Are We Asking the Wrong Questions about Renewable Energy?

Americans of all political parties are sick of spending massive amounts of government money. And it's certainly understandable why. In the fiscal year 2009, the U.S. spent $1.4 trillion more than it brought in through taxes, creating the highest budget deficit the country has seen since 1945.

Last year's Troubled Asset Relief Program and this year's $787 billion stimulus package (which included $67 billion for renewables and energy efficiency) had a lot to do with that incredible deficit. The major reduction in tax revenue from individuals and businesses was another major factor.

Now people are hopping mad. As a result, big, bold ideas are getting crushed under the weight of all that anger. The messy and confusing debate over reforming the health care system was fueled by our collective anger over exorbitant government spending. As the debate intensified, a slew of misleading claims was put forward on both sides of the debate, making people fearful of any sort of change.

If we're not careful, the same thing could happen with renewable energy. While renewable energy advocates are rejoicing the government's decision to invest tens of billions of dollars into our industry, many other people are lamenting another round of big spending and asking, “is it all worth it?”

On the surface, that's a perfectly legitimate question to ask. We're putting a lot of money down on the table and we want to ensure that our spending goes to projects that create good jobs, leverage private dollars, re-build our economy and, of course, generate reliable energy. But opponents of renewables have seized on our fear of spending and have tried to convince Americans that developing clean energy is nothing more than a wasteful, pork-barreled science experiment.

If you're a renewable energy junkie and you pay attention to the news, you've probably seen or heard about the myriad studies that have emerged “debunking” the myth of renewables as a viable alternative to fossil energies. The blogosphere has been buzzing about these studies for the last eight months. Because renewables are such a hot topic today, that buzz quickly moved beyond clean energy circles and into the mainstream newspaper and television outlets, where the subject was given a lot of play.

It started in March, when a Spanish university released a study that concluded the renewable energy industries were killing jobs in Spain. The study's author reported that 2.2 jobs were lost for every one job created in the wind or solar sector. And if the U.S. kept supporting renewables, it would be in for the same dismal outcome.

Then came a study from Denmark concluding that wind was an unreliable, expensive and marginal resource in the country that did nothing to offset energy generation from fossil resources. The authors warned that the U.S. economy would hardly benefit from a 20% wind penetration, as advocated by the wind industry and the U.S. Department of Energy.

And finally, back home, we've seen numerous studies warning that a carbon cap and trade program would cost Americans thousands of dollars each year and paralyze the U.S. economy.

Given the current zeitgeist, it's not surprising that these studies caught on like wild fire and fueled a new round of debate over whether clean energy is worth the effort. People are scared and angry, which can make them more open to misinformation and less willing to make bold decisions.

I'm less interested in picking apart these studies and more interested in looking at the industry response, which has been mixed. From a nitty gritty, nuts and bolts perspective, we've done a great job countering many of the claims made by the authors of these studies. But we have also allowed ourselves to get swept up in a debate framed around the question, “are renewables worth deploying?” rather than “how do we best deploy renewables?”

We go back and forth about the methodologies used in various job creation studies. We argue about the fairness of subsides for fossil and renewable energies. And parties on both sides of the issue find ways to make the data favor their arguments. Meanwhile, the casual onlooker just gets more confused and more worried that we're spending money on a lost cause.

We are on the cusp of one of the most dramatic technological, social and environmental transformations ever undertaken. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to build entirely new information and manufacturing-based economies, create new wealth and do so in a way that is environmentally sustainable. Yet somehow, our industry is caught up in a cautious, tit-for-tat debate over whether or not renewables are even worth the effort.

Don't get me wrong – I'm all for a nuanced debate over how to effectively deploy renewables. This kind of financially and logistically difficult task deserves serious scrutiny. Unfortunately, we're going about it in a way that could hinder our ability to make real change.

Did we slog through the same debate during the birth of the internet and personal computing? Did we quibble over studies that looked at the impact of the digital economy on the pulp and paper industry? No. We recognized the enormous business opportunities that the internet represented and we made an all-hands-on-deck effort to develop it. We made mistakes. People lost money. Some industries suffered. But today, we have a whole new set of industries that we never imagined possible a decade ago.

Of course, we need to listen to dissenting opinions. There are many people out there with legitimate concerns about how renewables will impact the short-term health of our economy and energy markets. But if we let them center their arguments around if we should develop renewables rather than how, we put ourselves on the path toward the same incrementalism and half measures that have always guided our industry.