NEI Nuclear Notes

Over the years, Dr. Roger H. Bezdek has become the leading authority on the issue of federal energy subsidies. In the most recent issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly , Dr. Bezdek has returned to the subject and provides an important reminder that the conventional wisdom isn't all it's cracked up to be: [T]he refrain is often heard, "The fossil industries are being given huge federal financial incentives, while renewable energy is being starved." The data show that this conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, there's a huge imbalance in recent federal energy incentives; however, the imbalance is strongly is strongly in favor of renewable energy (RE) especially when the contribution to energy supply of the different energy technologies is considered. While the report is for subscribers only, our archive of content on Dr. Bezdek's work remains free.

In 2008, NEI published a study based on an analysis by the Management Information Systems, Inc. that detailed the amount of subsidies that go to each energy source. The study has just been updated and now shows 60 years of energy incentives . Here’s the intro: With concern about the price and availability of energy increasing, public interest in the role of federal incentives in shaping today’s energy marketplace and future energy options has risen sharply. That interest has met with frustration in some quarters and half-truths in others because of the difficulty in developing a complete picture of the incentives that influence today’s energy options. The difficulty arises from the many forms of incentives, the variety of ways that they are funded, managed and monitored, and changes in the agencies responsible for administering them. It is no simple matter to identify incentives and track them through year-to-year changes in legislation and budgets over the 50-plus years that...

Steve Kidd from the World Nuclear Association, writing in Nuclear Engineering International magazine, discusses energy subsidies in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the U.S. view he cites figures from the Management Information Services, Inc., study commissioned by the Nuclear Energy Institute and released last fall. More importantly for this audience, Mr. Kidd describes the European experience on energy subsidies and reminds readers that nuclear energy has always had to include the cost of waste disposal in its calculations. According to Mr. Kidd, the Euopeans' cost of coal-generated electricity would double and that of gas-generated electricity would increase by 30% if they were required to internalize the costs and impacts of their wastes.

Dr. Roger Bezdek, President of Management Information Services Inc ( MISI ) and a noted expert on energy policy analysis, spoke at the National Press Club today, taking questions from the media on the release of a new report on federal incentives for energy development. According to the report, the main beneficiaries of more than $700 billion of federal energy incentives over the past five decades have been the oil and natural gas industries. The oil and natural gas industries together garnered 60 percent of federal incentives between 1950 and 2006, with 46 percent of the roughly $725 billion in federal support going to the oil sector, according to the MISI study. The report shows that the oil industry has benefited from $335 billion in combined incentives, with natural gas receiving $100 billion. The MISI study also shows that, contrary to some claims, federal energy incentives have not gone to nuclear energy technologies at the expense of renewable energy sources, such as wind and s...

In the world of Washington politics, one man's incentive may be another man's subsidy or boondoggle. A Wednesday afternoon posting on the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog reported the Senate's rejection of an attempt to extend tax credits given to renewable energy projects. The posting describes the on-again/off-again life of renewable energy tax credits and the punishing effect their uncertainty has had on investment in wind energy projects. Each time the production tax credit has lapsed, investment in wind energy has fallen off sharply, roiling the wind industry: The U.S. has never had long-term clean-energy subsidies in place; usually they are renewed for a year or two at a time. Lots of people in the industry blame that unpredictability for the stop-and –start pattern the clean energy industry’s developed over the last two decades. New projects generally come to a standstill the year after tax credits expire. The American Wind Energy Association, a ...

Details over at Atomic Insights .