Did I really stay up until midnight and watch the Braves lose in 13 innings, after leading in the ninth, and get knocked out of the playoffs?
Anyway.
The Energy Collective wants us to write more about wind, so here goes:
The LA Times reports that Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner ”raised warning flags” about the loan guarantee program for renewables long before the Solyndra bankruptcy. The article doesn’t have a lot of new information (the key players are clearly protecting themselves) but it does link to a fascinating briefing memo written for the President in October of 2010 by Summers, Ron Klain (then chief of staff to the Vice President), and energy advisor Carol Browner.
The memo says that OMB and Treasury were concerned about three problems, “double dipping” (massive government subsidies from multiple sources), lack of “skin in the game” from private investors and ”non-incremental investment,” the funding of projects which would occur even without the loan guarantee.
The memo then illustrates with one such program, the Shepherds Flat Loan guarantee. ...
Keep reading! My favorite part of the Shepherds Flat Loan guarantee is this:
If this wind power displaced power generated from sources with the average California carbon intensity, it would result in about 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions through 2033. Carbon reductions would have to be valued at nearly $130 per ton CO2 for the climate benefits to equal the subsidies (more than 6 times the primary estimate used by the government in evaluating rules).
An efficient subsidy would equate the per ton benefits with the per ton subsidy costs. So, without reading anything but MR's excerpt, this might be comparing apples and oranges. But still, this subsidy smells inefficient in addition to contributing to an ineffective stimulus (snark: makes me think the stimulus just wasn't big enough).
