Global Warming
What problems can the U.S. solve
with renewable energy?
Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have stopped
talking about the subject. Their energy proposals now target
lower costs, energy security and job creation from domestic
production. That doesn’t mean they no longer worry about climate
change; they just decided it would be politically infeasible to
adopt greenhouse-gas policies directly. Instead, they are
betting they can push the climate agenda indirectly, by focusing
on renewable energy as the solution to other problems.
Four years ago, both presidential candidates acknowledged
the threat of climate change and endorsed vigorous policies to
move away from fossil fuels. The U.S. seemed on the verge of
committing to greenhouse-gas reductions and developing
alternative-energy technologies. Since then,
casque dr dre, most Republican
leaders have become skeptical about global warming and now
oppose any major policy response.
While it’s tempting to roll all our energy challenges into
one,
dolce and gabbana, the problems and the solutions are numerous and distinct.
If your goal is just to maintain moderate energy costs or
achieve greater energy security, your friendly neighborhood
fossil-fuel producers have the answers.
Similar new techniques are even improving U.S. oil
production. More than half of the oil we use is now produced
domestically and that share is likely to rise over the next
decade. Technologies for converting coal and natural gas to a
gasoline equivalent are also advancing.
Economists of all political persuasions agree that the free
market, by itself, won’t address unregulated emissions that
damage the environment. Government policy is necessary and the
most efficient policy is pricing those emissions. By doing so,
casque beats,
we give incentives to develop all possible solutions -- solar,
wind, biofuels, nuclear power, improved energy efficiency and
even capturing emissions from power plants and sequestering them
underground.
What once was bipartisan agreement on the need to reduce
greenhouse gases has been recast as a political food fight.
Advocates of renewable energy feel cornered by the gridlock in
Congress and waning interest in climate change. But arguing that
renewable energy is the best way to address economic or security
concerns isn’t the way to prevail. It just focuses the debate on
issues where fossil fuels are almost sure to win.
The employment argument also falls short. During a
recession,
dolce gabbana, it makes sense for the government to promote job
creation with subsidies and federal expenditures,
michael kors, some of which
may be targeted at specific industries. In the longer run,
however, economists are almost unanimous that the economy
creates more and better jobs when companies operate in the most
cost-effective way. If we don’t count the cost of environmental
damage, that’s likely to mean carbon-based energy for
generations.
If conservatives continue to reject carbon pricing -- even
though cap and trade was the brainchild of mainstream
Republicans -- then subsidizing green power is probably the best
option. It is a more costly way to rein in greenhouse gases, as
I explain in recent research. But if similar subsidies for all
low-carbon technologies maintain a level playing field, such an
exchange is still likely to be a major step in fighting climate
change.
Abundant Resources
To contact the editor responsible for this article:
Max Berley at
mberley@bloomberg.net Some politicians argue that the government needs to invest
in alternative energy because it’s the next economic frontier.
The evidence doesn’t suggest such initiatives build a
sustainable industry. In Spain,
puma, renewables took off during the
last decade, but the industry crumbled in 2009 when subsidies
were halted during the country’s fiscal crunch. Germany made a
big push in solar photovoltaic technology with subsidies more
than five times the cost of conventional power generation, and
manufacturing of PV systems exploded. Then China got into solar-
panel production and German firms’ share of domestic PV sales
fell to 27 percent in 2010, from 77 percent in 2008.
Those market incentives need to be augmented by support for
the scientific research that will discover the next generation
of low-carbon technologies. The federal government supports
basic research in medicine, telecommunications and electronics,
and needs to nurture energy technologies in the same way. As a
share of gross domestic product, energy gets far less support
than these other areas.
We need to encourage all these technologies because we
don’t yet know which will be cheapest or most scalable. Those
incentives,
chaussures puma, however, should be even-handed, not the patchwork of
mandates, subsidies and tax breaks for favored technologies that
we have today. Pricing greenhouse gases helps all low-carbon
alternatives without putting a thumb on the scale.
(Severin Borenstein is E.T. Grether Professor of Business
and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business at the
University of California,
michael kors outlet, Berkeley. He is co-director of the
Energy Institute at Haas and director of the U.C. Energy
Institute, and a contributor to Business Class. The opinions
expressed are his own.)
The only compelling argument for policies to boost
renewables and reduce fossil fuels is the environment. The vast
majority of climate scientists believe that carbon-dioxide
emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary cause of
climate change. Most believe there is a real risk that the
changes could cause major ecosystem disruptions,
supra shoes, including more
frequent droughts, floods, hurricanes and wildfires, as well as
rising sea levels,
air jordan, more conflicts over resources and accelerated
species extinction.
Domestic coal is cheap and plentiful, and likely to remain
so for centuries. Natural gas is more abundant by the month.
With new drilling technologies, there probably is enough
moderately priced domestic gas to last for decades.
Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.
To contact the writer of this article:
Severin Borenstein at
borenste@haas.berkeley.edu Sure, the cost of low-carbon energy technologies -- wind,
solar, biofuels and others -- is coming down. But improvements
in technologies for extracting fossil fuels are making it harder
for renewables to reach cost parity. Scientific breakthroughs
are hard to predict: still, the most likely scenario is that
domestically produced fossil fuels will be the lowest-cost way
to meet most of our energy needs and achieve greater energy
security for years to come.
It’s a bad bet and likely to backfire. The U.S. needs to
invest in renewable energy, but not because that would be a good
way to address energy security, affordability or unemployment.
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