By Kyle Alspach

It’s a proposal that’s had plenty of test drives in the public sphere before, though not necessarily because of someone like General Motors CEO Dan Akerson: Raise the gas tax to cut our country’s oil consumption.

This week Akerson told the Detroit News that the federal government ought to raise the gas tax by up to $1 a gallon. The move would lead to a cut in carbon emissions and air pollution, not to mention helping the U.S. with its foreign-oil dependency problems. It could also stimulate demand for electric-powered cars (not coincidentally, Akerson’s statement comes as one of the early mass market options hits the market — GM’s plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt.)

With gas prices already in the $4 range (though currently falling), the statement resurrected a major debate. Interestingly, it’s not a left-wing vs. right-wing debate at all. It’s more like, economists vs. politicians.

In 2007, a study in the Journal of Economic Literature found that the ideal average gas tax for the U.S. would be $2.10 a gallon. At the time, the average tax was 40 cents a gallon — 18.4 cents for federal and 22 cents for state (it’s currently 23.5 cents in Massachusetts).

The $2.10 figure takes into account greenhouse gas emissions, local pollution and oil dependency, along with the costs of congestion and accidents.

To make the tax palatable, economists say the government could cut taxes in other areas — say, the income tax for consumers or corporate taxes for businesses.

The common sense of it is this: Instead of taxing things that are good (business profits or hard-earned income, for instance), why don’t we tax things that are bad (like burning fossil fuel)?

However, according to the Harvard Political Review, the issue quickly moves from the realm of economics to the realm of politics. And “since 1993, no prominent American politician has seriously supported a major increase in the gas tax. Virtually everyone agrees that supporting the gas tax is political suicide.”

And yet:

Economists from across the political spectrum — Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and even the chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, N. Gregory Mankiw — have come out in support of raising the gas tax.

Still, Americans love to drive a lot more than they love economic theory, and the psychological barrier is formidable. Working out an equitable tax-swap would be no easy task either.

But I for one would rather be taxed for a luxury (driving) than for a necessity (working.) Especially if I know our environment and security are getting important benefits too.

By Kyle Alspach

George W. Bush famously described America’s relationship with oil as an addiction.

Today, President Obama added his own metaphor: Americans are in an oil-fueled trance.

And we need to snap out of it, the president said.

“We cannot keep going from shock — when gas prices go up — to trance when they go back down,” he said during a wide-ranging address on America’s energy challenges. “We can’t afford to bet our long-term prosperity and long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out.”

The centerpiece of his address at Georgetown University was a new goal to reduce U.S. oil imports by a third by 2025. Key to making that happen, as laid out by Obama: increasing the production of domestic oil, natural gas and biofuels, increasing use of more-efficient (as well as electric) vehicles and better mass transit options.

The president also touted clean energy for electricity (to power the vehicles) and more energy efficiency upgrades for buildings.

To lead by example, the president said he’s ordered the federal government to buy only alternative-fuel vehicles by 2015.

For the scores of Massachusetts companies working on some aspect of clean technology, it’s good news that Obama isn’t dropping the energy issue, despite all the setbacks his plans have suffered.

But as always, American consumers will determine so much of how this plays out. As Obama told the college students watching the address, “you’ve got power in this process.”

Whether consumers are willing to pay more for energy independence and environmental benefits is a major uncertainty. Getting off an addiction, or out of a trance, is not an easy thing.

By Kyle Alspach

“Nobody was expecting it.”

That’s what I heard today from a 45-year-old employee of Evergreen Solar, one of the 800 who will lose their jobs by the end of March as Evergreen shutters its factory at Devens.

Sure, Evergreen (Nasdaq:ESLRD) had announced it would outsource its solar panel assembly to China by the end of this year. But this employee — who declined to have her name published, saying she didn’t want to put her remaining time at the job at risk — doesn’t do solar panel assembly. For nearly three years she’s worked in Devens as a fabrication operator for solar wafers, the building block for panels.

“That was the part that was supposed to be staying,” she said. “We thought we were all set…Now we’re sinking.”

High on the list of her reasons for worrying: her job provides the health insurance for her husband and two sons, ages 18 and 20, who live at the family’s Central Massachusetts home. She also just bought a new car, and her husband, a machinist, recently took a 10 percent pay cut due to weak economic conditions.

