If we build only small scale stuff we will never learn to manage the large scale one neither. So even if the only thing it's good for gathering experience, it might worth it.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Insightful)
In effect, you ignored my entire post. I did not shrug off the economics of it. I pointed out that it was starting to approach nuclear power in terms of operating cost. I figured that was enough by itself, but apparently not, so here's a quick review of economics 101 for you:
1. The cheapest solar installations are currently about on par with the most expensive nuclear power plants. This means the "non-economical" thing is just a load of bull, as I said in the post you replied to.
2. What's the #1 thing that brings down the cost of manufacturing? Economies of scale. Now you can't get economies of scale on nuclear plants. Each one has to be designed specifically for the location, at least to some degree. No two are alike. This doesn't lend itself to getting cheaper any time soon. Even if we started building cookie-cutter nuke plants, we'd still only be able to put them in certain places, which means economies of scale never kick in. And the fissionable material is only going to get more expensive as demand increases, so the long-term future of nuclear is not so bright.
Does solar lend itself to economies of scale? You bet. As we build more PV panels, we continue to find ways to make them for less money. We've seen major advances in non-PV solar systems, too, particularly in the area of nighttime power storage. What one thing is required for solar power to get cheaper? Lots and lots of people building large-scale solar power systems. Unlike nuclear plants, we can build tens of thousands of these things safely, so economies of scale can actually kick in and make the cost of each installation substantially cheaper. Subsidizing a few solar installations now is a great way of making new installations much more economical in the near future.
Besides, solar power is already cheap enough that it costs barely half what I'm paying for my highest tier of power from PG&E, so it's plenty economical already. The people who say solar is not economical are either misinformed or have an agenda. If it were not economical, PG&E would not be in the process of setting up a number of substantial solar power systems right now. In fact, at California's energy rates, even individual-sized PV systems (some of the most expensive per kWh) typically break even on cost after 5-10 years and are guaranteed to still be providing 85% of their original power output after 30. Sounds pretty economical to me.
Ignore it, you are being trolled (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't have to make sense - it's just a game.
I had that idiot spouting random bullshit over serious posts I made a while ago until I read his journal to find it's a fake, joke second persona where he pretends to be tinfoil hat crazy to stir people up. To paraphrase: "Slashdot is hacking me OMG" and similar stuff.