Congress should have known better.

Last winter, a long list of global companies—GE, Siemens, HP, Sony, Caterpillar, Cisco, Dow Chemical, IBM, Microsoft, United Technologies, Xerox and many more—warned the Obama administration in a letter [PDF] that a “Buy American” provision in the $787-billion economic stimulus package would make it harder to get the money out the door to create jobs.

Turns out they were right.

The Buy American regulations are complicating life for business, slowing down construction-ready projects and sparking trade tensions with, of all places, Canada.

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I learned about this problem only recently during a conversation with Daryl Dulaney, who is the CEO of Siemens Industry, a large U.S. division of the German industrial conglomerate that includes “industry solutions, industry automation, drive technologies, building technologies, mobility and Osram Sylvania.” With its German roots, Siemens may be more sensitive than most to American jingoism. But Dulaney is as middle American as they come—he’s a graduate of Ohio State and Northwestern who lives in a Chicago suburb—and he’s just ... read more >>

Until recently, you had to be deep green—and have deep pockets—to put solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of your home. The costs were high–$20,000 to $50,000 or more. The technology was baffling. The return on that big upfront investment was uncertain.

A California company called SunRun is changing that. A well-funded renewable energy startup – yes, even in these tough times, this small company has raised capital — SunRun offers homeowners a simpler, cheaper and less risky way to go solar.

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Photo credit: Gray Watson, Creative Commons

It’s doing so by adopting a business model that has been proven in the corporate arena. When you see solar panels on the roof of a Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Safeway or Kohl’s, chances are that they don’t belong to the retailer. Instead, those companies have signed what’s called a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with a solar provider. The provider (Sun Edison, near me in Maryland, is a big one) buys and installs the panels, owns and maintains them and sells the electricity at a fixed long-term rate to the customer. The retailers, in other works, benefit from solar power without paying a ...

First, the good news: A vast majority of Americans–as many 90%, depending on how you phrase the question–think the U.S. should act to curb global warming. Most expect the benefits of a national response to outweigh the costs.

Now, the bad news: Very few have acted on those beliefs. Only about 10 to 12% have contacted government officials, given money or volunteered with an organization working to reduce global warming.

So we’re concerned, but apathetic.

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Those are among the findings of an exceptionally detailed public opinion study called Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis. The 132-page study breaks down the populace into six groups, which it calls Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful and Dismissive, and analyzes each of their views. It was conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, which is led by Ed Maibach.

Global Warming's Six Americas

Disclosure: Ed is a good friend and running buddy. He’s also a prominent expert on social marketing, a professor of communications at George Mason U. (PhD., MPH, with prior ... read more >>

Yesterday I blogged about economist Steve Fazzari and his arguments on behalf of the Obama administration’s $8 billion in loans to automakers Ford, Nissan and Tesla to make electric and fuel-efficient cars. Today, an opposing view comes from Russ Roberts, a libertarian economist who is a professor at George Mason University, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the host of the excellent podcast EconTalk and a blogger at www.cafehayek.com.

Steve, Russ and I spent time together recently at a retreat for journalists and economists organized by the Murray Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.  What struck me was how smart, thoughtful economists can see the world so differently. If you’d like to delve further into these issues, you can listen to my podcasts with Steve and Russ at The Energy Collective, or listen to an in-depth conversation about Keynesian economics between Russ and Steve here at EconTalk. A correction to my podcast: Although I say that the administration is giving loan guarantees to the automakers, the government in fact is making low-interest loans directly to ...

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on June 26, 2009 to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, commonly known as the Waxman-Markey Bill. While, as of this posting, it has yet to pass the Senate, the bill promises an unprecedented and sweeping package of climate legislation, the full ramifications of which are yet to be determined.
 
But will the bill actually accomplish all of its purported goals? And how? What effects, short and long-term, will the bill actually have on the U.S. economy and the current path of climate change?
 
The Energy Collective conducted a live, interactive webcast in which energy experts and TEC blogger board members Jesse Jenkins of the Breakthrough Institute and John C. Whitehead of Appalachian State University dug into the bill and provided insight into its likely effectiveness in a number of key areas.

Listen to a recording of the discussion here:

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