Interesting story on the pitfalls about the move to green power in Spain:
Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.”
Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, had two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain.
Farmers sold land for solar plants. Boutiques opened. And people from all over the world, seeing business opportunities, moved to the city, which had suffered from 20 percent unemployment and a population exodus.
But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.
It would be really refreshing if, instead of repeating this, we learn from their mistakes.
artem1s
you mean like the oil industry which needs to be constantly subsidized by endless wars?
Mike Kay
This was Rahm’s fault.
Robin G
Solar power? That’s some hippie-commie-pinko thing, right? God gave us oil, I saw it on the Olympics!
chowkster
This is going to be a problem for a considerable future. Alternative energy technologies are not yet at a place where they can substitute coal and oil as viable, efficient sources of energy. I might get a lot of flack for saying this, but I agree with Eliot Spitzer that it might be worth exploring the nuclear power option in the meanwhile.
Michael D.
HAHAHA!!
“Learn…”
Funny.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains.
Perry Como
KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS OFF MY SUBSIDIES!
Nim, ham hock of liberty
So…it sounds like if we want to avoid being saddled with the externalized costs of a new industry that internalizes the revenue, we’ll need a regulatory and oversight scheme that ensures new facilities are both needed and efficient.
Hmmm.
YOU KNOW WHO ELSE DID THAT?
Mike Kay
@Robin G:
I read the hippies are complaining that Vancouver was as bad as the Berlin games.
http://deadspin.com/5484575/sportswriter-gil-lebreton-compares-vancouver-2010-to-berlin-1936
What the fuck are they putting in granola these days that creates such victims.
El Cid
Not that we shouldn’t learn lessons from these, but we carry out massive subsidies, direct and indirect, for the petrochemical and nuclear industry, so I hardly think it’s horrific the general notion that a transition to solar power might require subsidies. Those older industries are taken for granted as needing perpetual nourishment, protection, and administration by the nation-state, but we seem to have the notion that better energy supplies should sink or swim immediately.
Mike Kay
@Nim, ham hock of liberty: Hitler?
scav
mmm. Don’t build cheap shoddy stuff using masses of govt. money? Tricky that. Cause it seems to be ok for our team to do it for military reasons but wrong in all other instances.
RSR
learn from? or repeating our own mistakes?
Anyone else remember PECO’s “stranded assets” related to building nuclear power plants? from 1997:
Peco Share Risks Gives Stock A `Sell’
by MARIELLA SAVIDGE, The Morning Call with information from Bloomberg Business News. | May 11, 1997
The risks associated with shares of Peco Energy Co. of Philadelphia make it a good idea to sell the stock…
Despite the low dollar values to which Peco (NYSE:PE) shares have fallen, the company’s stranded asset issues — $6.8 billion associated with the construction of the Limerick nuclear plant — put the company at an extreme disadvantage. Peco wants to pass off the costs to its customers, and the degree to which the state Public Utility Commission will allow that to happen will determine the Peco’s future health, Lammert said.
On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Utility Commission made a preliminary ruling that would allow Peco to bill customers for $1.1 billion of the $3.7 billion it had requested.
http://articles.mcall.com/1997-05-11/business/3147130_1_peco-gpu-energy-nuclear-plant
Brian J
@Mike Kay:
I suspect ACORN (or whatever it’s calling itself now) also had a hand in it.
Mike Kay
@Brian J: I heard they’re calling themselves, Blackwater.
mr. whipple
You just know solar farms will be subsidized. This is Merka.
Ming
Agreed — we should learn from this (as should the Spaniards).
At the same time, I think Spain was smart to venture into this area, and the fact that it attracted industries and people is a sign of the benefits you can gain by taking the lead. And breaking new ground by necessity involves figuring out what does and doesn’t work — if you’re going to be in the lead, you’re bound to have some share of failure.
chopper
of course. in fact, we’ll fuck it up even worse, thanks to our ‘absolute lowest bidder’ mentality.
Nim, ham hock of liberty
@Mike Kay: Correct!
Regulating an industry to ensure that it doesn’t become a public burden is fascist, socialist, and it would make our founding fathers vomit with rage.
Seriously, though….regulation is the lesson to be learned here, right? Good luck with that. All it takes is Glenn Beck frothing about more big government for 30 minutes, and 10 million teabaggers are camped out on the lawns of their representatives’ homes, demanding deregulation of the industry.
Loosely-related: Most of these people can be found in the newly-restored comments to Yahoo news articles. Pick any article that’s remotely political/economy related, and read the comments.
Then weep for the republic.
