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   I concur that you have accurately framed the discussion as belief vs. facts.   The facts that argue for a lack of an unsubsidized economic and environmental viability for PV have deterred the belief that PV is (without subsidies) an investable technology.  Therefore we enter the political arena of supplanting investment with subsidies which distribute the income from nonbeneficiaries (largely lower income taxpayers) to the individuals and businesses best positioned to profitably influence public policies and government earmarks.  While there may be some ultimate societal, environmental and economic benefits to the population at large when subsidies are directed towards encouraging promising but risky and expensive R&D, propping up a mature industry which shows no promise of emerging as an unsubsidized economic front runner only exacerbates the real problem (energy availability) and redistributes wealth in a meritless manner.

   Affordable energy is a vital component of human health and welfare.  Increasing energy costs without compensatory environmental and social benefits while placing those increased costs onto those least benefited and least able to pay creates neither a just society nor a sound technological infrastructure.  Again, we do not have a crisis rooted in fact but one nourished by mythology.

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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   As many people on this forum have noted, photovoltaic solar power (PV) is principally a device for tax avoidance rather than a truly viable energy solution.  Photovoltaic technologies, which have been in development for over 50 years, are mature technologies and will most likely not produce any future undiscovered economic breakthroughs. If fully implemented these PV technologies would only be able to supply a small fraction of our energy consumption demand at a very premium price.

    As with most tax avoidance schemes this one seeks to redistribute costs from those with the least wealth to those with more wealth.  Rebates and incentives are paid for by those taxpayers who do not benefit from the real estate PV “investment” strategies nor do they enjoy concomitant power rate reductions.  To the contrary the current buyback subsidy strategy enables distributed PV system owners to be able to sell power to the grid for $0.12 per kwHr and buy it back for $0.07 per kwHr with the subsidized $0.05 difference being paid through taxes imposed upon those people least able to afford the discretionary “investment” of $10K - $50K for a very modest PV installation.  Capital cost subsidies for PV systems are largely directed to installation contractors - no surprise that the construction/installation industry lobbyists are some of the most avid advocates of PV.  Many of those outside the industry see PV as a limited energy resource with ineffective capital and resource allocation.

    The slightly more efficient concentrated solar power (CSP) energy generation technologies are attractive only under an incomplete cost accounting scenario.  The most desirable CSP and PV exploitable public lands (such as the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts) are those which contain some of the greatest biodiversity in the United States and have scarce cooling water.

   The full tragedy of this is that the “problem” is political and not technological.  There is no energy crisis that cannot be satisfied with other proven sustainable, cost-effective and environmentally benign technologies.  The political desire to redistribute wealth upwards is leading us towards barren and destructive national polices as we have already seen in Star Wars, Ethanol, and the much reviled General Mining Act of 1872.

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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