A Year of Stimulus
Whatever the effects of the stimulus bill on the rest of the economy, I don't think the renewable energy industry would look quite the same as it does today. Of course, today is the anniversary of the signing of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the stimulus bill.
By the end of today you'll probably have your fill of the "jobs created-jobs saved'' debate, but this is one spot that's pretty clear. It could be hard to measure some effects, especially ones as controversial as this has become. There's also trying to prove a negative if you ask "what if?" there was no ARRA.
But I'll try. The cash grant program stands at more than 250 projects through February 1. There's the little matter of snow in the nation's capital, so the figures are already a little out-of-date.
Grants total $2.3 billion since the beginning of September when checks were cut for wind, solar, hydropower and other projects meaning private investment totaled nearly $5 billion. Wind installed a record 9,922 megawatts when indications from a year ago set projections at half that.
There's always a downside. With increased attention comes more scrutiny, which should be welcomed if done fairly. That didn't happen last week when ABC News gave its take on an American University journalism project report from a couple months ago that claimed little stimulus impact on the domestic wind industry, but plenty of jobs and money going overseas.
As I've said here before, I thought the original report was incomplete and lacked context, and it hasn't fared any better updated for the television treatment.
If the folks at ABC News did their report a day later (it wouldn't have mattered, I know), they could have provided at least a little context and there were other opportunities in recent months. They might have looked at the news out of Vestas last week. Yes, that Vestas, the one in Denmark, which will miss its profit targets this year. But the company just reported its first U.S. contract in 14 months for a project in New Hampshire, one that may not have gotten that far without the cash grant program reviving the industry. And yes, blades for the 33 3-megawatt turbines will be built in Windsor, Colorado, not Randers, Denmark, putting American workers back on the job.
That's a more complete story, probably boring to some, and it doesn't fit neatly under the "your tax dollars going overseas" headline.
Suppose there was a parallel story about the auto industry. Whatever you thought about the "cash for clunkers program," there's no doubt some U.S. taxpayer dollars landed in Japan while also benefitting American automakers. I don't think Ford Motor Company, which just posted its first quarterly profit in four years, is complaining too loudly.
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Comments
Context Context Context.
National-level expenditures all sound outrageous without context, and all the media has to do is find a contentious subject and start rambling off seemingly huge numbers that should be averaged over the population it would benefit.
This presents some challenges with renewable energy for a number of reasons, the largest being that since the resulting installations serve such a small % of the 250 million Americans the math doesn't make sense the public without them understanding the essential nature and future enabling qualities of these investments. Joe Plummer won't study it on his own ... especially when his elected constituents also refuse to invest the time to grasp the roadmap. In fact, the roadmap is at best hazy for many people who work within the renewable energy sector.
If however we promote HOW all 250 million people will ultimately benefit immensely in the long term from creating economies of scale, and that economies of scale can only be enabled by these first steps, the public will make a better assessment and support these and even more investments. All renewable energy efforts should be focused on enlightening the public with a simple, accurate, and sound understanding of HOW today's renewable-energy investments (however isolated and unprofitable they may seem now) will ultimately benefit all 250 million with a far greater return than the cost of these initial future-enabling investments.
Regarding the overseas component of renewables, we would do well to put it into context with the money sent overseas to pay for fossil fuel. The MSM is beating us up with ommitted context, and we must demand, report, and promote suitable context to help the public use their votes and dollars more judiciously than possible when ommitting long-term technological contexts, and long-term fossil-fuel cost contexts regarding economics, climate, and energy security.
On another note: I'm hoping the website admin might take a moment and change the username label to read "email address" - I hope that's a reasonable request. I'm sure I'm not the only one who frequently has to hunt and peck through trying different passwords, not knowing that the real problem is that it wants my email address instead of my commonly used username. Expecting all users to troubleshoot this login-design-mistake on their own is inconsiderate and it's a tad presumptuous to assume everyone visits so frequently as to remember what to do every login thereafter.