Biden Marks Earth Day by Announcing $7 Billion in Solar Power Grants (time.com) 106
President Joe Biden travels to Triangle, Virginia, Monday to mark Earth Day, where he'll unveil $7 billion in grant funding for solar power under the Inflation Reduction Act and announce new steps to stand up his administration's American Climate Corps -- a program popular with youth climate groups. From a report: The announcements come days after the Biden administration made several significant conservation announcements, including barring oil drilling on nearly half of the national petroleum reserve in Alaska. Under the Environmental Protection Agency's Solar for All program, the administration will announce funding awards to states territories, tribal governments, municipalities and nonprofits "to develop long-lasting solar programs that are targeted towards the communities and people who need them most," EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe told reporters. Per McCabe, the funding will enable nearly one million households in low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from solar power, saving more than $350 million in electric costs annually and more than $8 billion over the life of the program for overburdened households.
Free money! (Score:4, Funny)
Free money! Come and get it. We have lots more to give out. Bring the whole family.
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Just be sure to stop by your local polling place to pick up your mail-in ballots on the way! Show them to our helpful staff for an extra free gift!
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That guy has no clue WTF he's saying, announcing or giving a speech about if it isn't on a teleprompter or big print, multi-page notes he's given.
You can readily see this any time he dares to go off script and potentially make "them" mad and get into trouble... [youtube.com]
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Re:Free money! (Score:4, Informative)
Not free, paid for by large corporations. The Inflation Reduction Act raises $300 billion over a decade by requiring large corporations to pay a 15 percent minimum tax on their profits and by enacting a 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks and redemptions.
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What? Actually taxing corporations, and using the money to promote the common good by slowing global warming!?
No wonder the corporate lackey trolls are attacking it
Re: Free money! (Score:2)
How much use of public infrastructure is your business entitled to? Because without it, it could not function.
Re: Free money! (Score:1)
You use the police and military every second of every day.
Re: Free money! (Score:2)
You would get to keep nothing you have without them, and the richness of this nation is based on military action and always has been. You don't even understand the argument.
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What? Actually taxing corporations, and using the money to promote the common good by slowing global warming!?
No wonder the corporate lackey trolls are attacking it
Right.. That's where that money is going.. Not to Ukraine or anything.....
Are you aware of how stupid you are?
Re: Free money! (Score:2)
"Every small business is a corporation."
That is a lie. Not every small business is an LLC, let alone a more structured corporation. For instance, the RV shop where I was underpaid and got a settlement against them for unpaid wages and retaliatory firing is a sole proprietorship.
Why do you tell so many obvious lies?
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You seem to have a problem understand the word "over". It isn't a lump sum at the end of the decade, it is accumulated over the 10-year period -- like like the spend.
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Meanwhile we're spending money now that will only be hypothetically raised in the future? I don't believe that will help to reduce inflation in the slightest.
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> Please explain how it raises money with a tax rate that's below the existing corporate tax rate
15% minimum. You're a fool if you think a large corporation pays anywhere near the corporate tax rate. 15% is much more money than these businesses are paying now.
Some of them are so good at the game that they effectively "pay" a negative income tax [americanprogress.org]. To pull the first example from that link; AT&T earned $29.6 and the Feds effectively paid them another $1.2B - effectively a -4% income tax. Under the IRA th
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Please explain how it raises money with a tax rate that's below the existing corporate tax rate
It's a similar concept to Alternative Minimum Taxes [*], which you probably haven't experienced with your own taxes. Basically, deductions that corporations can normally claim are disallowed and then their taxes are calculated at the lower rate. If the result is more than they would pay with the higher rate and broader set of deductions, then they have to pay it rather rather than the normally-calculated amount. So it doesn't apply to all corporations, or maybe even most, but it extracts additional revenue
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Not free, paid for by large corporations.
No they aren't, they are paid for by higher prices and fees. Corporations pay no taxes, We pay it all.
Re: Free money! (Score:2)
"Corporations pay no taxes, We pay it all."
False. You paid for a product or service. That money became the corporation's money. Then they paid taxes. All you had to decide was whether the product was worth paying for.
Re: Free money! (Score:2)
GOOD. That is what makes tariffs effective at changing behavior. Without that we would only have the ban hammer.
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GOOD. That is what makes tariffs effective at changing behavior. Without that we would only have the ban hammer.
Just how many aspects of life do you think government should be in charge of changing people's behaviour? I don't want politicians socially engineering mine or anyone's life. We are supposed to tell them what to do, not vice versa.
