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FacebookA month ago in "The Energy Subsidy Tally", the Wall Street Journal analyzed a comprehensive EIA report released last year which includes detailed analysis of every type of direct federal financial interventions and subsidies in energy. Yes, this even includes a breakdown on research dollars. Another great analysis of the breakdown can be found here (and especially in the comments section). CNN Money estimated a couple weeks ago that $50 Billion of the stimulus funds went to non-nuclear "green" energy; but how much of federal spending and subsidies went to each energy type?
Here is the breakdown:
We see once again that nuclear energy receives the least support of the main energy providers. Next post, we will examine lobbying dollars-- the most taxing (ha) analysis we have performed yet.
Note, the EIA report lumps very large expenditures on fusion together with fission under the "nuclear" moniker.
ReplyDeleteSubsidy dollars per joule is another measure of energy subsidy to consider. The WSJ article does show this, but you need to subscribe or come from Google to see it. However, one should compare past spending with current production, not spending and production from the same period as the WSJ piece does.
State-level subsidies, feed-in tariffs, and quotas are also significant compared to federal direct spending and should be considered.
An study commissioned by NEI compared cumulative federal subsidies 1950-2006 with production in 2006. Results, in billions of USD/PWh:
ReplyDeleteOil 29
Gas 15
Coal 14
Hydro 95
Nuclear 27
Renewable 55
That's from my notes. It looks like there's an updated version of the study, here:
http://www.nei.org/filefolder/Bezdek_Report.pdf
It's nice to see some subsidies but I don't think they are enough, currently!
ReplyDelete