Brian J
The article doesn’t make it sound like there’s anything particularly outrageous here. Some firms failed because they made unwise investments encouraged by poorly designed incentives, while others, even if they stumbled at first, rebounded because they were redesigned and are now doing well. Isn’t that how a market is supposed to operate?
Generally speaking, I don’t hear many people making the argument that solar energy is, right now, solid enough as an energy source to replace our current sources. I’ve always thought of it as more of a supplement to what we now have more than anything else. Perhaps that will change as the technology becomes better and it becomes easier to harness whatever energy sources are available.
Robin G
@Mike Kay: That was one of the weirder things I’ve read in awhile.
R. Porrofatto
It may well be worth exploring, all the while keeping in mind that one of the big problems with the nuclear industry back in the 80’s and 90’s is that so much of new plant construction became an immensely expensive boondoggle, costing taxpayers and investors millions. (See RSR above for just one example).
Brian J
@Mike Kay:
Which changed its name to the Incredibly Powerful, Superbly Awesome, Freedom-Loving Company for a Secure American Public, right? Right after it received the annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence?
Comrade Jake
Umm, isn’t the basic problem here that there’s not a price attached to carbon? “Efficient green energy” takes on a whole new meaning in the presence of a heavy carbon tax.
beltane
Why not do smaller-scale programs? Two years ago, we installed a solar hot-water system that cut our oil usage by over a third. Instead of blowing the money on stupid granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances, homeowners in Arizona and California could enjoy unlimited hot water without using electricity or propane.
cleek
you can’t make me learn. this is America!
toujoursdan
The problem with all these alternatives is that they still depend on a oil/coil platform to work. One still needs petroleum to mine, transport and process the commodities (uranium, silicon, lithium, etc.), build the solar panels, hydroelectric dams and nuclear plants and dispose of the waste. So they are no where close to replacing oil as a means of powering our economy.
The smart, but radical thing to do is treat oil like the precious limited resource that it is, tax the hell out of private auto/airline use, use the money to build efficient electric based public transportation and high-speed rail networks and direct the rest to agriculture (as it takes 10 oz. of oil to produce 1 oz. of food in our modern corporate based food economy) and for use in alternative energy construction and deployment. Then when oil becomes too scarce to use in our modern economy which may happen within the next 20 years, we’ll have something to fall back on.
We’ll never do this though and when peak oil hits us, things are going to turn ugly.
Mike Kay
@Ming:
That’s the new slogan of the Neo-Cons.
mr. whipple
I can see it now, selling photon futures on the commodity market.
beltane
@Mike Kay: You must have missed the closing ceremonies where William Shatner solemnly reviewed a procession of giant, master-race beavers and mounties. It was exactly like the Looney-Tunes version of Triumph of the Will.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: This should get the firebaggers panties moist.
IOW he will vote against it even if he is the deciding vote. I hope he sleeps better at night knowing children will STILL be denied health insurance after his stand for HCR purity.
PeakVT
we learn from their mistakes.
We don’t even learn from our own mistakes at this point.
chopper
@mr. whipple:
“you see, this new security we’ve invented is really cool. we take sunlight, use a prism to break it down into various colors, or ‘tranches’ as we call them…”
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I absolutely hate Kucinich. He is a preening dickhead.
chopper
@PeakVT:
we don’t even learn from our own successes to keep doing what we did right.
Wilson Heath
The policy is so much easier than people want to make it. Hell, there’s an easy way to get a lot of the bang of a carbon tax without a new tax regime. Kill the subsidizing tax preferences for oil, gas, and coal. Like non-economic depreciation, the option to expense drilling costs instead of having to capitalize them, bonus depletion, and so forth. If the true costs were born by the producers and passed on to the consumers, there would be a level playing field without creating a matching subsidy for the competing industry. Plus, there wouldn’t be any question of the length of the subsidy, like big oil’s emergency tax subsidy going back to the Korean war. (Crisis is still on, of course, since it’s just an armistice and not a peace.)
A level playing field is the best thing for competition. Some subsidy might be necessary to eliminate historic advantage, but have some sense about what’s already tilting the field.
WereBear
@Wilson Heath: I like that idea. Very much.
Keith G
@The Grand Panjandrum: He plans.
Interesting word choice, no?
ChrisS
Oil energy’s incredibly destructive waste stream is indirectly subsidized by everyone, but shhh … solar panels are socialist.
Edward G. Talbot
I think @Wilson Heath has it right – though if you think the insurance companies exerted some influence on healthcare, it’s nothing compared to what the fossil fuel industry would do if faced with tax changes.