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Just how many aspects of life do you think government should be in charge of changing people's behaviour?
All of those where they are incapable of making a sustainable decision.
I don't want politicians socially engineering mine or anyone's life.
I want politicians preventing the worst excesses by everyone, including politicians. That's because I have a nose, and other people are careless about waving their fists.
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They didn't. They went up variable amounts, often higher, depending on what they were. And those prices went up YEARS before this legislation was passed, so the link you're implying is imaginary.
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Names of bills don't mean shit, they never have. Trying to tie anything to what politicians *name* a bill is pointless and childish. (Hello "Patriot Act").
Inflation hasn't gone down because people are still spending, raised prices or not. Talk is cheap, actions are what matter. People bitch up a storm that fast food prices (for example) are thru the roof (they are), but they're doing it while buying enough fast food the companies are making record profits.
And it isn't just essentials that are absolutely req
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Not free, paid for by large corporations...
I can't let this pass. Corporations may write the check but they don't bear the burden of the tax. They pass the tax along to some combination of investors (lower profits), employees (lower wages or benefits), and customers (higher prices). Those flesh and blood humans are who bear the burden in that they have to give up something they'd otherwise prefer in order to see the tax paid.
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>"Not free, paid for by large corporations."
Which then it is immediately passed into higher consumer prices. And, thus, is a tax on consumers (all of us), again. Kinda like inflation is also a tax on everything, although even worse.
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Not free, paid for by large corporations. The Inflation Reduction Act raises $300 billion over a decade by requiring large corporations to pay a 15 percent minimum tax on their profits and by enacting a 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks and redemptions.
You are the perfect definition of an idiot. We're $30 T in debt...
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Know what makes something more affordable? Throwing enormous amounts of money at it. Works with student loans. Works with housing. Works with military hardware. Works with space shuttles. Make it clear that there is an unlimited supply of money in a sector and watch those prices come tumbling down.
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Know what makes something more affordable? Throwing enormous amounts of money at it. Works with student loans. Works with housing. Works with military hardware. Works with space shuttles.
It all depends on whether or not the demand for the thing you are throwing money at is finite, or at least constrained in some way. If you throw a lot of money at subsidizing oil or steel or some other raw material necessary to build military hardware, the cost of military hardware will go down. But it doesn't help if you decide to simply buy 10x as much military hardware. If you throw money at subsidizing the education of doctors and nurses, the cost of medical procedures would go down. But it doesn't help
Markets (Score:2)
The cost of solar panels is constrained by competition from other energy sources, so there isn't a risk of costs ballooning out of control. The only result of the spending would be more solar power generation built in the US.
If the market for energy were floating, you'd be right. There are government mandates on cutting coal mining, reducing the number of coal plants, restricting licenses on existing coal plants, cutting co2 emissions of energy production, and mandating non-co2 producing energy generation.
Which is all fine, but there are economic repercussions if you are simultaneously dumping cash into that same market.
It's not free (Score:2)
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It's about time we gave free money to someone other than oil companies and coal miners. Glad to see a government that is spreading around the joy to everyone. And we didn't even need to cause cancer or poison anyone to get it.
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Isn't it funny how people conveniently forget the decades we've been giving money to these two? How many billions (trillions?) of dollars have we the taxpayers been forced to hand over to these companies? Shall we include all that free money handed over to corn famers for their ethanol subsidies?
At least if people would be consistent in their "outrage" they might be heard more.
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It's about time we gave free money to someone other than oil companies and coal miners
I know you are mostly joking, but farmers get huge subsidies every year. Something like $22.6 billion in 2019 alone, representing 20% of farmers' profits (https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-data-says/). Plus, many of the farmers are incorporated and got huge corporate tax breaks and incentives on their solar panels (which you see everywhere in farm communities).
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Saving the Planet may require a bit of socialism. What would Jesus decide?
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Re: Free money! (Score:2)
Jesus would throw their asses out and be crucified for it, because that's what we do to people who are trying to help us.
A billion here, a billion there (Score:3, Insightful)
pretty soon you're talking real money...
Accounting (Score:3)
Remember when the pentagon found $60 billion in the couch cushions to give to Ukraine last year? Good times...
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The propaganda of the Chicago School of Economics has been terrifically successful in convincing most Americans that large products can be produced for less money (and same quality) by allowing for a profit margin
Of course it stands in opposition to all of the work created by the WPA, that is still in use to this day, but as an Atreides might say, "The PROFITS Must Flow!"
It is also widely disproved by the need for the US Blood supply to be managed by non-profit entities so that profit-inclined cost cutting
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It's not a lot, compared to the defence budget. Climate change is a much more immediate and bigger threat than anything else at the moment.
