For political and long term strategic reasons this is not the best time for pushing for tax credits for green energy. The main foci of the next Congress will be jobs, the national debt, and the overall economic situation. Green jobs are not the key to creating the 14 million jobs we need to get to 5.5% unemployment by 2020, which is a reasonable guess for when we will finally be out of the recession.

There is massive structural unemployment in the country and putting up wind mills and solar farms won’t solve this. However, training people and helping the development of skills toward future energy systems could help move things along with a far more long term perspective.

Pushing for short term advantage with the false argument that green jobs will help get a large chunk of Americans to work could end up tainting the green energy industry in a very bad way in the public eye.

We are also facing down a tsunami of debt based mostly on Medicare, Medicaid and social security, but with a lot of other things mixed in, like the DOD and other discretionary budgets. You may want to look at some of these from the Concord Coalition: http://www.concordcoalition.org/presentations. You may also want to look at the movie IOUSA: http://www.iousathemovie.com/. If that is not sufficient wake up then maybe this could help: http://www.iousathemovie.com//. The total amount of debt we are facing also includes debts built on future obligations via entitlements for medical care and more to the tune of about $54 trillion and counting. The economy is in sour shape and the economies of some of our major trading partners, such as the EU, are even in worse shape. Note the sovereign debt crisis in the Euro zone and how that could be growing and going on for some time – and affect the US. The recent report out of the President’s Fiscal Commission should also be a strong shot of reality for some: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-20111201-DeficitCommissionReport.pdf . These are the issues of concern to the American people and will be the issues of most debate in the next Congress.

Energy and environment issues will be sent to the backstage for a while. This is unfortunate given our needs for better energy and environmental legislations. It is also unfortunate that our leaders have not connected how energy production could help the fiscal deficit, especially with offshore oil drilling, certainly a taboo to some on this list, but a possible source of trillions of dollars of revenue to the government in the next decades. These trillions could also be used and redirected toward developing wind, solar, etc toward our needed energy transitions in the longer run.

We need to get practical. We need sources of revenue beyond taxation and nobody seems to be looking at these. We need creative thinking, but we just are getting the same old dry, dusty and worn out theories of how to get out of a recession. This one is different. We are also in the midst of peak oil kicking in at the same time. Energy issues and the economy are intimately intertwined, but not in the way some may think, such as “we need subsidies and tax breaks to survive”.

Maybe we need invention and hard work to produce a new energy future that does not require tax breaks and subsidies to cover for economic inadequacies of insufficiently developed technological answers. Alexander Graham Bell did not have a government gravy train to keep his ideas going, nor did Mr. Edison. Many of the great inventors of the past did not need tax breaks and subsidies from governments. Actually for many of them such breaks likely never came to mind. They did not exist.

There is a moral hazard to the assumption that all new ideas need propping up. What about the good old and time that flourished without these? The time for hard work is now. The time for creativity and invention is now. The time to stop whining for subsidies and tax breaks is now. The time to roll up our sleeves, all of us that are looking to a better energy future, and make sure it happens independent of the band-aids from the government that may actually push us to make the wrong decisions on what are the best energy sources for the future. Competition is good not only for the economy, but also for the future of energy. Let the games begin. Get the funding from the private sector, which will be far more careful and vet better the ideas they will support than some lobby-pecked bureaucrats.

Given the economic, debt and deficit situations we face the gravy train of energy subsidies and tax breaks is all but finished for some time to come. So one should invent, work hard to focus on private sector funding and support.

Washington finds itself at a precipice where Congress and the White House are dangerously dizzy from a confusing alphabet soup of multiple messages from multiple players in the renewable fuels sector. We need to have a different conversation.

The game changing opportunities are real as the advanced biofuels industry offers to help solve the country's current energy problems by building better fuels and start putting Americans back to work. Our industry is not seeking a lifetime of public policy support, but short-term, pragmatic incentives that will provide potential investors the certainty they need to make long-term investments, and lowering the costs including large-scale manufacturing facilities.

