“We have proved the commercial profit of sun power in the tropics and have more particularly proved that after our stores of oil and coal are exhausted the human race can receive unlimited power from the rays of the sun.” – Frank Shuman, quoted in “American Inventor Uses Egypt’s Sun for Power,” New York Times, July 2, 1916.
Solar electricity is not an infant industry. The following Wiki information (verbatim) on the inventor Frank Shuman tells an important part of the story.
Ed Note: The solar industry is in “a fight for our lives,” in the words of the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association. (Fifteen extensions of the Investment Tax Credit are not enough.) But the narrative has long been that solar is “competitive,” or almost so. The news story posted below, from 1994, is part of this false narrative.
“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.” (- Allen Myerson, New York Times, November 15, 1994)
Thirty-one years ago, the ‘newspaper of record’ excitedly reported atop the business section that a breakthrough with solar energy had occurred with the business genius of the upstart energy company Enron.…
Aaron Nichols on LinkedIn provided a history of federal solar tax subsidies, beginning with Jimmy Carter. His point was to show that the numerous extensions (15 by my count) were bipartisan. My point, instead, is that on-grid solar is inherently noncompetitive against free market energies. [Note: AN blocked me]
Solar tax credits were not “created by the Inflation Reduction Act” or “invented by the Biden Administration,” Nichols begins. He continues:
The first solar energy incentives were created in 1978 by Jimmy Carter’s Administration. They’ve even enjoyed bipartisan support and been renewed by Republican administrations! Here’s a high-level history of solar tax credits:
1978: The Energy Tax Act of 1978 set the first federal solar ITC at 10% of project costs. Congress extended and modified this credit through the early 1980s, eventually making a 10% solar ITC permanent in 1992.…