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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (245889)	4/7/2002 5:24:22 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Most galling for some is that the U.S. pioneered many of the key wind and solar technologies finding commercial success today. Notes Hal Harvey in frustration: "We paid to create wind and solar power, and we have been giving it away." Some of it, though, is coming back. Big Danish firms such as Vestas are building turbine factories in the U.S. The two largest solar-device manufacturers on American soil are British-owned BP Solar and German-owned Siemens. Ownership may be foreign, but American workers benefit. European and Japanese renewable-energy firms have prospered in part thanks to citizen commitment and government subsidies far more generous than those available to U.S. firms. A greater advantage for the foreign firms, however, is the higher price charged in their home countries for electricity generated by fossil fuels. Governments in Europe and Japan heavily tax oil, gas and coal to capture some of the hidden costs--from pollution and global warming to vehicular traffic--of consuming it. In the U.S., solar and wind energy have looked less attractive--at least until recently when fuel-generated electricity prices spiked for some customers in California to more than 25[cents] a kw-h. In Britain, the fuel tax-driven rise in electricity costs helped encourage Sainsbury's in March to refrigerate part of a food-storage depot in East Kilbride, Scotland, with electricity generated by a towering, 213-ft.-tall wind turbine. Sainsbury's also powers the refrigerators on some of its delivery trucks through solar panels on the vehicles' roofs. Denmark's government used to subsidize the installation of wind turbines but abolished the program in 1989, when wind power was regarded as fully competitive with electricity produced from heavily taxed fossil fuels. The global situation today in some ways compares to the decade after the 1973 oil embargo, when fuel prices soared. Americans suddenly wanted smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles. The Japanese, who had been building such cars for years, won lucrative market share and customer loyalty that U.S. producers have never entirely regained. Now as then, the affected U.S. companies are debating not only corporate strategy but also the appropriate role for government. While the Bush Administration's energy policy tilts toward traditional oil and coal interests, many renewable-energy entrepreneurs believe that global political and market forces are now on their side--and that their technologies have developed to the point where they can win, even on a playing field that is canted against them. Joseph Mahler, chief financial officer of FuelCell Energy, a Danbury, Conn., firm that builds relatively small but highly efficient and pollution-free power plants, says his factories are expanding production rapidly. Many buyers fear California-style blackouts, and he worries more about meeting demand than about whether the U.S. government tries to help Entire Article at ... time.com