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Friday, February 13, 2009
Stimulus bill offers hope for renewable energy
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Preparing the smart grid for more power
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Solar installation booms in New England
MHT reporter Efrain Viscarolasaga on NECN: Green tech brings jobs back to Mass.
The 1960s saw the assassinations of national leaders and the escalating Vietnam war, and led into the 1970s and Watergate.
No wonder so many of us felt for decades that the country we knew and loved in the 1950s and early ’60s had shriveled and decayed like a fallen maple leaf as winter frost betrays summer’s eternal promise. No wonder we are so overjoyed with the inauguration of President Barack Obama and are anticipating a spring of our new contentment.
But for those of us who were in the solar industry birthed by the oil embargoes of the 1970s, the last three decades have been one eternal Arctic winter. Within months of being sworn into office in 1981, President Ronald Reagan slashed the Department of Energy’s renewables research budget by 90 percent. And it didn’t take him long to dismantle the solar water heater on the White House roof. Standing there some years earlier while President Jimmy Carter dedicated that system had been one of the highlights of my life.
Reagan’s coup de grace of the solar industry, though, came at midnight on Dec. 31, 1985, when he and his Congress let the solar investment tax credits expire. As a reminder, taxpayers could deduct 40 percent of the cost of their solar system from their taxes. Most solar systems at that time were for the heating of buildings, water or swimming pools, not for solar electricity, which was not yet well developed. Wind investors had a sweet deal, too.
For five months we (the renewables industry) held our collective breath and hoped for the best until the industry’s annual trade show the second week of June 1986 in Anaheim, Calif. But with only ghosts of customers past in attendance, the floor was like a morgue. Almost every company went home and closed its doors.
So it’s not hard to get emotional, or even to be carried away with the promise of spring in America once again. As ominous as the economic horizon is, Obama clearly gets it that our addiction to oil is unsustainable and that our poisoning of the atmosphere is worse and more urgent than most of us can imagine, with not a moment to lose.
Déjà vu
So now the stimulus package has a chance to remedy the unique opportunity we lost in 1985 to wean the country from oil. Here are some of its highlights.
• It extends to the end of 2012 the federal renewable energy production tax credit, payable over a 10-year period, for wind facilities as well as to 2013 for qualifying facilities that generate electricity from biomass, geothermal, hydropower, landfill gas and ocean currents.
• Because finding financing is so difficult right now, such facilities that are in place in 2009 and 2010 can temporarily claim a 30 percent investment tax credit instead of the production tax credit.
• Through 2010, homeowners get a tax credit equal to 30 percent (capped at $1,500) of their expenditures on energy-efficient furnaces, hot water boilers and other energy-saving improvements.
• In addition, they can get a 30 percent (uncapped) tax credit for buying solar water heaters, small wind turbines and geothermal heat pumps.
• It authorizes $1.6 billion in new clean renewable energy bonds to finance facilities that generate electricity from wind, biomass, geothermal, hydropower, landfill gas, ocean currents and trash burning.
It’s a start. Had we maintained the momentum 24 years ago toward clean energy instead of killing it, we might not be in this mess. Let’s vow to sustain it this time.
Bruce N. Anderson is CEO of Wilson TurboPower and co-chair of the New England Clean Energy Council. He can be reached at Bruce.Anderson@WilsonTurboPower.com.
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