U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending, says International Monetary Fund Report

Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending

The world would be richer and healthier if the full costs of fossil fuels were paid, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund

By Tim Dickinson | May 8, 2019

The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.

The study defines “subsidy” very broadly, as many economists do. It accounts for the “differences between actual consumer fuel prices and how much consumers would pay if prices fully reflected supply costs plus the taxes needed to reflect environmental costs” and other damage, including premature deaths from air pollution.

These subsidies are largely invisible to the public, and don’t appear in national budgets. But according the the IMF, the world spent $4.7 trillion — or 6.3 percent of global GDP — in 2015 to subsidize fossil fuel use, a figure it estimated rose to $5.2 trillion in 2017. China, which is heavily reliant on coal and has major air-pollution problems, was the largest subsidizer by far, at $1.4 trillion in 2015. But the U.S. ranked second in the world.

The human, environmental and economic toll of these subsidies is shocking to the conscience. The authors found that if fossil fuels had been fairly priced in 2015, global carbon emissions would have been slashed by 28 percent. Deaths from fossil fuel-linked air pollution would have dropped by nearly half.

Oil, gas and coal companies — and their stooges in public office — have long argued that making consumers pay for the full impacts of fossil fuel use would cripple the economy. The IMF experts call bs on this idea, revealing that the world would, in fact, be more prosperous. Eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would have created global “net economic welfare gains” in 2015 of “more than $1.3 trillion, or 1.7 percent of global GDP,” the study found. (These net gains are “calculated as the benefits from reduced environmental damage and higher revenue minus the losses from consumers facing higher energy prices.”)

For the United States, the $649 billion in fossil fuel subsidies exceeded even the extravagant amount of money the country spent on defense. To offer a sense of scale, Pentagon spending accounted for 54 percent of the discretionary federal budget in 2015. In comparison to another important, but less well-funded part of the federal budget, fossil fuel subsidies were nearly 10 times what Congress spent on education. Broken down to an individual level, fossil fuel subsidies cost every man, woman and child in the United States $2,028 that year.

At the opening of the IMF’s spring meetings in April, Managing Director Christine Lagarde laid out the benefits she sees in properly pricing fossil fuels. “The numbers are quite staggering” she said, referring to the savings that could be achieved “fiscally, but also in terms of human life, if there had been the right price on carbon emission as of 2015.”

Lagarde continued to rattle off the benefits to humanity of realizing these savings. “There would be more public spending available to build hospitals, to build roads, to build schools and to support education and health for the people,” she said.

For Lagarde and the IMF, the conclusion was obvious: “We believe that removing fossil fuel subsidies is the right way to go.”

Link to the article at Rolling Stone here 

Report: Wind and Solar Power Reduce Pollution, Benefit Our Health and Climate, and Save Money

Wind and solar power are saving Americans an astounding amount of money

Not getting sick and dying from pollution is worth quite a bit, it turns out.

By David Roberts  | Vox.com | Aug 18, 2017

Wind and solar power are subsidized by just about every major country in the world, either directly or indirectly through tax breaks, mandates, and regulations.

The main rationale for these subsidies is that wind and solar produce benefits to society that are not captured in their market price (a.k.a. “positive externalities”). Specifically, wind and solar power reduce pollution, which reduces sickness, missed work days, and early deaths. Every wind farm or solar field displaces some other form of power generation (usually coal or natural gas) that would have polluted more.

Subsidies for renewable energy sources are meant to remedy this market failure, to make the market value of renewables more accurately reflect their total social value.

This raises an obvious question: Are renewable energy subsidies doing the job? That is to say, are they accurately reflecting the size and nature of their benefits to society?

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab published a comprehensive report on the health and environmental benefits of wind and solar in the US between 2007 (when the market was virtually nothing) and 2015 (after years of explosive market growth).

Below are the main conclusions:

• From 2007 to 2015, wind and solar in the US reduced SO2, NOx, and PM2.5 by 1.0, 0.6, and 0.05 million tons respectively;
• Reduction of those local air pollutants helped avoid 7,000 premature deaths (the central estimate in a range from 3,000 to 12,700);
• Those avoided deaths, along with other public health impacts, are worth a cumulative $56 billion (the central estimate in a range from $30 to $113 billion);
• Wind and solar also reduced CO2 emissions, to the tune of $32 billion in avoided climate costs (the central estimate in a range from $5 to $107 billion).

