Are Renewable Energy Sources Too Costly to Pursue? (ContributorNetwork)

According to the International Business Times, Congress allowed a longtime subsidy for ethanol -- in the form of tax credits -- to expire with the dawn of this new year. But ethanol isn't the only form of alternative energy that the government subsidizes.

* The ethanol subsidy, brought about by the Energy Tax Act of 1978 to provide stimulus to the industry, cost the government about $6 billion in tax revenue in 2011, the International Business Times reported.

* According to The Motley Fool, power sources -- traditional and renewable -- receive millions of dollars in government subsidies each year. When the amount of those subsidies are compared by cost per energy equivalent of a barrel of oil consumed, the subsidy for solar comes out the most expensive, at $63. The cost of the government subsidy for the energy equivalent to a barrel of oil consumed for wind stands at $32.59, and biomass/biofuels is at $20.37. As a comparison, the subsidy for coal is 39 cents. Nuclear is $1.79.

* Recently, the Navy signed a contract to purchase 450,000 gallons of biofuels for $12 million, which equals $26.67 per gallon, The Motley Fool reported.

* According to an editorial published in the Orange County Register, Washington's support of "hard-to-harness, expensive, "alternative" fuels, inadequate to meet ever-growing demand" is causing a self-made energy crisis. With 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil in North America, the editorial states, there is enough oil to meet U.S. demand for about 175 years.

* The Orange County Register editorial points to a half-billion dollar loan to Solyndra and $20 million spent "to create 14 jobs to weatherize four Seattle houses" as examples of the government-created energy crisis.

* A June 7 op-ed in the New York Times also lamented the cost of renewable energy, pointing to California's 2011 mandate to obtain a third of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. In order to meet their mandate through solar and wind, the New York Times piece stated, California will need to have 129 square miles of solar panels and more than a thousand square miles of wind turbines. Each would require land for solar lines and each megawatt of wind capacity produced requires roughly fifty tons of steel.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/environment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120104/pl_ac/10793393_are_renewable_energy_sources_too_costly_to_pursue

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