[dashster]

Jeb Bush advocating phasing out the wind energy tax credit.

Jeb Bush told an Iowa audience Saturday he thinks the federal wind energy tax credit is no longer necessary to support the “now competitive” industry, MarketWatch reported. Meanwhile, Bush's checkbook remains tethered to the profits of oil and gas companies, which continue to receive federal subsidies, thanks to an investment firm whose holdings first became known last summer.

[dinopello]

I wonder how the candidates come down on rooftop solar.

There was an article today about the centralized utilities lobbying efforts.

[dashster]

I wonder how the candidates come down on rooftop solar.

There was an article today about the centralized utilities lobbying efforts.

I guess the utilities have a point about someone with rooftop solar costing them as much to service (not the power generation part) as someone without, but I think they should have pricing that separates their fixed costs - or per user costs - from their power generation costs. A flat fee each month plus a variable cost depending on how much power you used. It would seem that it can't be that expensive just to maintain the grid and provide billing on a per dwelling basis.

The utility collects less revenue, even though the infrastructure costs — from expensive power plants to transmission lines and maintenance crews — remain the same.

[ROCKMAN]

We do understand that at least in Texas the wind power subsidy doesn't compete with oil production, don't we? If there's any competition it's with NG and coal. But this attempt to portray some conflict of interest for JB and Dorian is so bush league it's truly laughable. How does Dorian make money: Dorian LPG is a pure-play LPG shipping company and a leading owner and operator of modern VLGCs. How exactly will dropping the tax subsidies of wind power in the US benefit Dorian when their primary ops focus is transporting LPG in the Asia market with emphasis on Korea where all of their vessels currently call port.

Classic "yellow journalism": saying Dorian is related to the oil/NG production biz and 99% of our citizens are too f*cking lazy to do a 1 minute web search like the Rockman just did. Dorian, and thus JB, receive zero benefit from the loss if wind power subsidies. I bet even the majority of our above average family here was willing to buy this bullsh*t on face value.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Classic "yellow journalism": saying Dorian is related to the oil/NG production biz and 99% of our citizens are too f*cking lazy to do a 1 minute web search like the Rockman just did. Dorian, and thus JB, receive zero benefit from the loss if wind power subsidies. I bet even the majority of our above average family here was willing to buy this bullsh*t on face value.

OTOH, being against green energy generally, and green energy subsidies specifically is very much a right wing talking point. So the general ideal of a right wing presidential candidate being against a wind subsidy isn't at all farfetched. Besides, he has to try to feed the base somehow, if he hopes to win the GOP primary, right?

I'm a moderate who thinks we need ALL kinds of energy so I have no axe to grind here. However, both sides of the political left/right spectrum, especially the extremes, have EARNED reputations for certain expected behaviors. Acting like that isn't so is pretty unrealistic.

[dashster]

OTOH, being against green energy generally, and green energy subsidies specifically is very much a right wing talking point. So the general ideal of a right wing presidential candidate being against a wind subsidy isn't at all farfetched. Besides, he has to try to feed the base somehow, if he hopes to win the GOP primary, right?

Yep, combining "renewable energy" plus "subsidy" really gets the political right worked up, so he is saying just what they want to hear. But he probably has to back off that position if he wants to get elected. Although, with Obama (I think incorrectly) and others talking of "nearly a century of natural gas" it might fly. And, since people seem to conflate renewables and oil, the price of oil in the fall of 2016 will probably be a factor as well as to how cutting wind subsidies goes over at that point..

When I think about it, it probably is a bad policy for wind people to continually talk up how cost competitive they are becoming - assuming that is what they do. Maybe it is just "wind advocates" in the general public or with environmental concerns that do it. Looking at graphs of installations they still need the subsidy - they always plummet when it expires. But, besides the fact that they appear to overstate the competitiveness factor (it seems that it has been announced as "now" competitive or "now nearly" competitive multiple times as the price declines), it isn't even considering the full cost. The subsidy should be for wind plus storage of wind. That is, increase the subsidy, but only give it if storage is combined with the wind. It really isn't true that wind is close or is competitive with natural gas and coal due to the variability and constant need for backup power.

[vtsnowedin]

It comes down to needing a fair and realistic price schedule so that the power companies are not burdened by having to buy home owner produced power or rewarded by being able to buy it cheaper then other sources.
For discussions sake lets consider a household that uses 500 KWH per month and is presently billed $0.20 /KWH or $100 a month. And lets say the power company pays for it's power on average $0.10/KWH but has to pay $0.15/KWH for peaking power in periods of high demand. Also there are line maintenance crew and material costs when added up amount to $0.05/KWH
The question is whats a fair unsubsidized deal if the home owner wants to go renewable etc. And sell his excess to the power company?
I would propose a schedule that billed the home owner a flat fee for the line maintenance of $25.00 then credited him $0.015 for every KWH he delivered to the system up to his normal usage of 500KWH per month or perhaps to 667KWH?mouth to wipe out the line maintenance fee and then pay him $0.10/ KWH for every KWH dumped into the system after that. One other possibility would be those that had batteries or other storage systems that could deliver during peak demand periods ( at will) where they could be credited with $0.15 per KWH.
Now the question is where would such an unsubsidized system be viable when you plug in the actual numbers instead of my nice round figures?

[Plantagenet]

I'm hoping for a candidate with the guts to end the federal ethanol subsidies----a failed alternative energy program that the data shows actually uses more energy from oil then it produces in ethanol---and the federal money all goes to big agribiz and oil refiners anyway..

It sure isn't going to be Hillary----she flip flopped to supporting ethanol subsidies in 2008.


End the ethanol subsidy scam now!