The Fox News reports on solar power that included interviews in Boise came out Wednesday and as expected they made the issue about subsidies.
But the reporting, which included both a news report and a bizarre interview on Fox and Friends, only scratched the surface about the role of the free market in the energy debate and included some comical conclusions.
Producer Jim Springer reported on-line that the reductions of subsidies leads some to conclude that the future of solar power is dimming. In fact, the opposite is the case.
Springer reports that investor-owned utilities are having to raise rates on non-solar customers to cover the costs of the infrastructure to serve them. Because they use less energy, he says the utilities have to shift the costs to the customers who are using more energy.
He interviews Courtney White, who has been the subject of much of my reporting about Idaho Power’s proposed quadrupling of rates for many customers of its net metering system, which allows them to sell back surplus power to the utility at retail rates.
And he interviews Republican Rep. George Eskridge, of Dover.
“To me, the test is how cost-effective it is,” he told Fox News. “When solar is more expensive than other resources, I don’t think the other consumers in the system should have to subsidize that power resource.”
What Springer left out of his reporting were the benefits the solar customers give to the rest of Idaho Power’s customers. When they are producing power in the summer it would cost Idaho Power far more than retail rates to replace it during peak periods.
The company that has a monopoly over power distribution in its area is replacing that power with sources it builds and gets approval to pass on the cost of to its customers. The Idaho Public Utilities Commission then approves a set rate of return that goes to its shareholders.
So the solar customers, who are paying the capital costs themselves, are saving the other customers money over the long-term, as long as the fixed costs for the utility are not enormous. This is the balancing act Fox ignored.
But the most laughable reporting came on Fox and Friends when Fox Business reporter Shibani Joshi talked about why Germany has had so much success with rooftop solar while the U.S. has lagged behind.
“They’re a smaller country, and they’ve got lots of sun. Right? They’ve got a lot more sun than we do,” Joshi told anchor Gretchen Carlson. “The problem is it’s a cloudy day and it’s raining, you’re not gonna have it.
“Here on the East Coast, it’s just not going to work,” she said.
Germany has more sun? Media Matters, a liberal group critical of Fox News had a field day with that.
Germany’s success with solar is directly tied to its generous subsidies and how it has integrated renewable energy into its grid. It has no more sun than the East and a heck of a lot less than we have here. In fact Slate reported that according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, most of the U.S. gets more sun than Germany, which is more like Alaska.
They are eliminating many of their subsidies there because solar panel prices have come down so much that it is competitive with other new sources of power. Germany is allowing people to put solar on their homes instead of subsidizing new nuclear power plants.
Remember, every new source of power costs more than legacy sources such as hydroelectric dams.
Fox had a real opportunity to talk about the potential role of freeing up energy markets to help consumers and give them more choices. To its credits Fox’s reporters did not demonize subsidies pointing out we have subsidized the tech industry, the nuclear industry and even the oil and gas industry.
But it made the mistake many people who are looking at the solar industry in the U.S. make. They mixed the solar manufacturing industry, which has had mostly failures competing against the Chinese, with the solar installation and production business.
It is thriving due to low prices and the U.S. failure has come not because we don’t have enough sun. Unlike Germany we haven’t learned how to integrate it into our political and regulatory system yet.
Not related to this story in particular, but there’s something funky about the way that blog posts are showing up. I see this one on the home page, and if I click Idaho Statesman blogs, it doesn’t come up, and if I click Letters from the West, it doesn’t come up, but if I click on the article title specifically it does come up. The same thing is happening with some other recent blog posts.
Also, is there a way to get notified of new posts by mail for only some blogs, not all of them?
thanks and sorry to hijack.
I am shocked that a news organization as respected as Fox News would overlook such obvious and available information.Next thing You know we’ll find out The President was born in Hawaii!
Fox News is clearly an opinion base infotainment journalism masquerading as news.
In 2003 attorneys for Fox argued the 1st Amendment gives there broadcasters the right to lie or distort news reports on the public airwaves. Appeals court then ruled in favor of FOX NEWS declared they are absolutely doing nothing illegal when they lie, conceal or distort real world facts with opinion based information.