If you add up those central estimates, wind and solar saved Americans around $88 billion in health and environmental costs over eight years. Not bad.

Costs and benefits

In this case, as in all such cases, it is somewhat misleading to simply compare total subsidies with total health and environmental benefits. The total amounts are not all that matters. It also matters how costs and benefits are distributed — i.e., equity matters as well.

To put it bluntly: A dollar in federal taxes is not equivalent to a dollar of avoided health and environmental costs. The latter dollar is worth more than the former dollar.

Why is that? Simple: Federal taxes come disproportionately from the wealthy, via our progressive federal income tax, but health and environmental benefits disproportionately help the poor. And as any good economist will tell you, the same dollar is worth more to a poor person than it is to a rich person.

This is something that often gets lost in discussions of environmental regulations. It’s not just that their total benefits almost always exceed their direct costs. It’s that those benefits are uniquely egalitarian and progressive.

In the case of climate change, any reduction in CO2 emissions benefits everyone on Earth (egalitarian), while disproportionately helping the poor, who suffer earliest and most from climate impacts (progressive).

In the case of local air-quality benefits, cleaner air benefits everyone in the region who breathes (egalitarian), while disproportionately helping the poor, who are more likely to live in close proximity to fossil fuel power plants (progressive).

In terms of equity, converting a dollar of wealthy people’s money into a dollar of health for low-income communities seems like a good deal to me. And if you can get multiple dollars of low-income health benefit for every dollar of high-income taxes, well, that’s a no brainer.

Everybody breathes. Any dollar of federal income taxes used to produce a dollar of air and climate benefits is a net gain for justice.

Excerpts of the article are shown above. To read the full article, visit Vox.com

Myth About Renewable Energy Subsidies

The Myth About Renewable Energy Subsidies

Global subsidies for fossil fuels outstrip those for renewable energy nearly 10-fold

February 25th, 2016 by Giles Parkinson | CleanTechnica

Originally published on RenewEconomy.

Ever hear the story about why renewable energy can’t compete without a subsidy? You hear it all the time from the fossil fuel industry. And the response from renewables? Take away fossil fuel subsidies, and they’d be glad to compete on level terms.

This graph below, displayed today by David Hochschild, a commissioner with the California Energy Commission, at the Energy Productivity Summer Study in Sydney, illustrates why the fossil fuel and nuclear industries don’t want that to happen.

Studies by the International Energy Agency point out that global subsidies for fossil fuels outstrip those for renewable energy nearly 10-fold. The International Monetary Fund said if climate and environmental costs were included, then the fossil fuel subsides increased another 10 times to nearly $5 trillion a year.

This graph, that Hochschild sourced from DBL Investors, shows the accumulated energy subsidies in the US under federal programs. Oil and gas dominate, followed by nuclear. Federal renewable energy subsidies, in the form of investment and tax credits, are a small fraction.

“The fossil fuel industry hates to talk about that,” Hochschild told RenewEconomy in an interview after his presentation.

“There is a myth around subsidies, but there is no such thing as an unsubsidised unit of energy.”

He said the oil depletion allowance had been in place for the oil industry since 1926, and would be ongoing, despite the fact it was one of the most profitable industries in the world. He cited insurance costs for nuclear plants – met by taxpayers – “without which there would be no nuclear plants”.

For natural gas, it was the drilling, or fracking, which had been made exempt from compliance with the safe drinking water act: “That is subsidy,” he said. And he pointed to taxpayer funded rail networks that have helped coal.

By contrast, the large-scale wind and solar industries in the US have had to content with repeated changes to their federal support mechanisms. The tax credits have been changed seven times in a decade.

“How can you plan a wind turbine factory or project in those types of conditions,” he asked.

And he used this graph to illustrate the short-term nature of the subsidies that renewable energy does get. And the biggest benefit. “You put subsidies in renewable energy and costs go down” to the point where they are not needed any more. That has not happened with fossil fuels and nuclear.

~   ~   ~

StopFundingFossils.org

END FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES: While governments talk about the need for climate action, they’re handing out massive amounts of public money to the fossil fuel industry and making the problem worse.

