What a waste of $2 billion that the country does not have.

As for solar power being “green”—green my butt! The sun does not radiate 5kv ac! Solar requires huge amounts of space and equipment to convert that energy into useful power. It also has to be transmitted via high power lines and towers to a power grid where it can be supplied to customers. Then there are all the NIMBY battles that have to take place.

It would be much better and greener to provide direct subsidies, or subsidies in the form of huge tax breaks, for home and business owners installing systems on their homes and buildings as a supplementary system that would help reduce demand and eliminate the need for hundred of miles of transmission lines and towers. The subsidies have to be of substantial size to make an investment in a home/business solar system a financially viable alternative; and solar systems are anything but cheap! 

What many, if not most, fail to realize is that due to the unreliability of both solar and wind energy, power companies still have to maintain capacity to meet demand. So how do alternative energy sources reduce carbon based energy use when the utilities have to maintain the same capacity to assure the availability of power when needed and demanded?

Its domestic, It will hire Americans and provide for much needed jobs with a positive ending.

I hope very little is siphoned off to CEO’s, shareholders and overhead.

Too bad it was only 2 billion.

Again, the President missed the importance of decentralization.  Instead of building large centralized array’s to generate electricity, why not provide two billion in small grants to individual homeowners to install solar units on their homes.  We have poor national electric infrastructure for delivery of solar energy.  Units on each home would lessen the demand on that infrastructure.  Solar units on homes would compensate individuals not corporations.  Decentralized solar on homes eliminates a major target for terrorists.  It would also decentralize job creation.  Centralizing solar is a prescription for high energy prices.  Once again Obama supports the corporatist model.  Obama is NOT a man of the people.

Think how much more could be invested if we took back all those subsidies to Big Oil, King Coal, and the nuke racket? Not to mention cashing out of those oh so necessary wars!

Don’t knock it.  If the horrendous Gulf disaster serves to get us off oil and onto other new non-polluting energy sources, go for it! 

And one more thing:  $2 billion is peanuts compared to the cost of killing people in Afghanistan.

Two Billion?  Its better than nothing I suppose, but I read the other day that the nuclear industry is getting at least 54 billion.  That’s quite a discrepancy, makes me wonder what could happen if we were to instead spend all the oil, coal, and nuclear subsidies on solar and wind.  It seems like we should just go for massive amounts of solar now, end the wars and start working toward the realistic solutions toward lowering our carbon emissions that won’t lead to another problem like nuclear waste or even worse an accident at a nuclear plant.

Certainly solar would loose less money over the long term when compared with nuclear.  I wish we could mobilize ourselves as efficiently to save our own polluted planet as we do to protect ourselves militarily.  Imagine how much solar capacity a trillion dollars could have purchased.  Its really a shame that we just can’t pull up our boot straps, stand up fearless in the world without trying to bomb ourselves to a feeling of security, and face up to the very real threat our own ways are creating for the environment.  Its time to for us to wake up.