tax credits
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The federal government wants to pay for your electric bicycle
Electric bikes and electric motorcycles are awesome. They help you go up hills. They help you reach your destination with a minimum of armpit sweat. And they do this while dumping less carbon into atmosphere than their gas-powered equivalents. (Yes, there is such thing as a gas-powered bicycle. Yah. It’s stupid. We know.) The only […]
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Meet renewable energy’s new ally
Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way up front. The renewable energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) is an incentive provided to energy producers equal to 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, adjusted annually for inflation. If you generate electricity using a renewable system — geothermal, wind, solar, etc. — you’re eligible. For now, anyway. The […]
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What did Obama say about energy last night?
We at Grist List know more or less how your State of the Union experience went last night: You intended to watch it, but oooooh, you forgot there was a new Downton Abbey episode you hadn’t watched yet. You started watching the speech, but booooooring! You changed the channel/zoned out/got distracted by YouTube. Or you […]
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Federal tax credits may handcuff clean energy development
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Clean energy advocates should cast aside their worries about increasing Republican scrutiny of energy subsidies. The clean energy industry’s foolish reliance on tax incentives has already handcuffed its expansion. Unlike the leading nations in the clean […]
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Here comes the sun – the chart Paul Krugman left out
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Nobel economist Paul Krugman made waves last month when his column “Here Comes the Sun” noted that the rapidly falling cost of solar electricity – “prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year” – […]
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Group purchase gets residential solar to grid parity in Los Angeles
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Back for a second round, the Open Neighborhoods organization in Los Angeles has organized another group purchase of residential and commercial solar PV, bringing the lifetime cost of solar well under the cost of grid electricity […]
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Solar for Schools? Not so easy with tax-based solar incentives
You’re a city manager hoping to cut electricity costs at sewage treatment plant, a school administrator looking to power schools with solar, or a state park official needing an off-grid solar array for a remote ranger station. But unlike any private home or business, you can’t get 50% off using the federal tax incentives for […]
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America and Germany Getting Their Clean Energy Just Desserts
Germany is the unquestioned world leader in renewable energy. By mid-2011, the European nation generated over 20 percent of its electricity from wind and solar power alone, and had created over 400,000 jobs in the industry. The sweet German success is no accident, however, and the following pie chart illustrates the results of a carefully […]
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Can the wind industry survive without federal tax credits?
The wind production tax credit, a key incentive for new wind energy projects, is set to expire at the end of 2012.
