09-20-2014, 03:30 AM
The state of renewables in the U.S. as I understand it:
In the U.S., the main programs had been (1) government subsidizing companies that either manufacture or use renewables, and (2) power companies paying customers who use renewables a subsidy. However, even with the subsidies, U.S. renewable companies are unable to be 100% competitive with Chinese manufacturers and hydraulic fracturing - derived fossil fuels, known here as "fracking".
The government had expected that with proper funding, manufacturers would be making improvements at a consistent rate analogous to (but much slower than) Moore's Law. While improvements have occurred, there have been a lot of disappointments, leading some manufacturers to use "bad science" to maintain their funding. Ultimately, most of those efforts failed.
Meanwhile, the administration, while it opposes nuclear and fossil fuels to please environmentalists and the "not in my backyard" crowd, supports fracking because it (1) is propping up the economy, and (2) statistically looks very good in terms of oil independence and air pollution. This has caused renewables to add to the political split in the U.S., because surviving semi-private renewable energy support environmental and social-progressive policies if only because they need more funding, while fracking and private renewables would prefer deregulation instead.
At the same time, power companies are beginning to be unable to handle the spikes in production from increased renewable energy producers, and the programs to encourage renewables are causing energy distributors to loose money, so they are trying to reduce or eliminate payments to people trying to sell them energy. Local governments don't like this - they'd prefer to raise rates and provide energy subsidies so that the middle class subsidize the poor and the rich to subsidize renewables, but middle class voters don't want to pay a penny more, and the rich are increasingly moving to lower overall tax burden areas.
In the last year or so, more wealthier homeowners have become interested in renewables for their own personal use. So you've got construction companies pre-wiring new homes for solar and new wind turbines being built even though there's no market or storage system available for the power, because it sells houses. And meanwhile, rural roads are crowded with convoys of fracking equipment trucks.
In the U.S., the main programs had been (1) government subsidizing companies that either manufacture or use renewables, and (2) power companies paying customers who use renewables a subsidy. However, even with the subsidies, U.S. renewable companies are unable to be 100% competitive with Chinese manufacturers and hydraulic fracturing - derived fossil fuels, known here as "fracking".
The government had expected that with proper funding, manufacturers would be making improvements at a consistent rate analogous to (but much slower than) Moore's Law. While improvements have occurred, there have been a lot of disappointments, leading some manufacturers to use "bad science" to maintain their funding. Ultimately, most of those efforts failed.
Meanwhile, the administration, while it opposes nuclear and fossil fuels to please environmentalists and the "not in my backyard" crowd, supports fracking because it (1) is propping up the economy, and (2) statistically looks very good in terms of oil independence and air pollution. This has caused renewables to add to the political split in the U.S., because surviving semi-private renewable energy support environmental and social-progressive policies if only because they need more funding, while fracking and private renewables would prefer deregulation instead.
At the same time, power companies are beginning to be unable to handle the spikes in production from increased renewable energy producers, and the programs to encourage renewables are causing energy distributors to loose money, so they are trying to reduce or eliminate payments to people trying to sell them energy. Local governments don't like this - they'd prefer to raise rates and provide energy subsidies so that the middle class subsidize the poor and the rich to subsidize renewables, but middle class voters don't want to pay a penny more, and the rich are increasingly moving to lower overall tax burden areas.
In the last year or so, more wealthier homeowners have become interested in renewables for their own personal use. So you've got construction companies pre-wiring new homes for solar and new wind turbines being built even though there's no market or storage system available for the power, because it sells houses. And meanwhile, rural roads are crowded with convoys of fracking equipment trucks.