CLEAN ENERGY

Quenching Fossil Fuel

David Hochschild MPP 1999, Co-founder, Vote Solar Initiative

When the Bush administration’s energy plan was released last year, it was notable more for what it continued than for what it changed. Formed at the beginning of the fossil fuel age more than a century ago, America’s energy policy has not strayed far from its fossil-fuel burning roots. But importing fossil fuels is bad for the environment, risky for national security, and cannot be sustained. Energy policy is turning out to be America’s Achilles heel.

The environmental argument for change is abundantly clear. The leading contributor to global warming is pollution from energy generation. The consensus among scientists about the consequences of human-induced climate change is powerful and unambiguous. If left unchecked, global warming will produce more extreme weather events, reduce crop production, increase rates of communicable disease, and raise sea levels.

Despite this troubling picture, America continues to pursue an energy policy chock full of expensive military and political investments intended to protect our access to fossil fuels rather than wean us from them. As a result, the country remains unnecessarily vulnerable to political upheavals beyond our borders. As long as we rely on fossil fuels to produce electricity, we will have neither energy security nor independence.

There is a better way. Solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy are clean, durable, and market-ready. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the United States is the Persian Gulf of wind and solar energy. However, even as energy independence has become more critical than ever, we are falling behind our competitors in investing in renewables. Germany, a country with only 60 percent of the annual sunlight of the United States, has a much more aggressive solar energy policy. Ireland is building the largest wind generation plant in the world. Japan is home to two of the three biggest solar companies in the world. By heaping subsidies on fossil fuel technologies at the expense of renewable energy, America risks losing jobs and a niche in this rapidly growing industry.

Since both solar and wind energy are mature technologies stuck in immature industries, the potential exists to cut costs considerably by achieving economies of scale in manufacturing. The downward price trend for both of these technologies is already quite steep. Since 1980, the cost of solar energy has declined by 71 percent and wind by 89 percent. Heavy federal investments in wind and solar now would push costs down further and bear fruit quickly.

Last year, I was fortunate to be in a capacity where I could work on energy policy at a municipal level as a special assistant to the mayor in San Francisco.
My Kennedy School classmate Matt Goldberg MPP 1999 and I developed an idea for a $100 million bond initiative to put solar panels on public buildings. It turned out that such a measure could pay for itself entirely from energy savings at no cost to taxpayers. When the energy crisis hit California in the middle of our effort, the idea took on new potency. Last November, San Francisco voters approved
the solar bond by 73 percent.

Since then, we’ve started an initiative to help other cities implement solar energy programs and to help push down the cost of solar energy nationally. As leadership on clean energy is in short supply in Washington, DC, cities may offer the best hope for steering America away from its unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels. Large-scale investments in renewable energy are a smart, timely way for America to improve the environment, increase energy independence, and create jobs.

David Hochschild MPP 1999 can be reached at david@votesolar.org.