Re: US Leads Worldwide Energy Initiative

Great news on the Europe group
Who cares a *** about the US nowadays ?
Oh, americans ?
OK then, let them play with themselves


"John Kulp" <john_kulp@xxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit dans le message de news:48188472.172159762@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From the NY Times:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy
policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy
of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away.
Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to
suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for
this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is
money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi
Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas
tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China,
increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our
contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we'll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs.
Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend
precious tax dollars burning it up on the way to the beach rather than
on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what
energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as
the true American energy policy today: Maximize demand, minimize
supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here's what's scary: our problem is so much worse than you think.
We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to
shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you
want to discourage gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars - and
you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage - new,
renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been
bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to
stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to
encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so
poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last
December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy
production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and
solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up.
At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power
innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip
back down again which often happens - investments in wind and solar
would still be profitable. That's how you launch a new energy
technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without
subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by
taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he
would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush - showing
not one iota of leadership refused to get all the adults together in a
room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a
20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run
two years.

It's a disaster," says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of
the biggest wind-power developers in America. Wind is a very
capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready
to take 'Congressional risk.' They say if you don't get the
[production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more
turbines and build projects.

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar
Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point where
the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics that
it would turn its back on the next great global industry clean power
but that's exactly what is happening. If the wind and solar credits
expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000
jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion
worth of investments that won't be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost
manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America's premier
solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest
factory in the former East Germany 540 high-paying engineering jobs
because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has
not.

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy
technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. Last year, we
were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for
overseas markets.

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest
energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious
the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent
way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

.

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