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56 comments on The White House: AEI in All Its Glory (SOTU Open Thread 3)

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Slippery Slope on February 1, 2006 - 10:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Great points!  Even if we grant President Bush the best of intentions, "pork barrel" spending (maximum cash payments to political constituents) works against leveraging government research and development funds.  I am more hopeful about local initiatives at the US State and city level.  Here in Austin there is much support for alternative energy (including solar panel subsidies), rational transportation and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle technology (from anywhere).  

Austin (city level)
http://www.austinenergy.com/About%20Us/Environmental%20Initiatives/Plug-in%20Hybrid%20Vehicles/
http://www.austinenergy.com/Energy%20Efficiency/Programs/Rebates/Solar%20Rebates/index.htm

(Texas) (state level)
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/zzz_altfuels/alt.html

At the local level there is not so much research funding, but there is selective purchasing, direct or via subsidy, of state-of-the-art products that can help get manufacturers/suppliers/distributors/installers past the start-up and break-even stages.

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Marotti32 on February 1, 2006 - 10:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hi Slippery Slope, indeed many local proactive groups have cemented the foundation for this development here in Germany. Almost every developing starts on a grassroots basis. Atomic energy or clean coal are no technologies to be developed like this, because it is large scale technology and needs to be protected by laws or a lot of subsidizing money.

Meanwhile the industry of renewable energy became a major investment, not only in the EU. Bankers are heavily interested in this topic. The flow of capital and a very good profit lures them. So in the end, more the big money is benefiting from this. It became a multi billion Euro industry in a few years with good local jobs.

The installed wind power in Germany accounts for roughly 5 to 6 % of the domestic electricty. Ten years ago, there was almost nothing existent. Sometimes things can happen pretty swiftly.

matthias, berlin

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Slippery Slope on February 1, 2006 - 12:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's a small world. Siemens, headquartered in Berlin and Munich, is one of the world's largest electrical engineering and electronics companies - and it operates wind farms here in Texas.

http://www.powergeneration.siemens.com/en/windpower/casestudies/king/index.cfm

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Marotti32 on February 1, 2006 - 1:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Siemens was once founded in Berlin. After WW II it started to have its headquarter in Munich (München). Siemens wind power is a small player in wind energy. The largest one in Germany is Enercon, a privately owned company which once started in a garden 2 decades ago. There is also a lot of activity in Spain. There however, the installed capacity is installed by the large utility companies. In Germany, it was quite common to save taxes by investing in "Bürger Windkraftparks" =citizen wind power parks. So a lot of the wind turbines are owned privately. The utilities are obligated to buy the electricty for a certain amount of money, which decreases every year by 5%, to make sure technology will improve.

This law is now wideley accepted within the EU and is now in places like Spain, France, Italy.....and even in China.

matthias, berlin (where is no sund now, it's dark and cold...;-)

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56 comments on The White House: AEI in All Its Glory (SOTU Open Thread 3)

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