What about interconnects? (Score:2)
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Yes, but by then Biden will be at least 3-7 years out of office and it's not 'his problem' anymore whether Solyndra actually did anything.
Just a reminder, the federal program that funded loans to energy projects, one of which was Solyndra, actually made money. True, Solyndra went bankrupt and defaulted, but a hundred other projects the program funded paid the loans back with interest.
(sorry about posting as AC; don't want to undo my mods.)
Re: What about interconnects? (Score:1)
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Not exactly red tape, more like electrical company recalcitrance to preserve their own profit base
local utility greed (Score:2)
> more like [local] electrical company recalcitrance to preserve their own profit base
We wanted solar panels that could power our house directly if there were a power outage, which have been too common of late. But the local power co. rules are that you can't have such unless you also have a battery system, which greatly adds to the price. We'd be happy with day-time-power-only during a general power-outage such that batteries are not worth the extra cost & maintenance. (Yes, we know we may not be ab
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Solar panels are not "backup" power when there is no battery. They can't any any base load under many, many conditions. And even with a very expensive battery system, many are still mediocre for "backup" power.
If you want power backup, you can spend $60,000 or whatever for panels and a battery system that might last a day or something. Or you can buy an ICE generator (gas/diesel/natgas) at a fraction of the cost and have it working as long as you need, under any conditions.
What I see with solar stuff in
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> They can't [handle?] any base load under many, many conditions
I know there are limits, but when we know the power is out, we could avoid certain activities such as doing laundry (unless everything else is off).
> Or you can buy an ICE generator (gas/diesel/natgas) at a fraction of the cost and have it working as long as you need, under any conditions.
Those are noisy and smelly.
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>"I know there are limits, but when we know the power is out, we could avoid certain activities such as doing laundry (unless everything else is off)."
Without a massive battery, you won't be doing much of anything for the majority of each 24 hour day :)
My generator is only 6KW with no load shedding, so I know how to play the power budget game, myself. It is enough to run the central AC, frig, lights (all LED), computer/router/modem/monitor/tv/TiVo, microwave. Have to plan a bit if I want to do too much
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Fortunately for me I live in an area (rural Florida) where I can install an off grid solar power system without anyone's approval so I did. With the tax credit it cost me $14,000, I did all the work myself. I will save about $2,000 a year so my payback time is 7 years. Paid cash, a good stock pick paid off.
That's for nuclear (Score:3)
Question (Score:1)
Where does the federal government get the legal authority to award grants for solar power?
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Congress and their powers to tax and spend in general. That doesn't vary by specific technologies like solar vs oil, etc.
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So Congress has unlimited power. Correct?
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Unless SCOTUS officially rules "Unconstitutional", essentially. That's the check and balance we have.
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So according to you, Congress has unlimited power unless the Supreme Court says they don't?
What if Congress votes to repeal Article III and there is no Supreme Court?
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It doesn't work that way. Everything works because people follow the basic rules -- the Constitution itself. Amending the Constitution itself isn't a simple vote of Congress, much less something signed by a President into law. There's an explicit process.
Your question is akin in seriousness to "what if EVERYONE just stopped paying taxes".
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I asked if Congress had unlimited power and you replied unless the Supreme Court overrules them, "essentially."
So it does work that way.
Now you're invoking the Constitution again. You speak of basic rules. But according to you, the Constitution grants Congress unlimited power.
So which is it?
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Within the framework of the Constitution itself, Congress is king. They can override a veto by the Executive and remove them from office if they so choose. For the context we were speaking, tax and spend, Congress has effective unlimited authority if they so choose to use it.
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Fair enough. Suppose Congress opened a brothel? Imagine for a moment the supreme quality of whorehouse Congress could establish with trillions to spend.
Imagine if they made working there mandatory for all young women?
And if a state objects, well, federal law trumps state law, right? Why, according to you, Congress could just impeach anyone who complains.
Congress is king, right?
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That would be neither taxing nor spending.
Re:Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the same way that they paid for the electrical grid and projects like the TVA and Hoover Dam
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... projects like the TVA and Hoover Dam
Both of which would be called "Socialist" and "Big Government Overreach" if they were to be proposed today.
$DEITY forbid that the United States Government actually does anything useful for the citizens any more.
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US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1.
Congress can spend whatever they want on the general welfare of the United States. Any steps taken to mitigate climate change obviously count.
