Kaine, in Virginia Beach, promotes 'green' technology

The reason you can't swim or catch crabs and fish in the Elizabeth River is because industry dumped poisons, pesticides, and other things into the river. It had nothing to do with tax policy.

also, it is not "hogwash" to say that the market is the reason we can no longer swim in the Elizabeth river, not eat the fish, let only find anymore shrimp. Good public policy could have prevented this...decades ago.

...nor does it keep us from killing ourselves. Everyone go look up "tragedy of the commons".
The shared resource in this picture are the energy resources. Which are not infinate. Even if we don't run out in our lifetime, we do not need to wait for the market supply to drop in order for the price to rise and then we magically make changes. Ok, yes the change would have been created by the market, but bad b/c now we are nearly out of the resource. Not to mention the population growth means the demand will be compounded. This becoming a common sense philosophy, so I agree with Kaine's decision; even though I too am skeptical of global warming. I am not skeptical that we are reaching peak oil supply. And will sometime reach a peak in coal. Public policy is in place to save the market destroying its participants. Kaine is using policy to encourage energy efficiency.

First I believe global warming is absolute hogwash. The earth has been around for millions of years and will still be here long after you and I are gone. Need to change energy sources? Yes...we need to drill for our own oil and natural gas anywhere we can get it. I have no problem with nuculear, ethanol, bio diesal, hybrid, wind turbine, or hydrogen, as well as coal and oil, but none of us can park their cars tomorrow or stick a windmill on the hood. Well will still require petrolium products for many many years. Solar is too expensive for the little energy it produces. Change energy habits? WHY? Why can't I have the option to pay for the energy I consume especially if I can afford it? I now have a vehicle that gets 30MPG instead of 15MPG because I am cheap. Now I am getting slammed because the gas tax revenues are down. Not sure what you mean by true cost of dirty energy. Another reason is that mining coal and oil are jobs for rural Virginians as well. I think Kaine and the "green fiends" are a bunch of waco's.

Tell me what you find to be hogwash. I'll grant you my tone is a bit over the top - but it shouldn't hide the fact based arguments I make. Do you disagree with any of these?

Need to change energy sources?
Need to change energy use habits?
True cost of dirty energy not reflected in price paid?
So, you support Coal and Oil with our tax policy instead of emerging technologies?

Hogwash sir!

but we pay it one way or the other - with sickness, lost productivity, shortened life, loss of habitat and fisheries and jobs.

every technology gets government support - it's time to support something that won't kill us - by pollution or war/terrorism partly as a result of our middle east presence. Yes it will take a long time - but we must start changing now to get off of middle eastern oil to power our vehicles, and coal power for our electricity. of course the government needs to help steer the market - it's always been that way and sould always be that way. otherwise human beings (and the corporations made by people) enrich themselves and cheat, slight, pollute, and kill their neighbors to benefit themselves - maybe not by murder - but dying of cancer from pollutants can be prevented/limited. Another huge part of it is conservation, efficiency and elimination of waste. It's incredible the way we Americans run our air conditioners and breath stale indoor air, throw away things like they just go disapear, and use power like it's not CANCER CAUSING COAL BURNING TO CREATE IT - WELL WAKE UP BECAUSE IT IS! We need tax policy to help us begin to change over. Use less, cr

you folks pushing the 'wisdom of the freemarket' etc. - do you know how to look out the window/turn on a tv/listen to a radia/read a newspaper? do you not see what unfettered free market policies get us - greed, corruption, selfishness, excess, absurd risk taking, profit taking, pollution, environmental degradation, wars, sickness and yes - death.

You talk about the solar and wind and hybrid technologies as if they are not robust and fail if they are not supported by the government. DO YOU THINK WE PAY THE COST OF COAL ELECTRICITY UP FRONT? Do you think that dominion cheap $.08/kwhr is the true cost? Are you nuts - let me give you a few terms to snap you out of your foggy stupor - mountaintop removal, black lung, chronic asthma, lung cancer, mercury poisoning, global warming, acid rain, sea level rise, volatile weather, dying chesapeake bay, oyster and crab populations decimated...on and on. these are some of the results of coal power - not to mention petroleum auto energy, etc. these costs to deal with health care and the public costs of these effects are paid by us - they're just not put in the price we pay for burning coal to turn water to steam to spin turbines. but w

Mike, maybe you can explain to me what good it does to GIVE my tax money to a solar panel manufacturer when I cannot afford to convert my house to solar. When solar or wind becomes a cost effective way for me to draw my electricity I'll jump on it. Maybe you want to pay $20K to convert my house, but I don't have it.

I must also assume that all recent and new Runnymede construction is outfitted with solar arrays, since you are here chastising us for not wanting to leave our wallets open in support of Kaines latest feel-good pronouncement.

