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Global Marketplace
November 2013 83
government incentives aimed at promoting solar energy and
other renewable sources of power. At stake, the companies
say, is nothing less than the future of the American electricity
industry.” (“On Rooftops, a Rival for Utilities,” 26 July)
According to the US Energy Information Administration,
rooftop solar electricity – the economics of which often
depend on government incentives and mandates – accounts
for less than a quarter of 1 per cent of the nation’s power
generation. And yet, as reported in the Herald Tribune,
industry executives claim that such power sources could
ultimately threaten the ability of traditional utilities to maintain
the nation’s electricity grid. “We did not get in front of this
disruption,” Clark Gellings, a fellow at the Electric Power
Research Institute, a non-profit arm of the industry, said
during a panel discussion at the annual utility convention in
June. “It may be too late.”
Advocates of renewable energy say that such sentiments are
wildly overblown. For now, solar industry executives say, the
government needs to help make the economics of renewable
power work for ordinary Americans. Without incentives, the
young industry might wither: and so might its potential profits,
Ms Cardwell observed.
› At the heart of the fight is a credit system called net
metering, which pays residential and commercial
customers for excess renewable energy they sell back to
utilities. According to the US Energy Department, currently, 43
states, the District of Columbia, and four territories offer a form
of the incentive. The battle lines over the application of this
system are drawn among energy executives, lawmakers and
regulators across the country.
Utilities in California won a concession from the state
legislature, which ordered the Public Utilities Commission to
conduct a study to determine the costs and benefits of rooftop
solar to both customers and the power grid, with an eye
toward retooling the net metering policy. Results of the study
are due to be published before the end of the year.
Oil and gas
After investing heavily in new
equipment to process Canadian
tar sands, refiners in the US
are wrong-footed by their own
country’s shale boom
Until recently it was believed that all the world’s “easy oil”
had been found and that only extreme oil – so called for the
rigours it imposes on explorers and drillers – remains. Then
the US shale boom unlocked vast quantities of light, sweet
crude. Without fear of contradiction, Matthew Philips, an
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