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Oh I see, so the geniuses who wrote the Constitution crafted Article 8 like this:
1. Congress has unlimited power.
2. Here is a list of Congress' enumerated powers.
Then they ratified the 10th Amendment which says "Congress has no power except what is specifically granted in the Constitution."
Do you find it odd nobody brought up the fact Congress was granted unlimited power in Article I when the Bill of Rights was being deliberated?
Do you find it odd 13 colonies would ratify a document that granted Congress th
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The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States . . .
The power to tax and spend is not an "unlimited power".
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Nobody said it was, except the person I was responding to.
The entire purpose of the Constitution is to restrain the federal government. It is written specifically to frustrate, obstruct, inhibit, vex and ultimately cage the national government so it does not usurp the powers of the states or the people.
Congress has no legal authority of any kind to grant money to anyone for any purpose. Congress has no legal authority to loan, give, bequeath, save, deposit or invest money. The Constitution grants them the s
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Look at it historically. The constitution wasn't the US's first government. The first was the Articles of Confederation, which was generally understood to be a failure because the federal government was too weak. The whole point of the Constitution was to replace a state driven model with a stronger Federal government.
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Been that way for over a century? What was it before?
> We stopped pretending states were little fiefdoms in the late 1800s.
Oh? The Ninth Amendment and Article V were both repealed? Do you have a date for that?
> triggers the Commerce Clause and in turn gives them the authority needed.
So all they need to do is find some ephemeral justification by invoking the Commerce Clause and every Congress member is fitted for a crown?
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It's not quite as bad as that, but if memory serves, the feds once found a way to use the Commerce Clause to interfere with the operations of a restaurant because it was using pepper, which was brought in from another state.
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> It's not quite as bad as that
How bad is it, then? Do you find it alarming that we are even discussing a government with no limits on its power? One would think people who visit Slashdot would be smarter than that since they're all scientists and engineers.
But here we are.
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The constant espousing of Libertarian beliefs on Slashdot, SHOULD inform the gentle reader directly, on just how many idiots are here
Re: Question (Score:2)
That's not what this is, or even could reasonably be described as.
At most, not that it would be inconsequential, we are talking about a government with no limits on taxation.
In practice we have had that since Citizens United. Complain about that if you like.
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These people are asserting that the general welfare clause gives Congress limitless authority to tax and to spend.
If they have such authority, then there is no legal basis under which it can be challenged, including vetoes, court rulings or future Constitutional Amendments. That's the meaning and scope of the word "limitless."
As long as they contend it is for the "general welfare" of the nation, their authority is absolute.
That is what is being asserted here. Let's be clear about that much at least.
Re: Question (Score:2)
Constitutional amendments can change any part of the Constitution.
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Worse than that was the federal government asserting that you could not grow wheat on your own land for your own use because such constituted "interstate commerce." Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942) upheld that ridiculous notion.
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Commerce Clause.
Yeah. I was afraid of that. The only sorts of solar power projects that could conceivably affect interstate commerce are the really big ones. Not the little "put panels on my roof or the roof of a small business" subsidy stuff. Which are typically the bailiwick of state and local utilities and regulators. Because that's all the farther the electricity is likely to go.
Another "gibs" for the big boys.
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> Where does the federal government get the legal authority to...
They have none, they just secretly swipe bank money from gov't haters using their Deep Network of pizza parlor basement servers. Some are even hidden under the basement, a sub-basement, so they can't be found by vigilante basement inspectors like Edgar Maddison Welch. The Deep State out-Scoobied the Doo.
oil and gas tax loopholes (Score:3)
is this funded by closing those loopholes? because the number seems low compared to how much they save.
So that's where the ACP funding went. (Score:2)
Um... (Score:2)
I've been thinking about adding solar panels to my house. I would love if I could get a federal subsidy to do it. However, just like with my student loan forgiveness, I'm NOT giving Biden my vote in exchange.
LK
I have a soft spot for solar (Score:2)
With solar, after the initial setup cost, you get energy practically for free. What is not to like? Cost of solar has been dropping over the years. I wish we had solar on every roof and everybody could drive EVs. We would all breathe a little easier with a little less poison in our air and the cost of energy would also come down.
Battery research grants, plz? (Score:2)
What would be nice is some money thrown into batteries which don't have any hostile nation as a source for the components. Lithium batteries are nice, but a lot of the rare earths come from China with no other sources.
Instead, perhaps some research on sodium batteries. Solar is nice, but when China decides to embargo rare earths, think 1973 and the oil crunch.
After that, maybe some research grants for cheaper MPPT controllers. Next to panel efficiency, having power transferred to the batteries at the bes