GE Hates US Energy Policy Too
I am so angry this weekend that it is hard to write about clean energy news. US energy policy is held hostage once again by a GOP refusal to allow a fair up or down vote in the Senate by the majority on the expiring Bush tax cuts bill, that almost seems like domestic terrorism.
The GOP is holding a gun at our head so millionaires and billionaires can get tax cuts. Our clean energy policy that we had hidden in the tax bill was collateral damage. This is traumatic.
We can’t actually come right out and have a grownup discussion with these people and pass clean energy and climate policy like other countries. We have to hide it. That’s the only way to pass any progressive policy.
Section 1603 cash grants for solar projects, tucked inside the tax bill, was killed, along with much, much, much more.
Turns out that the CEO of GE is just as mad, and he puts it better than me.
“You actually have to have an energy policy,” Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE told Businessweek. “It’s stupid what we have today.”
By contrast with the US, Immelt said, China has public policy. Along with innovation funding, supply chains and demand, “China is green, green, green, green — four greens.”
Here’s the rest from Richard Matthews The Green Market in Canada:
China and other industrialized counties are pulling ahead of the US in the race to lead in clean energy because policy makers in Washington have been caught up in debates on issues such as the effects of climate change, Immelt said.
“The rest of the world is moving 10 times faster than we are, and that’s going to mean someday fewer jobs, it’s going to mean less energy security, it’s going to mean lots of other things other than just climate change,” he said.
Immelt, who also called for a national standard requiring the use of renewable energy, said GE won’t give up on pushing to change US energy policy.
Immelt indicated that the US needs to establish a “long-term price signal” on carbon emissions, in order for companies to provide “appropriate funding for innovation.” Such moves would create jobs rather than shift them overseas, Immelt said.
What he said.
Susan Kraemer@Twitter
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