Let’s keep in mind that unlike the electric automobile industry, we do not need to build and replace an entire fleet of cars for every American to make a significant difference. Unlike the wind and solar industry, we do not need to build an entire grid to bring clean power to market.

A little dose of tough love, we are doing something wrong as an industry when the solar, wind and geothermal industries have access to 1603, which is an investment tax credit, but as an advanced biofuel, the federal government says no thank you.

Let’s start this new conversation by acknowledging that there are many technology platforms with the potential to deliver scalable, economically sustainable and environmentally friendly biofuels. There are various benefits that each technology brings to the table. Some are lower in carbon intensity, some are cheaper in production, some are fungible in today's infrastructure. All of these technologies have a role to play in creating more energy diversity, environmental sustainability and greater economic prosperity for America and countries around the world.

Recently, the Advanced Biofuels Association (ABFA), Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and the Algal Biomass Organization (ABO) started a first of its kind conversation in an effort to develop a set of fundamentals that we can agree on as an industry.

We have a real generation-defining moment to grow an economically viable, job producing industry that provides multiple benefits to America by backing out foreign oil while building better fuels for our nation and our environment.

The answer to this question is best addressed by looking at the issue another way: By when do we wish to have renewable energy be self sufficient from a market perspective? In order for renewables to be a concrete, lasting part of our overall energy mix they will need to be self sustaining on their own merits. Not due to some greater authority’s view of who should win and who should lose.

We must remember that at the turn of the last century there were many forms of self-powered vehicles on the market, including spring powered, steam powered, and even electric powered autos on the road. Once the energy storage and power density of gasoline proved to be superior to the alternatives available at that time, the gasoline fueled internal combustion engine became the standard. But, would it have been a mistake to offer tax credits and grants to, let’s say, the spring power system? We can only imagine a fleet of clockwork-like cars buzzing around. Maybe that would be a good thing: No fossil fuels consumed.

A fully developed, self sustaining market for renewable sources of energy can’t exist until the underlying technologies can compete head to head with alternative energy sources sans tax breaks or other subsidies. Still, there is an allure to either keeping or modifying the current level of subsidies so as to enhance the relative market position of renewable technologies as they exist today if for no other reason than to keep us from stumbling backwards in time to an even greater level of use of nonrenewable energy sources. Do we really want to be energy independent? If so, it would appear that the full stop, free market approach might not help in moving us toward our goal at a faster pace than the one which got us to where we are now – after all, it took about 100 years to get to the level of development we now enjoy (including the global infrastructure that had to be developed to explore, develop, and consume our fossil fuels at the rate we do now in such a ubiquitous manner). Given the current motivation behind our newly developed urgency – we are warming our world and at the same time consuming our legacy energy supply at very fast rates – a program that doesn’t deliver something we can point to today as achieving even a modest goal will be deemed a failure. And, if there is one thing most Americans can agree upon, it’s that is we do not want to be associated with failure. Furthermore, our political brethren would add, “not on my watch”.

So, we have a short term dilemma: If we maintain the subsidies, we will at least keep to our new status quo. And, if we do not maintain the subsidies we run the risk of falling back into old habits and possibly missing some great opportunity for a real and lasting, successful technology or process, as yet unidentified, that can solve our long term problems. It seems like the old expression “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” might apply here. So, let’s not sink long range plans by focusing on short term budget problems.

To encourage a competitive renewable energy industry in the U.S., one that can compete with heavily subsidized programs in China, Japan and India, the U.S. needs policy incentives that both pull deployment and demand and push domestic manufacturing. That means we need federal incentives including manufacturing tax credits, grant programs for deployment, a federal renewable electricity standard with teeth and low cost financing for renewable energy.

Developing a strong and stable clean tech industry in the U.S. requires us to shift our thinking from one policy answer or the other to E. all of the above. We need to explore low pollution forms of natural gas and encourage the development of solar and wind farms through tax credits. We need to encourage our states to increase their own renewable electricity standards while we wait for a national one. And we need to encourage policymakers, businesses and consumers to demand companies, products and policies that reduce our carbon footprint.