The U.S., China, E.U. and the other G20 countries are still giving $452 billion to support fossil fuel production every single year.

Send your message demanding world leaders Stop Funding Fossils in the next 5 years.

The time for talk is over, We Need Action!

TAKE ACTION - Visit: http://stopfundingfossils.org/#action   

Want to Pay for Cuomo's $8 Billion Nuclear Bailout? Comment Today!

It's Time to Hit the Brakes on Governor Cuomo's Extravagant 12-Year Nuclear Bailout

The push for a massive nuclear power bailout in New York just got a lot worse -- and the state agency pushing it doesn't want to consider other options or give the public any time to make our voices heard.

After saying for months that the proposed nuclear subsides would cost only $270 million over 12 years, a new proposal released just a few days ago raised the projected price to almost $8 billion. Yes, you read that right, Governor Cuomo and the New York Public Service Commission now want to spend $8 billion of New Yorkers’ money on bailing out the nuclear industry, and in particular, one company: Exelon. The cost will be paid by every electricity consumer in New York -- residents, businesses, and municipalities -- with higher energy bills.

This may be the largest corporate bailout or subsidy to one company in New York history. And the public has been given only 10 business days to comment on this new expensive plan. They are rushing to try to make a decision by August 1.

IMPORTANT: If we want to stop this, we need thousands of people to comment by Friday, July 22. So I am writing to ask you to please raise your voice.

Click here to comment today.  It's Easy! Just send a form email message or personalize it.


This plan is so much worse than even the original plan to bail out most of New York's nuclear power plants. If it goes through, New York will end up spending two times more money on bailing out dirty, old, dangerous reactors than on building safe, clean, affordable renewable energy. And we would be locked into paying this nuclear tax for over 12 years, until 2029.

The PSC hasn’t even considered other options. They have done no analysis to see what it would look like if we replaced nuclear power in New York with efficiency or renewables. 

The plan is outrageous and dangerous:

• It risks nuclear meltdowns on the shore of Lake Ontario, drinking water for 9 million people, just miles from Syracuse and Rochester.

• It steals billions of dollars from building the clean-energy economy New York needs and deserves.

• And it blocks real climate solutions for over a decade, just to make more and more radioactive waste.

Please send a message to the Public Service Commission and Governor Cuomo now.

Thank you for raising your voice!

Jessica Azulay
Alliance for a Green Economy

CLIMATE & ENERGY POLITICS - U.S., Canada, Mexico Pledge - Clinton Pushes Solar - Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Excerpts from News Reports

North America Will Draw Half Its Electricity from Carbon-Free Sources by 2025
37 percent already comes from non-carbon power plants, mostly nuclear and hydro

The United States, Mexico and Canada recently made a joint pledge to draw half the continent’s power from non-emitting sources by 2025. White House climate adviser Brian Deese described the pact as a sign of the growing bonds between the nations on climate and energy policies. He told reporters that the trio are cooperating more on those issues now than at any time in recent history.

The agreement calls for the continent’s power grid to draw 50 percent of its generation by 2025 from renewable energy, efficiency, nuclear power and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage technology. It would require a steep increase in clean power and efficiency over the next nine years.

Renewables are projected to increase to 23 percent by 2025, while nuclear power is expected to decrease to 18 percent as some units are decommissioned. Those figures don’t include state and regional action to de-carbonize the power grid.

The Clean Power Plan will be the “central component” to meeting the goals, but other policies—including federal tax incentives for renewables—will help. The Clean Power Plan faces litigation and is stalled under a Supreme Court stay.

Nuclear power is also a big part of the existing 'carbon-free' electricity in the United States—representing about 19 percent of the power mix. [Editors note: nuclear power doesn't emit carbon, and so it is referred to in the article as 'carbon-free'. However, the life-cycle of nuclear is definitely not carbon-free. It's also not environmentally 'clean' since it generates radioactive nuclear waste].

Deese added that the three countries will focus on the transmission lines needed to pave the way for rapid clean energy development.

Mexico will join the United States and Canada in committing to reduce methane emissions by between 40 and 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 from the oil and gas sector. This will immediate impact on climate change since methane has a strong, short-term impact on global warming.