Tax details are not something I know a lot about, but a few years ago, I had the opportunity to look at a few years of Schedule K for a limited partnership involved with mining and drilling several different things. As I researched each line, I was flabbergasted at how they’re allowed to offset profits. This partnership was clearly making loads of money, yet the partners/investors were able to reflect a new loss on their tax returns five years in a row. All completely legal.
Contrasted with the various ways you get screwed by taxes if you’re self-employed, it’s pretty stark.
burnspbesq
Spanish solar energy is just like Spanish football: outrageously expensive, egregiously mismanaged, and a crap product.
sparky the self-puncher
what’s the problem? the us can subsidize inept schemes, banks can loan, wall st. can sell CDOs on the likely failures, and then the treasury can repurchase the CDS and the assets. seems like a full employment scheme to moi.*
actually i like this one even better, because then as a bailout the US can simply impose a green tax on utilities, who can then skim from the extra rate increases.
time’s a wastin!
*employment here means employment of the productive class–i.e., those who labor in the fields of finance, tilling the ocean of digits so their offspring may see the glorious sunsets of Florence first-hand.
and 60% of other persons.
dhd
No, instead, we will use this as “clear scientific evidence” that solar power doesn’t work, defund alternative energy research, and proceed to do nothing for the next 30 years.
PurpleGirl
@chowkster: The first thing that MUST be resolved before any new nuclear power initiatives are started is what to do with the waste. This is imperative. As it stands now, all nuclear facilities — power plants, medical test providers, medicine manufacturers, etc. — have to keep the waste on site unless approved arrangements have been created. A number of states were able to develop multi-state compacts to make state waste sites and companies can transport waste there. But not all states did that. New York State, for example, refused to find an in-state site and so they were unable to join a northeast compact. And NYS companies have to keep waste on site. This has been a problem since the 1970s.
Nutella
Never. We are always exceptional. We never learn from any earlier mistakes or successes.
Health care? Every other rich country in the world does it a million times better than we do, in several different ways. We resolutely refuse to learn anything from any of them. We must create something completely American!
No-smoking laws? Many jurisdictions from cities to countries have them so we could easily find out what the effects are. Will all the bars and restaurants go out of business? Proponents of the laws say no, opponents say yes. All sides refuse to look at what has happened in other places.
We are America. We are exceptional. We never learn from our own past or anyone else’s. Every day is a new day to shout our own prejudices louder and louder. The lessons of history cannot be permitted to affect the present or future.
PurpleGirl
Under the Carter administration there was a lot of research happening in solar power. Reagan stopped funding any of it and the field dried up. And now, although the feds are again talking about green energy…. much of the manufacturing of wind machines is going to China. It wouldn’t surprise me if solar panels are also being manufactured in China and not domestically.
Ahh a Lion!
Like learn from it by not subsidizing energy companies? Sounds good to me, lets start with ethanol and petroleum, and end by abolishing the Department of Energy.
former_friend
@Mike Kay: “I read the hippies are complaining that Vancouver was as bad as the Berlin games.”
And I read that some people are actually conflating random musings on a blog somewhere with entire ideologies and political movements.
Incredible, but true!
Cat
@PurpleGirl:
Mostly due to the fact our industry stopped innovating right around then.We haven’t invested in spent fuel recycling plants instead we bury the waste from the powerplants thats close to 97% recyclable.
Cat
@PurpleGirl:
Be surprised then! Most of the new manf. plants for solar cells are in the US and Germany.
If you had a revolutionary new technique for making efficient and cheap solar cell’s you’d not want to build them in countries with very lax and hardly enforced IP laws.
PurpleGirl
Cat, if that’s so, then that’s good.
feebog
The article points out another problem, Spain apparently concentrated on big solar farms instead of emphasizing solar panels for individual homes and businesses. There is always a significant loss in transmission, and the way to overcome that is direct conversion at the point of location.
Parrotlover77
In our effort to remain absolute isolationists (politically, not economically), we will find a “uniquely american solution” that will be a bastardization of compromises that will look oddly similar to failed solutions elsewhere in the world.
In other words, America doesn’t learn from other country’s mistakes. Or even their own.
We are masters at reinventing the wheel!
Scott P.
Yucca Mountain.
ThresherK
@burnspbesq:
I’m surprised it took this long to devolve into a football thread.
trollhattan
Still awaiting delivery of a major energy source that’s not subsidized.
Anyway, our hippies are better than Spain’s hippies.
