Hillary Clinton made the following announcement today:
“By the end of my first term, we will have installed a half a billion more solar panels, and by the end of my second term, enough clean energy to power every home in America,” Clinton said at the Blue Jamboree in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday. The Democratic presidential front-runner said her plan to subsidize alternative sources of energy would not entail a middle-class tax hike. In fact, Clinton said she would reduce taxes for working-class families. “And people say, well, can you do that without raising taxes on the middle class? Absolutely,” she said. “That’s why I’m going to be fighting for tax cuts that help hard-working families get ahead.”This is not a new plan of hers. Nor is it a pie-in-the-sky thing. Even Zack Colman, writing in late July of this year for the conservative Washington Examiner — not exactly known for its friendliness towards Democrats in general or Hillary Clinton in particular — says that this is eminently doable:
While the goal to boost U.S. solar capacity to 140 gigawatts, up from 20 gigawatts today, is "aggressive," experts said, it's still doable given recent growth trends and falling technology prices.
"Although it's a big number ... it's not a number that I'd characterize as entirely unreasonable. You would not have been able to say that even four years ago. That fact alone really demonstrates the tremendous progress the solar industry has made," Francis O'Sullivan, director of research and analysis with the MIT Energy Initiative, told the Washington Examiner."It shines a light on how solar is no longer this niche business."
Both solar and wind energy have been growing like gangbusters in the US recently. As Meteor Blades noted last week, wind power has smashed through official government predictions for growth and is showing no signs of slowing. This is probably because banks are inreasingly reluctant to fund coal-powered electric utility plants, but are more than happy to back wind and solar projects as they don’t have the enormous hidden costs possessed by coal plants. (US banks flatly refuse to fund nukers, even with the Price-Anderson Act providing a big Get Out of LIability Free card for the industry.) Investment banks are noticing that wind and solar are looking better every day in terms of cost. The potential of turning paved areas into solar energy collectors is just starting to be tapped.
By the time 2030 rolls around, we may well see an America that is not only energy self-sufficient, but clean. We need to make sure that a Democrat is in the White House to lead the way.