Click here to read the full report at Scientific American.


Hillary Clinton has promised to have a half-billion solar panels installed by 2020

Hillary Clinton, courting young voters and the broader Democratic base, has promised to one-up President Obama on climate change, vowing to produce a third of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027 while spending billions of dollars to transform the energy economy. 

Under the Paris Agreement, an accord committing nearly 200 countries to lowering carbon emissions, Mr. Obama pledged to reduce the United States’ emissions 25 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050.

A half-billion solar panels will be installed by 2020, she has promised, seven times the number today, and $60 billion will go to states and cities to develop more climate-friendly infrastructure, such as public transportation and energy-efficient buildings.

She would put the United States on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. And, she says, she could achieve all that without new legislation from Congress.
But Mrs. Clinton has avoided mention of the one policy that economists widely see as the most effective way to tackle climate change — and one that would need Congress’s assent: putting a price or tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

Conservative campaign operatives agree that they would immediately pounce on any mention by Mrs. Clinton of a carbon price.

Absent a carbon price, Mrs. Clinton plans to use a mix of new regulations, grant programs and spending on new infrastructure to achieve her targets. She would also spend $30 billion on a plan to help redevelop coal mining communities that are suffering economically in the wake of climate change policies.

And Mrs. Clinton would need at least some action by Congress to meet her goals — legislators would need to appropriate the $60 billion she intends to spend on clean infrastructure grants to states, and the $30 billion to help coal communities.

Among environmental groups and the renewable energy industry there is support for Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, however difficult they might be, compared with those of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who denies the established science of human-caused climate change.

Click here to read the full report at the New York Times.
 

Richest nations fail to agree on deadline to phase out fossil fuel subsidies

Energy ministers from the world’s major economies have failed to reach agreement on a deadline to phase out hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies for fossil fuels — subsidies that campaigners say are helping to propel the globe toward potentially devastating climate change.

Ministers from the Group of 20 major economies met in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday but failed to reach agreement on a deadline, despite Chinese and American efforts and a joint appeal from 200 nongovernmental organizations.

The Group of Seven richest economies last month urged all countries to eliminate “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. At a separate annual meeting in June, the United States and China agreed to push for a firm target date to be set at a summit of G-20 leaders in Hangzhou in September.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the G-20 had not agreed on a specific timeline to eliminate subsidies but said the United States believed that by 2025 or 2030, “we’d like to see very substantial progress.”

A 2015 report by the British think tank Overseas Development Institute, along with Oil Change International, calculated that the G-20 major economies subsidize fossil fuel production to the tune of $444 billion a year, marrying “bad economics with potentially disastrous effects on the environment.”

Russia spends some $23 billion in annual subsidies, and the United States $20 billion — despite President Obama’s calls to end tax breaks on the fossil fuel industry, the report said. China spends $3 billion, while Britain is one of the few G-20 countries increasing fossil fuel subsidies and cutting back on investment in renewable energy. Total G-20 subsidies for fossil fuels was four times the total global investment in renewable energy, it estimated.

“It is tantamount to G-20 governments allowing fossil fuel producers to undermine national climate commitments, while paying them for the privilege,” the report said.

 Click here to read the full report at The Washington Post 

Global Warming - Editorial Cartoons and Grim Reality

[Click Image to Enlarge]

And then there's this...

Bloomberg to discuss preparing NYC for warming world, as projections show growing effects

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, June 11

NEW YORK — The projections paint an unsettling picture of New York’s future: a city where by the 2050s, 800,000 people could be living in a flood zone that would cover a quarter of the land, and there could be as many 90-degree days as is now normal for Birmingham, Ala.

Facing those new projections of the effects of global warming on the nation’s biggest city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was scheduled to talk Tuesday about what to do about risks that Superstorm Sandy brought into stark relief.

“We have to look ahead and anticipate any and all future threats, not only from hurricanes and other coastal storms but also from droughts, heavy downpours and heat waves — many of which are likely to be longer and more intense in the years to come,” an excerpt from the mayor’s planned speech says.