Neurovore
Nuclear construction projects like all projects need financing to be built. A loan guarantee is not the same as a subsidy. The utility has to pay off the loan as soon as construction is completed. Nuclear power has really low operating costs and it actually pays off its loans quite quickly since nuclear power plants are extremely well run and efficient facilities.
Granted, constructing a nuclear powerplant is risky because the NRC is as much of a political and pointlessly bureaucratic institution as the people that run it are bureaucrats rather than scientists unlike the DOE but the NRC has all of the power. The process of obtaining an operating license is difficult because applicants have to pay expensive fees for the licensing process and it takes a very long time, often up to ten years. A lot of this is needless redtape and the application can be denied for any reason. Not to mention that there is often rampant NIMBYism that ties construction projects up in court for years just to be obstructive. If the licensing process was not so ridiculous and more streamlined there would be less risk of cost overruns and therefore it would be a more attractive investment choice. Nuclear construction projects in many other countries have shown that they can be completed on time and on budget because they have a political regulatory environment that is not openly hostile to nuclear energy. The fact that a nuclear submarine can be completed in as little as two years shows just how idiotic our current nuclear application structure is at the moment.
Concerning the “waste” of nuclear power, the amount of spent fuel ever produced in the US could fit inside a room the size of a high school gym only a few feet deep. Since spent fuel is solid and is therefore much easier to contain than other forms of waste, this is not an insurmountable task. A lot of that material is actually U235 that can be reprocessed for more fuel thereby greatly reducing its volume and radioactivity even more. In addition, spent fuel can also be a potential source for medical isotopes as the medical industry is experiencing a shortage at the moment. However, president Carter imposed a blanket ban on nuclear fuel reprocessing in the 1970’s after he mistakenly believed that it would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation even though fuel grade material is practically useless for military purposes.
Also, even the worse case scenario seen with Chernobyl resulted in fewer than 100 known casualties, including the ones that resulted from immediate radiation poisoning. Chernobyl was a series of one error after another including actually shutting down any safety features the reactor had to run an unapproved test. Finally, the reactor itself was an inherently dangerous design that no country uses or has ever used since. If the Chernobyl reactor had a containment dome like all reactors do now, the whole disaster could have largely been prevented in the first place. As it is, the evacuated area of Chernobyl is only a few levels above background radiation and it has largely become an unofficial haven for wildlife as it is flourishing there since people have left.
The disaster at Three Mile Island resulted in no injuries or deaths and it was the absolute worst thing that could have happened with a light water reactor. Yet in spite of this, the containment dome prevented a major disaster from happening an the operators were exposed to the radiation dose equivalent of getting an X-Ray (The same amount of radiation you receive from background radiation during a jet flight). Now compare the Chernobyl incident with the Banqiao dam collapse in China or the continually burning underground coal fires in Centralia, Pennsylvania. No energy source is completely risk free, yet the potential harm that could be caused has not stopped anybody from making use of hydropower or coal power. (Coal has got to go, though)
Granted, the light water reactor design is not the best design as far as reactors go, as there are even more efficient designs, such as the liquid fluoride thorium reactor that uses thorium for fission and can also act as a breeder in addition to using our current inventory of spent fuel as actual fissile material. In addition, the design of this particular reactor makes it impossible for it to experience a “meltdown” as the core of the reactor is already molten and it is unpressurized. It has a negative void coefficient. If the core heats up, the speed of the fission reaction is slowed down. In the event of the core becoming too hot, there is a plug of cooled sodium metal at the bottom of the reactor chamber that would melt and allow the contents to drain out and solidify.
There are numerous advantages to molten salt reactor designs and a working prototype was up and running at the ORNL national laboratory for two years before being defunded for political reasons. As this was the height of the red scare, much of our nuclear research was actually going into perfecting a new process for creating weapon grade material. In the molten salt reactor design, the plutonium 239 is too contaminated with plutonium 240 in addition to U232 and it made the reactor useless for obtaining weapon grade material. As a result, a brilliant design for cheap and clean energy was left to languish for political reasons. We need to get it up and running again. For more information, you can take a look here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKfS74hVvQ
Sorry for the bloviation, but I think that more people should be aware of the true potential of nuclear energy and what it can do.
Steeplejack
@Neurovore:
Awesome post. I feel like I have been brought up to speed by about 10 years. Just hope that you’re not a troll and that at least 50 percent of what you said is true.
Neurovore
Oh, no…what I said is true. It is just that it is quite sad at how nuclear energy gets lambasted for no reason by some people and that it really is one of the few real alternatives to fossil fuels. Without wanting to go off on another tangent, nuclear energy has been impeded by politics rather than any major technological hurdle.