Green Is To Cash As Cash Is To Green

Keep an eye on this because the lynch pin is Global Warming, particularly the political climate and any potential carbon taxes to come.

For instance, take one company currently central to Al Gore's latest financial maneuvers - Ausra. Yes, market competitiveness is certainly the key.

Ausra develops and deploys utility-scale solar technologies to serve global electricity needs in a dependable, market competitive, environmentally responsible manner.

But it doesn't currently exist. This is all fine, assuming you buy Gore's obsession with carbon dioxide as being the key to global warming. But if you don't buy it, or it turns out to be a bust, much like other heating and cooling cycles we've seen, you still have some powerful people with a ton of money and political clout positioning themselves to make billions of dollars while the average consumer pays higher fees and taxes when it comes to energy.

Still, a supportive political climate, public anxiety over climate change, and the expectation that carbon emissions will eventually face some kind of cap or tax all work in Ausra's favour.

If this were about war fighting, make no mistake, Gore and his cronies would quite simply be war profiteers. If Gore is wrong, as many scientists think, than all he is creating is a get richer vehicle for the already liberal and rich, wrapping it up in a Green wrapper and fueling it with the average taxpayer's sweat.

Comments

[ajacksonian]

Dear me! Austrians believe that there will be some way to cap Chinese emissions?

Lotsa luck! If you thought the US, which didn't sign Kyoto and is yet further along towards meeting its goals than other industrialized Nations, won't submit to such global nannying, then China will teach folks about this strange notion that such a thing will not be done there.... until their Dickensian system of bad loans, huge debt load and local pollution cause the industrial sector to implode. Then it has a good chance at 'capping emissions'. Time for the global greenies to get off their high horse about the US and start looking at China. Or start capping their own co2 emissions by talking less.

[seekeronos]

Chinese industrial collapse?

That is tantalizingly frightening and fraught with hope at the same time.

Hopefully, they won't be thinking too much of this as they produce a dozen nuclear subs and aircraft carriers per year kitted out with the latest stealth and standoff capabilities c/o the Clinton Connection.

[Lala]

I was watching Glenn Beck last night, he has a new book coming out called "An Inconvenient Book". BTW Beck believes in global warming, just not that we are causing it.

He had on the guy who started the Weather Channel and he was asking why scientists are not coming out against this global warming being caused by mankind bs. The guy (I'm too lazy to look up his name right now) said that they have indeed come out but the MSM are not publicizing what they have to say.

[IslamoLlama]

Remind me again what you guys have against solar power? Al Gore is a big crazy loon for investing money in solar plants? Burning things is the only way to generate energy because... that's how we do it now and why change?

I'm totally baffled by this natural gravitation to coal, oil, and bio-diesel every time the dreaded Al Gore puts his money where his mouth is.

Are solar plants now a grand evil conspiracy of some sort that I'm unfamiliar with?

[chris]

Jesus didn't use no solar power. Ergo, the 'necks don't need it neither.

Btw, Glenn Beck = Mormon Asshat.

[templar knight]

Uh, evil twins, solar power is TOO EXPENSIVE, costs too much, is not economic, etc. Do you two jerks get it, or am I going too fast for you? What I like, and invest in, and use, is wind energy. But what we need is more infrastructure to support wind, and other forms of alternative energy, including solar.

But solar must get less expensive, and steps are being taken that will decrease the price of solar energy, making it more attractive. But that is further in the future. I'm all for spending more money to make solar less expensive, to create the infrastructure needed to convert solar energy into electricity, and move it past the passive stage, which is not convenient for most Americans, unless you live in the SW.

In my opinion, the single best thing we could do right now in this country would be to make us energy independent. But that means we need to take several steps, and I will be glad to list them, since you asked in a roundabout way:

1. Open up ANWAR for oil and gas exploration with tight controls to prevent any damage to the environment.

2. Relax certain laws, and give tax incentives for building refineries.

3. Offer large tax incentives for anyone who wishes to use solar and/or wind energy to help offset the initial costs of investing in wind or solar.

4. Give utility companies large tax incentives to investigate the feasibility of building solar towers. If feasible, offer incentives to build them.