Read more online at The Washington Post 

Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Energy Rose To Record High In 2012, IEA Reports
AP  |  By By KARL RITTER Posted: 06/10/2013

Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Let's End 'Polluter Welfare'

Politico 
By U.S. SEN. BERNIE SANDERS and U.S. REP. KEITH ELLISON

At a time when we have a more than $15 trillion national debt, U.S. taxpayers are set to give away roughly $110 billion to the oil, gas and coal industries over the next decade. We cannot afford it.

The five largest oil companies made more than $1 trillion in profits in the last decade, and in some cases paid no federal income taxes for part of that time. They certainly don’t need government handouts.

We need to end this corporate welfare in the form of massive subsidies and tax breaks to hugely profitable fossil fuel corporations. It is time for Congress to support the taxpayers’ interests instead of powerful special interests like the oil and coal industries. That’s why we introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act — which eliminates every subsidy to the oil, gas and coal industries.

The bill already has grass-roots support from across the political spectrum, including 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and many others.

Some of the same Republicans in Congress who advocate savage cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security consistently vote to preserve billions in tax breaks for Exxon Mobil, one of the most profitable corporations in U.S. history. While those members of Congress fight to continue fossil fuel subsidies worth tens of billions, they are working overtime to deny a one-year extension of key sustainable energy incentives for the emerging wind and solar industries.

Rather than pass strong legislation to help reverse global warming, Congress continues giveaways to the fossil fuel industry — even as its carbon pollution devastates our planet.

While there have been attempts to remove some of these fossil-fuel subsidies in the past, our bill is the most comprehensive. It would end all tax breaks, loopholes and federal research support for fossil fuels. It would make sure the industry pays its fair share by ensuring royalty collection for all drilling or mining on public land. We also end the loopholes that allow tar sands pipeline operators avoid paying clean-up tax.

It is important that the American people understand just how egregious these fossil fuel handouts are:

ENERGY & CLIMATE News

 ENERGY

• Innovative program can create jobs and clean energy By Larry Beahan, Sierra Club Niagara Group

• Sen. Sanders, Environmental Groups Call to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies - Common Dreams

• Coal-fired power proposal attacked By David Robinson, The Buffalo News

• Support the EPA's proposal to limit industrial carbon pollution from power plants - Natural Resources Defense Council

• Where's the Jobs? - How this state’s electricity pricing system is hamstringing investment and renewables and stifling job growth - By David Bradley

• Community Power vs. the Kochs By Aaron Bartley, PUSH Buffalo

CLIMATE 

• Gauging Public Opinion on Climate Change Policy - NPR Talk of the Nation 

• Great Lakes Ice Cover Down 71% Since 1973 By Jeff Masters

President Obama, Roses and The Kitchen Sink

By Jessica Glendinning, Virginia Organizer at 350.org

This article is cross-posted from the 350.org website
  

"I believe in an America where future generations will have clean air to breathe and fresh water to drink, powered by clean renewable energy (and good old fashioned American ingenuity). Don’t let me down."

This past summer, I was arrested in front of the White House on the first day of the Tar Sands Action, which resulted in my spending three days in a District holding cell. I have been back to DC a few times since then, including a trip this past November to give the President’s house a great big hug.

Jessica and Jason

Last week, I was back in Washington and at the White House again - but this time as an invited guest along with 350.org's Jason Kowalski [Policy Director in Washington DC; full disclosure: David Kowalski's son].

I met up with Jason a few minutes before our scheduled arrival time, and we walked up to the gates. Two ID checks, one security checkpoint and just a few minutes later, we were on White House grounds. Walking up to the Rose Garden, we were greeted by military officers in their ceremonial uniforms and a four-piece jazz combo.

Having always been on the other side of the fence, it was slightly surreal to have the experience of being inside the gates, schmoozing with members of the other environmental groups and the rest of the invited guests. We rubbed elbows with the heads of organizations, networked as much as we could, and were then led as a group to a portion of the Rose Garden right outside the Oval Office.

Green Solutions to Fix a Broken Economy

Video: "The Story of Broke" with Annie Leonard

The United States isn't broke. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this 'dinosaur economy' on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money.  

"The Story of Broke" calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. 