In the midst of a recession we may have to settle for B or C. But that doesn’t mean these policies aren’t a large part of the comprehensive solution. In the short-term extending the successful Treasury Grant Program and a manufacturing tax credit will do much to encourage the continued growth of emerging clean technology. Likewise, increased federal procurement of renewable energy will help lower clean energy costs. But it also doesn’t mean we don’t need A and D - and likely the rest of the alphabet.

The 1603 Treasury Grant Program has been without a doubt one of the best returns on taxpayer investment and justifies a two-year extension from Congress.

A little background on the program; solar project developers have often relied on tax equity financiers to infuse cash into their projects. This was a mutually beneficial proposition. Most project developers did not have taxable income and consequently, using the solar investment tax credit was impossible. So to convert the tax credit to cash that they could use in the development of a project, developers sought out investors that did have a tax appetite. These investors were firms that had other tax obligations that the investment tax credit would help offset. In this arrangement, everybody won. Developers had cash to build projects and tax equity financiers were able to utilize the tax credit.

However, the financial crisis in late 2008 wiped out most of the players in the tax equity market. The 1603 program remedied this by giving developers the flexibility to convert the tax credit into an upfront grant. The program was originally created for twenty months with the thought that this would give the financial markets time to recover. This has not happened and there is still a significant lack of tax equity investors. A two-year extension would bridge the gap between the lack of tax equity and developers until the economy recovers.

The 1603 program has been a primary driver of solar’s record growth in 2010. So far, the Treasury 1603 Program has helped move forward more than 1,100 solar projects in 42 states. It has helped create more than 20,000 new solar jobs (this does not include tens of thousands more jobs in other renewable sectors). A report on the impact of the extension of the TGP by EuPD Research projected that a 2-year extension of the program would create 65,000 new U.S. solar jobs and 5,100 megawatts of solar capacity – enough to power more than 1 million households. In short, we need to keep job creating programs like the 1603 Treasury Grant Program running until our economy fully recovers.

(These comments were submitted by Sean Garren, Clean Energy Advocate for Environment America.)

The 111^th Congress should not adjourn for the year before extending an important program that helps clean our air and protect our health through incentives for clean, renewable energy. Wind, solar and geothermal, among other renewable energy industries, have been a bright light in an otherwise dim economy these past few years. The public health and environmental benefits, as well as tens of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in investment that have been generated by these growing clean, renewable energy resources would not exist if not for investments like the Treasury Grant Program.

This program has been extraordinarily successful. To date, more than 1,300 renewable projects have utilized the program. Many of these projects would have stalled without the grants they received because of the lack of adequate financing from the Wall Street collapse. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the Treasury Grant Program saved more than 55,000 jobs in the wind industry alone. Within the solar industry, the program has supported roughly 20,000 U.S. jobs through more than 1,100 projects across 40 states. One such project, the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Florida, created nearly 400 jobs during its construction, and will cut air pollution in Florida for years to come.

Absent of a long term commitment to renewable energy, like a renewable electricity standard, we must at the very least extend the Treasury Grant Program for another two years in order to continue this growth and continue to compete in the international market for clean energy technologies. With the program set to expire in just a month’s time, action on this critical investment is urgently needed. It would be unconscionable for the 111^th Congress to leave without extending this program, thus dimming the lights for clean energy.

A clear and sustaining market, more than any single standard, grant or tax credit, will drive renewable energy development in the U.S. As in every other economy in the world, the right public policies will drive that market – which means in the next month Congress must enact the strongest, most supportive, long-term policies it can. Fortunately it has several opportunities to do so, through the tax code and via the bipartisan RES bill. We must show the world that our country is a smart place to put the billions of dollars American and global investors will spend on clean energy in the coming years.