Instead of spending your time defending taxing the people why don't you put your considerable (and self professed) expertise on every subject imaginable and solve the problems you have helped create at SPSA?

skispcs - the problem is that you have to live very energy conscious to live "off the grid." Any extra gains during the day fed into the grid would probably get eaten during the evening. If I owned a house though, I'd probably try to throw up an array - just for fun. The higher end home inverters have serial and ethernet and some geeks graph theirs with rrdtool or mrtg or what have you... here is an example, you can see the output from a home in Boston:
http://256.com/solar/

Look at the graphs, notice that because it's been presumably cloudy, the output has been nil. This is the same problem with wind.

Perhaps a rule that any house over 3000 square feet facing in the right direction MUST have an array of a specific capacity?

If you want energy independence then Gov. Kaine should endorse ALL kinds of energy resources such as off shore drilling for oil and natural gas deposits off Virginia's coast. I have no problem with using wind, solar, or whatever. We still will have the combustion engine and will have it for many more years to come. I for one would love to tell the Middle East to drink their own crude, but no one can provide fuel for their automobile with a windmill and ride light rail to no where. I also doubt that a homeowner in VB would ever get a permit to install a wind mill in their back yard. Boo Bird? Only the pro tax "government knows best" folks think that we should let Kaine push this waco "green" agenda. If being a boo bird means I refuse to roll over and play stupid then so be it. One thing Kaine should focus on is removing that pre Kaine der garten program and add that 4 million to the budget short fall.

Government has no money of its own to invest. When government "invests" in Green Power, or Magic Beans, or whatever, it must take that money from some citizen. Every dollar it takes to "Invest" in the politically popular notion of the moment is a dollar a consumer cannot spend to drive our economy or a private investor cannot put to use creating jobs for some purpose that will make a profit and generate more consumption or investment, and thus the less efficient is the overall economy, which diminishes general prosperity.

In free markets, capital flows to its highest use, enriching ALL of us. When government diverts capital to "invest" in the flavor of the month, we benefit ONLY if the government is smarter than the collective wisdom of the marketplace. I guess that is possible, but I will expect to look out my window and see pigs flying loops first.

A distributed system where each building both feeds and draws from the grid would be beneficial. Each building could have a few solar or wind or whatever generators that fed the grid.
If you need power, you get it like normal, but if you are making more than you need the meter runs backwards and your bill goes down.
In a power outage if the main transformer that feeds a neighborhood goes down then the neighborhood can produce reduced power for itself

These tax incentives are meant to ease the cost of conversion to greener/more efficient technology. The demand IS there. What sort of tax incentive would you suggest? This is not bad, or even the lesser of two eguals. This is good! Ok but every die hard boo bird is going to still see an opertunity cost in all of this. In their mind's they seem to believe that if these tax incentives were not given then that would mean more money in "their" pocket. I'm just wondering if I have found the correct rationale for arguing against tax incentives which would make our region more energy independent and diverse. Maybe these tax incentives should be reinvested into forms of corporate welfare...YEAH, THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!

The Boo Birds are smarter than your average "green" person as far as cost vs benefit. Wind energy does not pay for itself and needs substantial subsidies to operate. Look no further than your European guinea pigs to figure that one out. Solar panels do not pay for themselves unless one wants to wait 30 plus years and then maybe. High efficiency anything comes at a high cost and never delivers the promised cost savings to your electric bill so where is the benefit? Hybrid vehicles only provide a benefit under certain conditions like driving around the block. Until the technology meets the market at a price that produces a benefit to the consumer, it will never mean anything no matter the tax breaks.

From the DOE website...

"Residential Renewable Energy Tax Credits
Consumers who install solar electric systems can receive a 30% tax credit for systems placed in service from January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2016; the previous tax credit cap of $2,000 no longer applies. In addition, consumers who install small wind systems can receive a tax credit up to $4,000. Geothermal heat pumps also qualify for tax credits up to $2,000."

There's also info on tax credits for buying hybrid autos.
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If Kaine announced that he has cured cancer, the reflexive boobirds would complain that he should have cured Aids... and vice versa.

Do these companies make the panels? I didn't know we had PV panel manufactures here in 757. Or do they resell em? Like reselling BP Solar or Sharp panels, or panels from China? Even if your house faces South, when purchased new the payoff may take over 50 years at current electric rates. Perhaps if you combine it with new tech HVAC equipment you could do better. The way to go still seems to be surplus panels, unless China really starts to crank em out cheap. There was a company that would put the system on your house, then bill YOU for the power it generated at current electric rates. So no money out of pocket, and the company gets a portion of the money that would otherwise go to Dominion. Seemed like a win-win to me.

The State of VA does not have money, how come?

The State of VA wants SouthSide Glow Money and the Heck with the Pollution or the high Cost of Nuclear Power.

Go Wind Mills, Solar Panels, Tide Power!

State of VA has never given SouthSide anything, Richmond can jump in Va Beach water!!

Why is it politicians love the "wind and solar" rhetoric so much? Have they just never actually asked an engineer about it and found variable sources like that can only effectively cover about 10% of the demand? What about the the other 90%?