I don't have a problem with a reasonable amount of government funding of R&D and enabling a certain amount of development of alternative energy. But if alternative energy technologies are going to take off and become a major source of power, there are going to have to be breakthroughs that allow the alternatives industries to start growing on their own unaided for economic reasons. We're not going to be able to force them into bigtime success simply by providing them ever larger subsidies, mandates, etc.
As to the national security - domestic vs imports issue, I've said before the simplest way to deal with that would be an import tax on oil and gas from sources we don't have a free regional trade relationship with (it makes no sense to tax imports from Canada and Mexico). Set the tax at say $5-10 a barrel from places other than MX and CN. This would encourage domestic production, discourage imports and give the government a source of revenue to fund R&D, refund to the public, whatever.
For industries with high barriers to entry like energy
I don't think the barriers are high. There are people willing to buy electric cars - you claim to be one. There are laws requiring electric grid owners to buy power generated by the public via solar, wind, biowaste, whatever. No barriers there at all.
, the market tendency is to create monopolies or oligopolies that stifle diversity of products and competition.
There is no monopoly or oligolopy in energy. There are a vast array of companies in the oil, gas, electrical generation and marketing markets. TXU, I mentioned earlier, gets power from natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, and other (presumably burning of timber industry waste). Other places utilities use geothermal or hydro. There are no barriers, no monopolies. No coal companies keeping utilities from using nuclear or natural gas or wind power or hydro or anything. All in all we have a very open and competitive marketplace in energy.
.. lower barriers to entry. There are many ways to do that including subsidies, lowering regulatory barriers and grants for R&D. All of these tools should be used towards renewable energy.
On the contrary as I've shown, examination of what really happens in energy and power markets shows there are no or very low barriers to entry. Subsidies, grants - I guess you could justify them somehow. I don't have a problem with some reasonable level of this, but they're not some magic key that opens the door.
Frankly most subsidies involve political favors for things that are politically popular ... like ethanol, solar, wind ... these have communities of fans who pressure pols to give subsidies. Some of these fans are driven by "likes" ("clean" energy is better than "dirty" energy even though nothing is really clean) but often the fans have money riding on the favored power source - like corn farmers and people based in their communities, Boone Pickens with his natural gas and wind investments (which are related - ng needed as backup for wind), AMD, and even people like you with investments in PWB that you hope will make your grandchildren rich. |
