Brookings Institution / by Adele Morris, Pietro S. Nivola and Charles L. Schulze
http://bit.ly/NWUlnh
[From a Climate Wire story by Evan Lehman, sub. req'd] ”Giving clean energy subsidies to American companies is akin to throwing money “down a rat hole.” Mostly, it’s just a “bad idea…”
… pouring grants, loans and tax breaks into a specific sector is likely to waste money by betting on technologies that could fail or cost too much, say the authors…
The most efficient way to boost economic activity, like clean energy production, is to price each ton of carbon dioxide that is released by America’s utilities and factories, they say. Tax revenue would no longer be needed to aid commercial clean energy projects, in part because industrial sectors would increase their use of renewable power in order to decrease their emissions.
Short of a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program, energy subsidies should only be used for technologies that provide the biggest reduction in emissions and for basic research, the authors say…