They call it a lame duck, not a dead one, for a reason. Although skepticism remains high that the Senate will address renewable electricity standard legislation in the upcoming session, there remains a case for optimism. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) continues to press forward on the bill he co-authored with Senator Brownback (R-K.S.). The lead authors are joined by 33 other Senators as cosponsors, including five Republicans.

Even if the Senate fails to pass an RES during a contentious lame duck session, it must extend the highly successful tax credit reimbursement program created by section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, along with the 48(c) manufacturing tax credit – two vital incentives that have provided some semblance of tax parity between the renewable sector and fossil fuel industries. These policies have driven real investment in the renewable energy industry here in the U.S. After the stimulus was passed, Iberdrola Renewables alone committed to investing up to $6 billion here between 2010 and 2012.

Beyond enticing investors and providing a more even playing field, however, these incentives have created and saved jobs even during the height of the recession. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Section 1603 generated or saved more than 55,000 American jobs in the wind industry alone. If we let these incentives expire, the U.S. will sacrifice the potential to create an additional 100,000 jobs, according to a recent report by the U.S. Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance authored by clean energy experts at Deutsche Bank and GE.

The renewable energy industry – which is booming in the EU and China – has not reached its full potential in America because our stuttering, start-stop policy measures do little to boost investor confidence. If the U.S. actually does want to attract the jobs and investment dollars that will flow to attractive markets in the coming years, our national leaders need to act clearly, now. The RES is one clear signal, as is extension of incentives that to bring those jobs and dollars to America.

I continue to believe that a robust renewable energy standard, which requires utilities to meet a portion of their energy demand through renewable energy, is the most efficient way to help transition our economy to clean energy sources. More than half of U.S. states have renewable energy standards, which have proven to be an effective and popular driver of renewable energy projects.I am confident that we will eventually adopt a national renewable energy standard.

In the meantime, targeted tax credits can help level the playing field for the renewable energy industry. The growing wind, solar, geothermal, and wave energy industries compete with more traditional forms of energy, such as natural gas, nuclear power, and coal, which have been receiving tax breaks and other government subsidies for decades. The biggest oil companies, for example, will enjoy at least $35 billion in tax breaks over the next five years. Many of these fossil tax credits, some of which go as far back as the early 1900s - like the expensing of tangible drilling costs - are permanent, which tax credits for renewables are temporary. As global companies, they also stand to reap subsidies offered in many other countries around the world. The International Energy Agency recently reported that fossil fuel consumption subsidies totaled $312 billion in 2009 alone. Does the highly profitable and technologically mature fossil fuel industry really need this government support? Shifting scarce government resources to renewable energy projects will not only help clean sources of energy compete, but will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction, manufacturing, installation, electrical, and other industrial sectors. It will also help keep us competitive with China and other international competitors, who are making significant investments in clean energy technologies.

Tax credits to promote renewable energy projects have had strong bi-partisan support from the beginning. The Energy Policy Act of 1992, which created the renewable production tax credit, passed 381 to 37. Beyond the benefits of cleaner air and energy security, each state can benefit economically by developing the renewable energy industry. In fact, significant renewable energy construction developments are underway in every state in the union. Unfortunately, and despite these bi-partisan origins, federal support for renewable energy has been far from consistent.

To make matters worse, many analyses of the “cost” of supporting renewable energy does not account for the “costs” of supporting the fossil fuel industry. Beyond the direct and indirect tax incentives provided to the fossil fuel industry, that industry passes significant environmental and security externalities onto our citizens. Many of the costs associated with fossil fuels, such as our dependence on foreign oil, health effects of air pollution, and environmental and safety risks associated with mining, are not currently part of the cost equation for these sources. We need to better level the playing field between renewable and fossil energy resources. Tax incentives can help bring new technologies to scale and make them cost competitive with more traditional forms of energy.