Not to mention the poor prospects for getting another job.

“There’s nothing out there that pays what I’m making,” she said.

She admits that she did suspect that Evergreen might pull out of Devens eventually, with the company struggling to compete with solar manufacturing in lower-cost regions such as China.
But not this soon.

“We figured we had at least couple more years in there,” she said.

It’s not just the Evergreen employees at Devens that were likely taken by surprise on Tuesday. The company’s headquarters, in Marlborough, will also experience layoffs, said Evergreen spokesman Chris Lawson. “Some of the cuts will come from Marlborough but beyond that I don’t have any finite numbers yet. That will all be determined in the coming weeks,” Lawson said in an e-mail.

Evergreen says the move is necessary to preserve cash and put the company on more solid ground in the highly-competitive solar industry. The plan is for the company to evolve into a producer of standard-sized solar wafers, which can be sold to solar panel manufacturers. The company so far has been forced to make its own panels because its wafers aren’t the industry standard size and aren’t in demand.

As a reporter following Evergreen Solar, however, what’s struck me most about this plan is the severity of the job cuts.

In 2007, when the company struck a deal with the state to receive $58 million in connection with the new Devens plant, the grant agreements show that Evergreen employed 310 people in Massachusetts.

But subtracting 800 jobs from the company’s 2010 headcount — 925 — would leave Evergreen with just 125 jobs in Massachusetts after the plant closure, not even half of the 2007 staffing levels.

That means that this move isn’t just about Evergreen leaving Devens. Arguably, it’s about Evergreen pulling up stakes in Massachusetts altogether, as the company’s presence in the state reverts to what it was well before all of this began — when Evergreen was just a promising startup.

Google won’t be helping Cape Wind Associates, or anyone else, with making offshore wind power happen in New England.

Not directly, at least. But wind advocates are excited just the same about Google’s $5 billion plan to lay undersea electrical cable along much of the East Coast, in a bid to make offshore wind projects faster to build.

Among those cheering is the team at Cape Wind. Amid the endless debate over the Nantucket Sound project – currently raging about the cost of the power – the company will take all the good news it can get about offshore wind.

“Every bit of forward momentum like this really sends a market signal that this industry is for real. In that way, I think it does help Cape Wind,” said Mark Rodgers, spokesman for the Cape Wind project.

Google’s 350-mile “superhighway for clean energy” wouldn’t reach New England, or even New York state. It would instead run from Virginia to northern New Jersey and be able to carry enough electricity to power about 500,000 homes.

If built, the project would almost certainly make a difference for the nascent offshore wind industry. By way of example, Cape Wind’s two 18-mile transmission lines would represent a “significant” part of the construction, Rodgers said. Not to mention the time it took to permit the lines.

So it might not be a bad idea for New England wind supporters to start thinking about how to bring a wind superhighway here. If it could be pulled off, the projects that would inevitably follow Cape Wind might find fewer cost issues – and PR nightmares.

By Kyle Alspach

Every ambitious company has its milestones – the first financing, the break-out quarter, the IPO.

But for the two cleantech companies co-founded by Yet-Ming Chiang of MIT, one of those milestones is a little less traditional: the presidential shout-out.

Sure, it’s not what the two companies – A123 Systems Inc. of Watertown and American Superconductor Corp. of Devens – have been aiming for.

Speaking at an event for an electric-vehicle battery maker in Michigan on Thursday, President Obama mentioned just one other battery company – A123. With the help of $249 million in federal funding, A123 plans this fall to open a battery manufacturing plant in Livonia, Mich., and is also pursuing a second plant in the state.

Meanwhile, American Superconductor was highlighted by Obama in a weekly address last November. The company does most of its business in designs and controls systems for wind turbines, and Obama spoke about the company’s creation of U.S. jobs through exports to Asia.

The two companies have yet to get a visit by the president. Maybe that’s the next milestone. But in any case, the mentions by the president do prove one thing – that Massachusetts cleantech companies are getting attention at the highest levels of government.

Chiang, who spoke with me on Friday, said he’s been much more involved with A123 in recent years than with American Superconductor. He says he’s just glad to see the companies succeeding and isn’t reading too much into the shout-outs.

Still, he said, “It made me smile.”