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To Fight Russian Aggression, Build More Clean Energy Capacity

To Fight Russian Aggression, Build More Clean Energy Capacity

Russian attacks on Ukraine have spiked the already high price of oil. But going up with that are the economic incentives to ditch this primitive fuel — the environmental reasons being well known.

Russia provides about 40 percent of Europe's imported gas, and its squeeze on supply has forced some factories to cut back on production. The case for moving to renewable energy grows only stronger.

The CEO of the Portuguese utility EDP made this point on CNBC Europe. "These are (indigenous) ... resources — wind, solar — that we have in Europe," Miguel Stilwell de Andrade said. "We need to accelerate (their development) and do it much faster."

Americans, meanwhile, can dismiss conservative claims that President Joe Biden has set back America's "energy independence." Policies to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energy have hardly shut off the flow of domestic oil and gas. Actually, the U.S. became the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas this year.

On a related topic, Biden's infrastructure bill set aside $6 billion to stop the premature retirement of nuclear plants. Another $2.5 billion is going for work on advanced nuclear technologies. Biden backed this zero-carbon energy source while fighting off some opposition from the left.

Germany's outsized dependence on Russian oil resulted from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's unwise decision years ago to shutter her country's nuclear plants — and replace that source of power with Russian natural gas. (Imagine Europe launching its largest fossil fuel project in the year 2022.)

In retaliation for Russia's assault on Ukraine, Germany has suspended approval of Nord Stream 2, an underwater pipeline designed to transport Russian natural gas to Germany. Good for the new chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Some Europeans are reportedly dealing with the convulsion in fuel prices by installing solar panels and burning wood for heat. Hooray for solar. (Boo for wood-burning, though understandable in an emergency.)

Clean energy means more energy, which, when added to improving green technology, eventually means less-expensive energy. By 2020, solar already provided cheaper power than that from plants fired by coal or natural gas in most countries, according to the International Energy Agency.

The U.S. has just passed the milestone of 200,000 megawatts of utility-scale clean energy capacity, according to the American Clean Power Association. Do you know which state installed the most wind and solar power capacity last year? Texas.

Natural gas prices were, of course, surging before Russia started pummeling Ukraine. That reflected an upturn in demand as the COVID-19 pandemic started to retreat.

But companies in Europe that had made long-term agreements for renewable energy at fixed prices found themselves in a far better place, The Wall Street Journal reports. Orange SA, the huge French telecom company, for one, is securing power from nearby solar and wind farms, as well as its own installations. It plans to obtain half its energy from renewable sources in three short years.

Such businesses, George Bilicic, head of power and energy at the investment banking firm Lazard, said, "should be better positioned than others given current fossil fuel price spikes."

Steep gas prices are, of course, a great selling point for electric cars, not that they need it at this point.

Moving the world away from fossil fuels would erase Russian President Vladimir Putin's biggest nonnuclear weapon. After all, oil and gas accounted for 39 percent of Russia's budget revenue and 60 percent of its exports in 2019.

We, on our part, must make major investments in power grids to accommodate the diverse types of low-carbon energy. But there's nothing like international turmoil at the hands of a distressed country run by an unstable leader to provide a major push in that direction. Let's get pushed.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Solyndra’s Bankruptcy: Another Watergate — Or Another Whitewater?

When the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives last year, they vowed to launch dozens, perhaps hundreds, of shocking investigations of the Obama administration. So far their Congressional probing powers haven’t produced much in the way of shock, let alone awe. In the failure of Solyndra — a solar energy company subsidized with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds — they think they have finally uncovered a scandal that will prove the administration’s mismanagement and corruption.

According to their version of the Solyndra story, its bankruptcy shows not only that the White House misused stimulus money, but that solar energy doesn’t work and that all public investment (and especially the Obama stimulus) is synonymous with waste and fraud.

But as followers of wayward Washington know from long experience, some scandals are serious and troubling, while others are overblown and misleading. Watergate was a real scandal with vast implications; Whitewater was a fake, despite much huffing and puffing from the Beltway media. Which will Solyndra turn out to be? The initial indications suggest that it should do little damage, if any, to the Obama presidency — and that its meaning for the solar industry and public investment is the opposite of what conservative critics are claiming.

On Wednesday, the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report whose whose most damning conclusion after seven months of investigation is that White House eagerness to publicize progress on “green jobs” unduly influenced the decision to provide a $500-million loan guarantee to Solyndra. They leaked emails to the Washington Post suggesting that pressure to schedule a Solyndra photo op with Vice President Biden overrode concerns about the company’s solvency.

Those findings have been accompanied by much speculation — so far lacking any foundation — that political pressure on behalf of some Solyndra investors influenced the loan decision. One of the Solyndra investors bundled large sums for the Obama campaigns. But as other media have reported, the company’s second-largest investor is a fund backed by the Republican family that founded Wal-mart — and Solyndra’s CEO is a registered Republican, too.

Apart from all the noise and innuendo, there is a Justice Department investigation of the Solyndra management, some of whom are reportedly suspected of misleading federal officials in order to obtain the loan guarantee. And so far, that appears to be the limit of any plausibly alleged wrongdoing. It isn’t much — but there could be much bigger issues at stake here.

As for solar — and government’s green investments — the Solyndra case illustrates how mistaken we would be to abandon a vital future industry over one bad loan. The Solyndra loan guarantee represents just over one percent of what government spends on energy loan guarantees, and an even tinier fraction of the $10 billion or so spent every single year on average to subsidize oil, gas, and nuclear plants. You will never hear the Republican leadership complaining about those “market distortions.”

Solyndra went under because its technology was too costly to compete with the silicon-based panels produced by its competitors, both here and abroad, as the price of silicon fell drastically. Other factors contributed to Solyndra’s fall, including cheaper panels produced in China, where the state is heavily subsidizing renewable energy because the Chinese hope to dominate the world’s economic future.

Does government have an interest in promoting science and technology that benefit the public? The answer is yes, and in this country it has always done so, stimulating knowledge, commerce, environmental improvement, and gainful employment. Like so many other key technologies, from integrated circuits to the Internet, solar has become a viable alternative thanks to government support — in a world that desperately needs safe energy and clean jobs.

If there was criminal misconduct at Solyndra, it should be prosecuted — and apparently will be pursued by the Obama Justice Department. But there is no “scandal” here that justifies abandoning public investment or solar power.