Fox News commitment to willfully use opinion based propaganda to misinform the American society for the purposes of a conservative psychological warfare against a factual real world American society and supporting fictional archaic conservative world view.
The United States prosecuted Nazi media propagandists as war criminals, successfully arguing there media propaganda was an instrument of aggression.
Just as the Nazi’s used the media to train Germans to obediently follow fascism, Fox News and its false presentation of facts, dissemination of provocative lies and the systematic deception of public opinion has trained those conservative Americans to fear anyone not like them, confusing there reality and ability to accept factual truths.
7 studies have prove Fox News viewers are the most misinformed Americans.
“Germany is allowing people to put solar on their homes instead of subsidizing new nuclear power plants.”
“Remember, every new source of power costs more than legacy sources such as hydroelectric dams.” Rocky
Yes, and let’s remember that not all KWs are equal.
Likewise, according to this Bloomberg report, Germany is building new coal plants to replace their nuclear plants. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-19/merkel-s-green-shift-forces-germany-to-burn-more-coal-energy.html As the article says wind and solar “can’t produce electricity around the clock.”
Even the LA Times recently recognized the fact that not all KWs are equal in their 12/9/2012 article,”Rise in renewable energy will require more use of fossil fuels.” “As the state attempts to reach the goal of producing one-third of its electricity from wind and solar sources by 2020, more reliable sources of traditional power will be needed as a backup…” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/09/local/la-me-unreliable-power-20121210
Oh and regarding Germany eliminating their renewal energy subsidies, Bloomberg also tell us this: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to cap taxpayer subsidies for renewable energy is aimed at limiting the political fallout among voters from a surge in electricity bills due next week.” http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-11/merkel-curbs-renewables-to-limit-voter-backlash-on-power-bills Right now, the cost of electricity in Germany is already at 35 cents per kWh! Merkel is not stupid — It’s an election year and it’s been reported that some 800,000 German households can no longer pay their energy bills.
Tauna:
Good points about Germany needing to build coal plants to back up its renewables. And your point about the cost of power in Germany being an election issue also brings us back to the challenge that every new power plant adds to the cost of electricity over our legacy power. That’s why energy efficiency often is the cheapest way forward. But it’s not the only way. Nuclear and solar are about the same price right now and each has their limitations.
But both are low carbon alternatives to coal and will likely be a part of the mix of our future electric power along with natural gas. Once the coal industry gets serious about developing carbon sequestration technology it too can thrive.
As I have written before, the conservative and libertarian economists who acknowledge that we need to reduce greenhouse gases to fight climate change favor an energy tax that does not pick winners over subsidies.
Thanks Rocky for your response. In both your article and your response, there is that underlying assumption nuclear and solar are interchangeable. That is not correct. Nuclear can stand alone on the grid, whereas renewables such as solar/wind cannot — they require backup generation (primarily from fossil-fuel sources, given that hydro is finite and only in limited locations).
And setting subsidies aside, is that must-have backup generation required for renewables included in the true cost of solar or wind?? NO, it is not — which really skews things on several different levels.
The talking heads guarding the inhabitants of Bullsh*t Mountain from rejoining the world of the sane only serve their own warped ideology. Fox News is a propaganda machine which dumbs down America by the day through disinformation and their slanted agendas. See their anchors spewing forth feces from their mouths in my visual homage to the network on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fox-news-scylla-guardian-of-bullsht.html
Also in the Statesman: 17 solar panel producers in Cal. produced 46.5 million pounds of sludge and contaminated water in the last 3.5 years in making solar panels. 97% of the hazardous waste was taken to facilities within Cal; 1.4 million lbs was taken to other states. After installing a solar panel, it would take approximately 3 months of generating electricity to pay off the energy invested in driving the hazardous waste out of state. When one factors in the fossil fuels required to dispose of the hazardous waste associated with solar panel production, the industry isn’t a clean and green as Rocky and others want you to believe.