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Wind Energy Grows 45% in the United States in 2007 |
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Contributed by Jim Elliott
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Saturday, 26 January 2008 |
It is reported by the American Wind Energy Association that wind generation in the United States has grown by 45% in 2007. This amounts to 30% of new generation created in the United States in 2007, the country that doesn't want to join the Kyoto Protocol or respond to climate change.
This reflects a $9 Billion dollar investment and is creating problems
of its own. With such a demand for wind turbines, there is a shortage
of available turbines in 2008. It also creates an opportunity for
those local manufacturers and entrepreneurs to fill the demand and the
local conditions that they have.
In response to this, the U.S.
Congress is debating the future of a bill on alternative energy tax
credits. Currently this program is slated to end at the end of the
year with no intentions to extend the support. The previously enacted
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 recently signed in
Congress does provide $2 Billion dollars in research for alternative
energy. It still pales in comparison to subsidies given the fossil fuel industry.
The Canadian National Round Table on the Environment and the
Economy announced, in their recent report, that the government
"institute a market-based policy that takes the form of an emission tax
or a cap-and-trade system or a combination of the two". Many have
interpreted this as a carbon tax. There would be a carbon tax put on
different fossil fuels dependent on their carbon content, natural gas
being less than gasoline less than coal. They have further supported a "Canada-wide plan, in the earliest possible time frame, that leads to better coordination of complimentary federal, provincial and territorial GHG emission reduction policies aimed at common or shared targets, time frames and actions." (See report)
The emission tax would show us whether we were transfering our fuel sources from the dirty ones to ones that are cleaner and more
efficient. If the initial tax level does not get the intended policy
direction, the tax would be increased to, as President Bush said, stop
us from being "addicted' to oil. The money generated would be
utilized to subsidize or support conversions to cleaner fuels or to
make wind and solar systems less expensive, for instance. It would be
revenue neutral. If everyone was using the most efficient or carbon neutral system or
the best practices we could get, then the tax would be constant or even zero.
This is also seen as an imperative by Richard Heinberg and those
supporters of the peak oil scenerio. With oil supply having peaked or
close to peaking, the supply of cheap oil will continue to decline.
Therefore, they say, we need an "oil depletion protocol" to push our need for the
petroleum down to zero, an eventuality in their future. Supporters have suggested that we need to reduce our use of
fossil fuels by 2% per year and that should be the indicator as to whether there is sufficient economic pressure put on our economy by things like carbon taxes and alternative energy tax credits to get our use of fossil fuels to zero.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 26 January 2008 )
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