solar

A few weeks ago, the term du jour was “team of rivals.” This week, “shovel-ready” is the term most frequently on the lips of pols and pundits.

The incoming administration and Congress plan to direct a fire hose of borrowed money at the flames engulfing the economy. Many of those dollars will be directed at the “shovel-ready” – projects ready to break ground and put people on payrolls within weeks.

In an economic emergency, it’s certainly a good thing to put people to work right away spraying insulation into home attics, retrofitting wasteful cooling systems in federal buildings, and shortening the disgracefully long list of deferred maintenance projects at national parks and wildlife refuges.

Still, to put on green eyeshades for a moment, there ought to be some room on the ever-lengthening shopping list for supporting projects that will have long-term economic development value. Ideally, borrowed money should be used for long-lasting capital projects, so that the costs will be shared by the generations that will benefit.

An example of a long-range project is modernizing the creaky, overstressed transmission system used to move electricity from power plants to end uses, such as my computer and the one that you’re reading this on....

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I don’t know how many fireplaces Barack and Michelle Obama have in their home. I don’t know how many homes John and Cindy McCain own. Nor do I give a damn.

I do know that there are two houses that each American owns in addition to the ones he or she lives in. One is called the House of Representatives. The other is called the Senate. Those houses matter. Hold that thought.

Rather than counting fireplaces or real estate, let’s count megawatts. Eight hundred to be exact.

That’s how many megawatts of generating capacity will be added to California’s power grid from two mega solar projects planned for San Luis Obispo County. A week or so ago, Pacific Gas & Electric, one of California’s big utilities, signed contracts with two solar photovoltaic developers to build a 550-megawatt “solar farm” and a 250-megawatt “solar ranch.”

These won’t be penny-ante demonstration plants that produce more photo ops than power. Eight hundred megawatts is big. In capacity, 800 megawatts is about equal to a garden-variety coal plant and almost as big as your typical nuke. Together, the solar plants will produce enough carbon-free electricity to power an estimated 239,000 homes.

If they’re built, that is. Because if Congress doesn’t extend the solar investment tax credit, which expires Dec. 31, they may not get built. ...

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Hollywood screenwriters could come up with a fictional scenario that makes Congress look worse than it did in real life last week.

But it’s hard to see how.

Both Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress have professed their undying love for renewable energy resources. Their affection, however, took a back seat to rock ‘em, sock ‘em partisan politics when the Senate failed to move legislation extending various tax incentives for renewable resources.

If the game of chicken goes on much longer, the tax incentives will expire at the end of the year, and billions of dollars in wind, solar, and other clean energy investment capital is likely to go elsewhere, where the politics are less toxic and the financial certainty more solid.

Rather than putting money where their energy mouths are, both parties are playing for political trophies.

Reckless and feckless, that’s what they are.

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