About Social Media Today
First off, as I’m sure most of you are aware, Congress approved a one-year extension of 1603, the Treasury Grant Program, which pays cash grants for 30 percent of solar energy (and other renewable energy) installations in lieu of a tax credit, for companies that have not acquired a “tax appetite”; that is, enough of a tax burden.
It’s part of a bigger tax package agreed on by a divided Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, along with an unemployment insurance extension and some other, less well appreciated measures.
And in California, which has earned a gold star for four years running with its solar energy can-do attitude, the California Air Resources Board approved a cap-and-trade program for the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions implicated in climate change – a problem which only clean, renewable technologies (like solar, wind, geothermal and algae-based biofuels, among others) can ever hope to solve.
Under California’s AB 32, signed into law in 2006 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the program sets a limit on the amount of emissions various sources (electricity generation, manufacturing, transportation fuels) can emit. The new rules cover 80 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Major GHGs include CO2, nitrous oxides, and methane.
The program will be executed in phases that encourage (force?) businesses to implement long-term, capital projects to reduce emissions, and the state stands ready to offer encouragement, in the form of subsidies, to its most difficult polluters.
All in all, politicians note, the two achievements show the benefits of negotiating from a position of mutual respect. Environmentalists, always the harder to please, consider both results as a cup-half-empty – “green” gets a helping hand, but so do the rich – and expect the usual industry grousing, with most of the heavy lifting being done by those closest to the ground, environmentally speaking.
But at the end of the day – or year, as it is – we have still made progress on solar funding extension. And that is a feat worth celebrating.
Photo Credit: Karen & Brad Emerson via Flickr CC