It's time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let's build it better. Watch this Video:
 

No Fuel Costs or CO2 using Wind Turbines

Dave Bradley of the Buffalo Wind Action Group wrote informative answers to questions asked about my post, Clean Coal: More Expensive, Less Desirable. The answers are in the comments section below that post, but in case you missed them, I decided to post them here:

Question: How much of that $1.5B cost for Huntley is government subsidy?
Answer: Most of that $1.5 billion (and it could be $2 Billion) is the cost of constructing the facility AND the Air Separation plant(s) to supply it with O2 instead of air. The subsidies come from allowing the CO2 pollution to occur, and also from the long term power purchase agreement that would take place between NRG and the New York Power Authority (NYPA). The price stability (very hard to find in NY) would protect it from competition from lower cost generation, such as onshore wind turbines.

There may also be certain subsidies from either NY State or the Dept. of Energy for this initial trial plant (though other such projects have been done on a slightly smaller scale). But the main subsidies are the essentially cost free allowance to pollute our atmosphere with fossil fuel derived CO2, not including the costs of coal mining (like mountain top removal), and the preferential stability that a Power Purchase Agreement gives (wind projects get no such treatment from NYPA in NY). That will lower the financing insecurity, and save the owners billions in higher interest costs that would otherwise happen if NRG has to sell this power on the NYISO at whatever rate NYISO goes for at any given time - the so-called free enterprise route.

Question: And how much solar or wind generating capacity could that much money buy? 680 MW?
Answer: As for the $1.5 billion in capital, that could buy 750 MW of installed onshore wind capacity - a very decent sized wind farm, or set of farms. With an average of 33% output (typical NY value), this would deliver an average of 250 MW of power. However, most of the costs would be involved in paying down the debt - no fuel costs for wind turbines. That avoids this terrible fate.

The Huntley plant was built for $40/ton coal, and so far this year, prices are now near $108/ton, with this just the early part of summer. The coal price spike is due to oil and natural gas prices going up, as well as the devaluation of the dollar, which allows Europeans (Euro currency) to buy our coal cheap (to them) and the increased demand just spikes U.S. prices. The one virtue of coal used to be its cheapness - and that is also fading away.

500 New Jobs: Silicon for Solar Electricity

The idle Globe Metallurgical Plant in Niagara Falls will reopen under the parent company, Globe Specialty Metals, Inc., and produce high-purity silicon, a rare commodity essential to make solar-electric panels. Globe will create 500 new jobs, as well as additional jobs needed for construction of a new 100,000-square foot facility. The new facility will produce 4000 tons of solar-grade silicon per year by 2011, and overall the plant will produce 30,000 tons of metallurgical grade silicon annually.

"In about seven months from now, approximately 150 people will be working there, not including contractors who will complete the construction," said Alan Kestenbaum, President and CEO of the New York City based company. In 1.5 to 2 years, an additional 350 people will be added to the staff. The average salary will be approximately $52,000, as reported in Business First of Buffalo.

Kestenbaum said that “This project will be a cornerstone for New York State to become a major center for production and research for renewable energy, and in particular solar energy products", as reported in a Buffalo News story. Globe will invest $60 million to retool the existing metallurgical-grade silicon plant and to construct and outfit a new facility to produce the premium-grade silicon product.

An economic development package supplying low-cost electricity from the Niagara Power Project was key in attracting Globe Specialty Metals to western NY. Empire State Development Corp. (ESDC) and the NY Power Authority partnered to develop the incentive package that provides Globe with 40MW low-cost hydropower over 5 years, and up to $25 Million in Empire Zone Benefits for up to 10 years. In the agreement, 25% of Globe's solar-grade silicon will be used to attract new solar panel manufacturers, positioning NY as a potential solar energy hub. The timing of this news couldn't be better as the National Solar Conference organized by the American Solar Energy Society will be held in Buffalo in 2009!

The ESDC sees the incentive package as necessary to develop the green economy in western NY. Others question the amount of subsidies and the need to waive payment of taxes, as detailed in the Buffalo News report by James Heaney, and covered in his News blog. Still, with so many incentives from the Federal government directed towards the fossil fuel economy that is linked to global warming pollution as well as environmental, health and security concerns, isn't about time that we take a giant step necessary to establish a green economy in western NY based on producing a commodity essential for a clean, renewable energy source? I'm for it. Perhaps some of the issues will be addressed in the June 19th session of Business Gets Green, where a representative from Globe Specialty Metals is slated to speak.