The tax credits’ success in supporting renewable energy development can be demonstrated by the “boom and bust” cycle as the credit has expired and then been renewed over time. To head off another “bust” cycle, Congress enacted a grant-in-lieu program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This program allowed renewable energy projects to expand significantly over the past year. The wind industry added a record 10,000 megawatts in 2009, more than twice as much as expected without the program. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the Recovery Act saved at least 40,000 jobs in the wind industry; jobs in construction, engineering, transportation, and manufacturing.

Beltway insiders may disparage the possibility of extending a Recovery Act program, but it’s more important than ever for renewable energy supporters to look past the rhetoric and focus on results. The Recovery Act’s Section 1603 is a great example of how Congress can be flexible and ensure incentives for renewable energy are efficient and effective. This program, for example, allowed Iberdrola Renewables to leverage $975 million worth of grant money into as much as $6 billion worth of investments in U.S. renewable energy projects through 2012. The 1,200 megawatts that the company currently has in the construction phase across the country would not have been started without the market certainty that Section 1603 provided.

I don’t buy the premise that renewable energy needs “saving.” This is the direction our country is headed. The question is how quickly and how efficiently we get there.

Surely, there are nascent forms of renewable energy that could stand to benefit from tax credits. America’s thriving corn ethanol industry – which now accounts for half of all ethanol produced around the globe and enjoys booming exports to other countries – isn’t one of them.

Since 1980, the industry has benefited from trade protection and $45 billion in taxpayer dollars, the purpose of which has always been to incentivize the use of American-made ethanol by American consumers. Recent reports from CNN Money and Financial Times suggest that some of this money is even subsidizing exports, which means that American taxpayers are paying hard earned money to lower prices at the pump for Europeans and other drivers around the world.

Bipartisan opposition to the costly and unnecessary ethanol tariff and subsidies is making it increasingly likely that they will expire on December 31st. Last week, leading conservative Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) joined former Vice President Al Gore in calling for ethanol policy reform. Today’s release of a bipartisan Dear Colleague letter from Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) brought even greater evidence that ending the ethanol tariff and subsidies is “something we can all agree on.” The letter, signed by 17 Democrats and Republicans from across the country, calls for an end to policies that are “fiscally irresponsible and environmentally unwise,” and says “The tariff on ethanol makes our country more dependent on foreign oil […] Eliminating or reducing the ethanol tariff would diversify our fuel supply, replace oil imports from OPEC countries with ethanol from our allies, and expand our trade relationships with democratic states.”

These policies probably made sense in 1980 when the corn ethanol industry was nascent, and American consumers were looking for relief at the pump. But 30 years later, when everyone is benefitting from American taxpayer dollars except taxpayers themselves, the time has come to remove the industry’s training wheels and promote market competition.

New research from the heart of the farm belt provides a convincing economic case for eliminating the ethanol tariff and subsidies. A new report by Bruce A. Babcock, director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) and a professor of economics at Iowa State University, finds that extension of the two policies would have stark consequences for taxpayers and food prices – while allowing them to expire would have no significant impact on the ethanol economy.

Why? Because of a robust government mandate to blend ethanol with gasoline, the $6 billion dollar per year subsidy does very little to stimulate additional demand. In a letter sent yesterday to congressional leadership, nearly 60 groups ranging from FreedomWorks to Friends of the Earth agreed: “At a time of spiraling deficits, we do not believe Congress should continue subsidizing gasoline refiners for something that they are already required to do by the Renewable Fuels Standard […] Letting the VEETC expire will help control deficit spending without in any way hindering the development of advanced biofuels […]”

Still not convinced that the corn ethanol industry can survive without tax credits and trade protection? Just talk to executives from the third and fourth largest ethanol producers in the U.S., who said recently that eliminating tax credits would not hinder industry development. In September, Todd Becker, CEO of Green Plains Renewable Energy, said “If we lost the VEETC, we don’t necessarily see a big decrease in the use of ethanol.” Two months prior, Gene Edwards, Executive Vice President for Corporate Development and Strategic Planning for Valero, called the ethanol tax credit “almost irrelevant” and said “You would not see blending back down one barrel because of the credit being gone.”