5. Offer large tax incentives to build wind farms, and the infrastructure necessary to make it viable.

6. Make it easier to build nuclear power plants.

7. Offer tax incentives for fuel cells, solar cells, bio-diesel and other forms of fuels to replace gasoline.

[dumbblonde]

Llama, I don't think anyone here is againt solar power, not even us stooopid 'necks. You don't need to believe in Gore's junk science in order to recognize the benefits of alternative energy.

[dumbblonde]

And also, thi stooopid 'neck has a problem with a hypocrite like Gore profiting financially from the fear he manages to generate with his junk science.

[dumbblonde]

oops. "this"

[IslamoLlama]

"Llama, I don't think anyone here is againt solar power, not even us stooopid 'necks. You don't need to believe in Gore's junk science in order to recognize the benefits of alternative energy."

And yet time and time again, you throw Big Oil cronies in office who continue subsidizing Exxon while they cut research to Universities, private enterprises, and government programs that do solar research. The last energy bill dropped half a billion dollars on US Oil Companies for exploratory drilling. This money was to keep oil prices down. Four years later, it's $3/gal and $40 billion / quarter for major energy companies.

But solar research and solar plants are just too expensive. After all, solar power costs 15-17 cents per kilowatt hour, while conventionally generated electricity is between 5 and 18 cents. Of course, with solar power technology improving (predicted to fall to 11 cents by the end of 2010) and fossil fuel prices... not, I can totally see why we'd want to wait until after fossil costs exceed solar costs before developing any serious solar plants. That makes perfect sense.

I'll ignore the 'junk science' jab, because if you don't believe the CDC, the EPA, the NASA, not to mention Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bear Sterns investors, the various oil companies all racing for newly exposed shipping lanes and oil reserves in previously frozen-over Arctic, private University research, studies commissioned by the House of Lords, the Association of British Insurers, the World Bank, or a myriad of other investigatory bodies, I just don't think you're going to believe anybody.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_global_warming#References

[dumbblonde]

Well, Llama, if solar has the potential to be as profitable as you believe, I'm sure there will be no end of *private* investment money poured into R&D. And that's how it should be.

[dumbblonde]

"3. Offer large tax incentives for anyone who wishes to use solar and/or wind energy to help offset the initial costs of investing in wind or solar."

tk, these are all thoughtful points, but I don't think tax incentives are the answer. Here in CA, tax incentives are/were available to individuals who put in solar systems. So what happened? The price of the system increased by approximately the amount of the supposed tax benefit. At the same time, the tax break is phased out for higher incomes.

Ditto hybrid vehicles and natural gas vehicles. The dealers/manufacturers know the vehicles qualify for tax credits, and they raise the prices accordingly. Again, the tax break is phased out for higher incomes.

I would like to put in solar (can't do wind at this house). I would like to purchase either a hybrid or a NGV with a home filling station. I do not qualify for tax breaks for any of these items, yet I would still have to pay the inflated prices. After doing the math, none of these options make financial sense.

Tax incentives actually prevent competition, and cause prices to be artificially inflated. They give consumers (some of them, anyway) an incentive to buy, but they don't give the manufacturer/dealer an incentive to provide a better product or to price their products competitively.

[templar knight]

Islamoboob, indulge me. How is one to build a "serious solar plant"? I am not aware of a working solar plant anywhere in the World. I know there is a solar tower under construction in Australia, but as far as I know, it is not finished, nor has the technology been proven to work in a large scale plant. But please, indulge me this one time.

[seekeronos]

"--- serious solar plant ---"

Well, the Lenny Bruce Solar Plants just don't seem to get on very well with the rest of the power grid... (*haltingly unfunny cymbal crash*)

TK:

Funny you mention the solar towers. FWIW, the Discovery Channel had a special on a few nights ago about Spain and its small handful of sub-megawatt solar concentrator towers and a small-scale solar turbine tower (the basis of the 50MW concept tower slated for construction in Australia).

I think the junk science angle on AGW is exactly that... junk.

However, if we can see that junk science and green (read: Karl Marx Red) politics divorced from the need to conduct development and research into solar, wind, tidal and geothermal power offer much promise, especially when hydrogen photolysis technologies can be brought online to store truly clean and abundant (water + sunlight) energy.

Show me a free market, Christian conservative Republican leader who supports serious development into non-petroleum derived energy, and I'll show you at least one person among many who will vote for him.