|
Renewable Energy: FY2005 Budget and Policy Review
Thursday, March 18, 2004
3:30 – 4:45 p.m.
, 2318
Rayburn
House
Office
Building
The House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy
Efficiency Caucuses and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute
(EESI) held a Congressional briefing on the key renewable
energy policy issues pending before the Congress, including a review of
the administration’s FY 2005 budget request for renewable energy
R&D investments and deployment initiatives.
Over the next several weeks, Members of Congress will be dealing
with appropriations and renewable energy policy issues that have been
part of the debate over comprehensive energy legislation.
The Senate plans to take up a revised energy bill (S. 2095)
shortly.
Briefing
Panel:
·
Fred Sissine, Energy Policy Analyst, Congressional
Research Service
Presentation
·
Elizabeth Paris, Tax Counsel,
Senate Finance Committee
·
Deborah Estes, Minority Counsel, Senate
Energy and Natural
Resources Committee
·
Karl Gawell, Executive Director, Geothermal Energy
Association
·
Glenn Hamer,
Executive Director, Solar Energy Industries Association
The
United States
is blessed with an abundance of renewable energy resources, including biomass,
solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower, which can be utilized
through many technologies to provide electricity, water/space heating
and cooling, transportation fuels and biobased consumer products.
Tapping these resources can yield a variety of societal benefits:
reduced air/water pollution that is harmful to human health; decreased
greenhouse gas emissions; local and regional economic development,
keeping dollars home that would otherwise be sent to other regions or
nations; and enhanced energy security, greater energy diversity and
reduced electric grid vulnerability. Moreover,
as households and businesses across the country have directly
experienced the volatility and high prices of natural gas markets, the
need to encourage greater diversity in the country’s energy portfolio
is all the more pressing.
Background
The costs of renewable energy technologies have
dropped significantly over the last decade, and promise to drop even
more with further R&D and accelerated deployment.
However, investment and production tax incentives have played a
critical role in making the “economics” work for renewable power and
fuels. In fact, the
expiration of the production tax
credit for wind at the end of 2003 resulted in the stoppage of many
contracts and loss of jobs across the country.
Renewable energy is also an issue in the increasingly competitive global
economy. Other countries are
moving forward aggressively on deployment, and many have much more
robust policies than the United States in support of an array of
renewable energy technologies. For
example, photovoltaic (solar cell) manufacturing increased globally from
562 megawatts (MW) in 2002 to 742 in 2003 – however, the
US
share fell from 120.6 MW in 2002 to 104.2 in 2003.
Global installed wind power has grown 500 percent since 1997 to
39,294 MW in 2003, with the
US
responsible for just 17 percent and
Europe
for 73 percent.
For more information, please contact
Josh Alban
at 202/662-1885 or jalban@eesi.org.
|