By allowing 30 years of ethanol subsidies and trade protection to expire as scheduled on December 31^st, government leaders will be helping to lower fuel prices, save taxpayers money and provide Americans with greater access to the economic, environmental and energy security benefits of advanced renewable fuels like sugarcane ethanol.

Currently our nation’s nascent alternative energy industry is being buoyed by a system of tax credits and energy grants that are set to expire at the end of the year. Absent a price on carbon, these incentives are needed to keep the new market’s pulse from stopping.

It may be that extending these credits will be all the support for alternative energy that will come from a federal government heading for gridlock, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking we have done enough, or done the right thing.

These kinds of small-bore measures are not a very efficient way to transition to cleaner fuels—dollar for dollar, the American public won’t get as much out of these efforts as they would a long-term, market-based approach to clean energy. Tax credits and grants cannot drive the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to make a significant shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

The hard truth is that without market-based mechanism like cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, we will not have a financial incentive to adequately stimulate the level of investment needed to develop the renewables industry to compete with fossil fuels or other nations’ cheaper alternative energy exports.

So while it may make sense to keep measures like tax credits and grants in place as an interim measure, the U.S. alternative energy market will never truly take off until we commit to pricing carbon.

The fundamental problem is that without a strong market price signal in the form of a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax, the task of spurring innovation is left in the hands of the political process which allows for too much special interest influence, and insufficient economic, scientific, and engineering information.

Instead, innovation should be left to the millions of investors, managers, engineers, and workers who can most efficiently figure out the best ways to reduce emissions and develop and utilize alternative energy.

Well-designed market-based mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will help to bring more private resources to bear on the renewable energy market, which will spur the innovation necessary to bring down the cost of switching to cleaner fuels.

Policies that would accomplish this, like a carbon cap, are eminently cost-benefit justified and, although some might wish it weren’t true, are among the few ways we will make renewable energy more competitive. Without some tool to price carbon, we will not be able to genuinely address the risks posed by climate change.

Tax incentives, energy grants, and regulatory standards may be helpful as interim steps, but they are piecemeal and always less efficient than an economy-wide market-based approach. For now, they can be viewed as bridges towards a broader policy. But unless they are followed by an effective carbon price, they will be bridges to nowhere.

The geothermal, wind and solar industries will still be here after the lame duck session is completed, but what Congress does, or does not do, may answer several questions, in particular: How fast will renewable energy grow? How much of that growth will be in the United States?

Governmental policies have intervened in energy markets for decades and looking back to tally up how much subsidy one technology or another has received only underscores that there has not been a free market in energy for many decades. But, let’s not kid ourselves, renewable energy has not been the big winner in the subsidy contest.

With support from federal and state policies over the past few years, we have seen a period of sustained growth in renewable energy in the United States. Renewable technologies can provide substantial power and energy for the future with continued support. While renewable energy’s contribution may be comparatively small today, the underlying energy resources are virtually unlimited, low-polluting, have low fuel costs and are widely available across the nation and the world.

Renewable technologies are also capital intensive, which means they often make economic sense only over time because they trade-off higher up-front capital costs for lower life-time fuel costs. If they cost more up front why would an investor put their money into renewable energy? Some may share the vision that they are the energy technologies of the future, but there is no question that it is also because government incentives make them better investments today.

If America wishes to be the leader in new energy technology, we need to keep building the geothermal, wind and solar projects that are cutting-edge technology. If we wish to attract global investment in building new renewable energy industries, we need to be building these new projects in the United States. Extending federal tax incentives, and the tax credit reimbursement, are simply critical to sustaining growth particularly in this slow economy where investors are sitting on the sidelines and taking few, if any, risks.

Whether the problem is America’s dependence on foreign sources of energy or its continued pollution of the global atmosphere, renewable technologies are an important part of the answer. Supporting the growth of these industries will help spur economic growth, address our energy and environmental problems, and position US renewable industries for leadership in some of the world’s fastest growing markets.

