The math is hard to do, but some portion of U.S. oil industry subsidies will soon benefit greentech companies.
Unsurprisingly, it's not easy to learn the extent of America's subsidy of its oil and gas industries.
Even though there's a broad awareness of the fact fossil fuel is subsidized, and as of this week, a serious intent expressed by American lawmakers to co-opt some of those incentives for renewable energy, exact details of oil subsidies are hard to come by, Cleantech.com found while researching a new column.
Greenpeace criticizes the industry for intentionally making this information hard to obtain and measure. It believes Europeans spend about $10 billion or so (USD equivalent) annually to subsidize fossil fuels, while the American oil and gas industry might receive between $15 billion and $35 billion a year in subsidies from taxpayers
Cleantech.com's column, Oil industry subsidies for dummies by acting editor Dallas Kachan, identifies many of the direct and indirect ways the American government subsidizes its oil industry, the various points the industry uses to defend its levels of subsidies and common criticisms of U.S. petrochemical policy.
House Democrats this week announced they're crafting an energy package that would roll back billions of dollars of oil drilling incentives, seek higher federal royalties from oil and gas companies and put the money into new tax breaks for renewable energy sources such as biofuels, solar, fuel cells and wind power. The legistation is to be introduced January 18th.
While this may translate directly to as much as an additional $5 billion USD to be infused into greentech energy industries in the near term, "don't expect government floodgates to open immediately," wrote Kachan. "There's no clear consensus even among Democrats as to how the new funds should be used."
It will be hard for greentech/cleantech industries to not count their chickens before they hatch.
"This week marked the first steps on a long road to reshaping American petroleum policy. And, at the same time, potentially infusing renewable greentech energy sectors with a vigor that would have been only a dream a year ago," Kachan wrote.
Read Cleantech.com's Oil industry subsidies for dummies.
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Will money trickle down?
I'll happily eat my words, but I doubt we're going to see a whole lotta trickle-down into renewable energy soon, even if the Dems pull this off. They'll likely only going to be able to make the case for the Gulf of Mexico offshore royalties before the 2008 election, and that's really not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Maybe the solar subsidies will be augmented a little? Or maybe Washington will help accelerate pluggable hybrid development and throw money Detroit's way?
Maybe there'll be more. But like I said, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
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