Senator Clinton: Investing in Renewable Energy
I mentioned the Walmart etahnol article and Senator Clintons' clean energy article last night. Lowfloat posted the Walmart one, here is the Clinton Washington DC article.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a stand by introducing legislation to create a "Strategic Energy Fund" to help pay for the clean energy transition. It would raise more than $50 billion to fund research, development and deployment of energy technologies that will reduce America's oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions.
The Strategic Energy Fund will move America toward the goal of producing 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 by extending the production tax credit for generating electricity from wind and other renewable sources for 10 years.
It calls for more efficient vehicles on the road by doubling the consumer tax breaks for hybrids, clean diesel, and other advanced vehicles, and creating a tax incentive for fleet owners to purchase more efficient vehicles.
The proposal would speed the development of cellulosic ethanol by providing loan guarantees for the first billion gallons of commercial production capacity, and providing $1 billion for research.
To speed infrastructure conversion, it calls for increasing the availability of "E85" fuel pumps to 50 percent of gas stations by 2015 by providing gas station owners with a 50% tax credit for the cost of installing pumps.
And, by creating a $9 billion "Advanced Research Projects Agency," the legislation seeks to accelerate energy research.
At a speech at the National Press Club last Tuesday, where the Senator called for the "Strategic Energy Fund" to help America reach the goal of reducing oil imports by 50 percent by 2025, she pinpointed the nation's impasse between energy and national security:
"Our present system of energy is weakening our national security, hurting our pocketbooks, violating our common values and threatening our children's future. Right now, instead of national security dictating our energy policy, our failed energy policy dictates our national security," said Senator Clinton.
The proposed legislation also places a temporary fee on major oil company profits that exceed a 2000-2004 profit baseline. The fee would be in place for two years, and companies could offset their fee by investing in refinery capacity, ethanol production, or electricity generation from wind and other renewable sources. In addition, the proposal eliminates oil company tax breaks that the companies have said they don't need, and ensures that oil companies pay their fair share of royalties for drilling on public lands.
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Comments:
Some of Senator Clinton's comments make sense, but her statement about 8 million barrels of oil per day, replaced (I guess
with ethanol or biofuels) is not realistic - especially with corn. To produce that many barrels of ethanol from corn would require us to use all the land area from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico - two states wide. Even using switchgrass, which is much more area efficient, would require all the area in Colorado and Wyoming. Plus, the processing of that much corn is a logistics impossibility.
What the Senator is proposing is what this country needs to get moving now toward energy self-sufficiency responsibly. We have so far lacked political will to do anything much besides give more tax breaks to the oil, coal and nuclear industries. I think we could relegate the oil, coal, and nuclear industries to footnotes in the history books, if we really wanted to. A big pat on the back to the Senator for having the fortitude to stand up and say what needs to be said. I hope this is not an isolated thing on her part.
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