An extension of the renewable energy tax credits is urgently needed to avoid further damage to an industry that has already been hit by the one-two punch of a sluggish economy (reducing electricity demand) and the lack of Congressional action on energy legislation that would provide certainty to investors.

With respect to tax incentives, wind energy needs a level playing field. Our competitors in the fossil fuels industries have tax incentives that are permanent, some of them dating back nearly a century, as well as access to Master Limited Partnerships (MLP’s) that make it easy to use those incentives. By contrast, the wind incentive has been allowed to expire three times in the past 11 years—each time bringing wind development to a standstill—and has been extended only for one- or two-year periods. In addition, wind projects are not eligible for MLP’s.

To put it quite simply, this is not how you build a major new domestic industry capable of providing new manufacturing jobs and revitalizing the hard-pressed rural farming and ranching communities of America’s heartland.

The wind energy industry can install new power plants with a very short lead time, an advantage that has enabled it to survive thus far despite remarkably inconsistent federal energy policy over the past decade. But with soft electricity demand, the challenge is that much greater.

In the short term, the industry needs an extension of its tax incentive. And to provide the foundation for sustained industry growth in the years ahead, it needs the consistent policy (at no cost to the Treasury) that only a Renewable Electricity Standard will provide.

The Federal Government has been pursuing non carbon sources of energy since the first oil embargo in the early 1970s. Oil companies at that time invested private capital in solar energy and photovoltaic cell development. Neither public or private investments have produced an alternative energy source that is commercially viable and that can meet the economic and energy needs of the United States.

Billions of dollars in tax credits and other forms of subsidies have been lavished on wind and solar energy development and yet they remain high cost forms of energy that only survive by subsidies. Proponents get enriched at taxpayer expense. One estimate is that the federal government has given away about $30 billion to promote solar and wind power over the past several decades.

As one analyst put it, what we have today is the Enron model of political capitalism. Instead of companies using their own capital to produce cheaper and lower carbon sources of energy, the green energy market grows by political largesse granted from the halls of Congress. The business plans of these “green” companies are based on Washington subsidies and mandates because they simply can’t compete against traditional sources of energy. What we get from this is the transfer of wealth from taxpayers to promoters of wind and solar, capital investment being misdirected, and human capital is being diverted to mine government tax breaks and subsidies instead of pursuing the technology breakthroughs we will need in future decades.

At a time when the Obama Stimulus Program was supposed to create jobs and jump start a failing economy, it contained a feature that allows wind and solar developers to obtain up to 30% of their costs from the government. The combination of direct cash outlays, loan guarantees, state tax credits, and renewable mandates, guarantee that these so called “alternatives” can’t fail.

A recent White House memo by outgoing National Economic Council chair, Larry Summers, which did not get the press coverage it deserved, made clear that these investments produced high risk and overpriced carbon reductions. The memo demonstrated this with an analysis of a wind facility in Oregon. It concluded that the government was paying 65% of the costs with the equity investors putting up 11% and getting a 30% return.

These alternative energy programs are simply an abuse of the federal government’s authority to tax and spend. In the halls of congress, wishful thinking has replaced hard headed realism.

The negative impact of these tax breaks, subsidies, and mandates becomes increasing clear and painful as unemployment and economic growth continue at unacceptable levels.

It is time to declare an end to the free lunch party and take away the subsidy punch bowl. The well being of our economy and the generations who will follow deserve nothing less. As the Obama Deficit Commission and others are making painfully clear, the current fiscal course is unsustainable. Solving our fiscal crisis will involve tough choices. A good place to start anew would be the billions of dollars in federal subsidies,especially those for sources of energy that don’t make economic or energy sense given the current state of knowledge.

Scientists writing in Science Magazine stated “all renewable suffer form low real power densities” and “are intermittent dispersed sources unsuited to base loaded without transmission, storage, and power conditioning.” At best they are supplements, but inefficient ones at best. Reality dictates that the government stop propping up wind and solar projects and enriching rent seekers and instead invest in a forward looking R&D program.