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New solar funding is almost comically inadequate

As part of the SOTU hoopla, the Bush administration released some details of a major new initiative:

The President's Solar America Initiative.
The 2007 Budget will propose a new $148 million Solar America Initiative -- an increase of $65 million over FY06 -- to accelerate the development of semiconductor materials that convert sunlight directly to electricity. These solar photovoltaic "PV" cells can be used to deliver energy services to rural areas and can be incorporated directly into building materials, so that there can be future "zero energy" homes that produce more energy than they consume.

It strikes me as a bit of an Austin Powers "ONE MILLION DOLLARS" moment. The solar industry is unlikely to turn down the money, but let's face it: The total, not to mention the increase, is peanuts. It gets us back up to the level of R&D funding during the Carter Administration.

More to the point, what we need is not R&D, but deployment. California just passed a $3.2 billion program to put solar on 1 million rooftops in the next 11 years. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if you take seriously the fact that global warming has the potential to destroy the foundations on which our current way of life is built, and we need to seriously reduce carbon emissions now, then this remedy is so pathetically inadequate to the problem that it seems more like an insult.

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SOTU: Omissions

Two terms not used in last night's speech: "global warming" and "Hurricane Katrina."

Wonder why?

Bush’s goal is timid

Last night the president uncorked what to casual ears might have seemed an ambitious and inspirational proposal :

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.

"75% of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025." Hmm. As usual, the closer you look at the language, the more hedged you realize it is.

There are two basic problems with the goal -- aside from the unlikeliness of Bush competently following up on it, that is.

First: Just under 24% of our oil imports are from the Persian Gulf (Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates). Canada is our biggest supplier, followed by Mexico. There are only three Middle Eastern countries in the top 10, and Saudi Arabia alone accounts for 15 of those 24%.

Oil imports constitute somewhere around 60% of our oil use, so Persian Gulf oil amounts to around 14% of our total oil use. Cutting that 14% by 75% would amount to reducing our overall oil consumption by 10.5%

That what Bush's grand energy initiative amounts to: A reduction of U.S. oil consumption by 10.5% over 19 years. That's really the best he thinks we can do?

Not much

(Warning, numbers ahead. And I'm notoriously awful with numbers.)

This president has been known to ... mislead those who do not parse his words like Talmudic scholars. Here's what he said this evening:

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy ....

So what, pray tell, is the current budget for clean-energy research at the DOE?

I'm going to assume Bush was talking about the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy dept. Here are its budgets over the past few years:

• FY2003: $1,202,326,000

• FY2004: $1,235,478,000 (up 2.7%)

• FY2005: $1,248,582,000 (up 1.1%)

The FY2006 budget (PDF; view as HTML) says this:

SOTU prediction

Prediction:

Tonight, Bush will unveil a splashy energy program.

It will have one of his patented Orwellian names: The Energy Strength and Independence Small Farmer 9/11 Protect American Children Act, now with Extra Freedom^™!

It will have three parts:

• A big boost for campaign contributing Safe, Clean^© nuclear power, perhaps integrating and expanding on his recent reprocessing announcement (via Judith Lewis, check out the Union of Concerned Scientists press release on reprocessing);
• a big boost for hydrogen research (on that subject, see Technology Review);
• a big basket of subsidies for ethanol.

This will be packaged as an "alternative energy" proposal, along with a bushel of nationalism and xenophobia (foreign oil! foreign oil!), and will ultimately amount to little more than massive subsidies to friendly industries and constituencies.

Speech:

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research -- at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy. (Applause.)

We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years. (Applause.)

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. (Applause.)

Well, I could have done worse.

Six years to perfect a fuel blend?

John F. Kennedy, 1961:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

George W. Bush, 2006:

We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.

SOTU

ThinkProgress has the full text of the State of the Union speech here. More on that later.

‘Eco-terrorism’: A radio discussion

Your Call Radio hosted a discussion on "eco-terrorism" involving John Sellars of the Ruckus Society, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Judith Lewis of L.A. Weekly.

It's really, really good -- an uncommonly hysteria-free discussion of the subject. You can listen to it here.

The SPLC, which has tracked far-right extremist groups for a long time, recently starting tracking "eco-terror" groups (some material here and here). Mark Potok makes no excuses for their behavior, but he makes it very clear that they are nowhere near the "top domestic threat." And Lewis makes some fantastic points, many of which I have made myself in my obsessive blogging on the subject, and provides some interesting historical context.

Recommended.

(via Judith herself!)