[quote=Aecetia]Green is gone: “Renewable power companies have been forced to abandon attempts to raise money on the London and Madrid stock markets amid fallout from the European debt crisis and concerns about future public spending levels.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/13/renewables-float-spain-economic-uncertainty%5B/quote%5D
Call me a lefty, but this makes me quite sad. Not only do we not have enough enterprises ready to put “green” energy on the market, but the markets don’t have any support for the few that are left! I don’t see much future in getting the US off oil if there’s little invesment interest in other forms of energy….
To change the tone of this debate a little, what makes “green” energy or other industries so hard to promote and produce? It definitely takes a lot of money (and permits and such) to erect a wind farm, but an oil rig must take at least that much, right? Are the profits just so much bigger? Barrels of oil vs. kilowatts of wind power?
I guess a key difference is there’s little or no intermediate market–crude oil has to be processed and then distributed, so there’s lots of opportunities for money to change hands there.
Wind and sun convert pretty easily (I am no expert, but I don’t see any refineries connected to the houses in town with solar panels) into electricity.
Are we just making green energy too simple to be profitable?
As for the jobs generated in CA–I have seen an uptick of solar-related contractors lately. Surely there’s a few hundred jobs there? Or do they not count becuase they are probably all out of work roofers who just made a career change….
