New York Times extends invitation to a dialogue on renewables
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0242
The 26 October New York Times article “ Future of solar and wind power may hinge on federal aid ” declared that in recent years, wind and solar power “have been among the fastest-growing sources of energy in the country” and that “questions loom over their future: Will federal incentives that are important to their growth continue? And what happens if those incentives expire?”
Now the Times opinion-page editors have selected a responding letter as the topic for this Sunday’s reader dialogue. It’s from Bernard L. Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University.
Weinstein observes that tax breaks for renewables cost the treasury $7 billion last year. “For every megawatt of electricity produced by solar,” he writes, “the subsidy amounted to $776. For wind, it was $56.” He asserts that comparisons to “current and past tax breaks for oil and gas” fail to acknowledge that “the tax incentives for fossil fuels amount to a mere 64 cents per megawatt.”
He continues:
Renewables have their place, and perhaps at some time in the future they’ll be able to stand the market test. But they don’t obviate the need for reliable, uninterruptible power. If the Obama administration is serious about energy security, it should approve the Keystone XL pipeline, open up more federal lands — including the outer continental shelf — for exploration and production, and embrace the shale gas revolution and its potential for providing a clean and relatively inexpensive fuel source for power generation.
He adds that these “actions will require no new subsidies.”
The editors add this note: “We invite readers to respond to this letter for our Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Weinstein’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail: letters@nytimes.com”
The editors offer no advice on getting a letter published, but experience and common sense suggest that short letters have the best chance, that pithiness multiplies the chances, and that it’d probably be best to submit by Thursday, 3 November.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for “Science and the media.” He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.