Whichever way you look at it there's no justification for giving the same tax treatment to both coal and solar. One imposes an enormous externality and the other doesn't.
Whether it's a subsidy for one or a tax for the other is somewhat immaterial. The point is that they shouldn't be taxed the same.
Currently coal and gas actually receive massive subsidies, too, while a 30% tariff is slapped on most solar panels imported from China which is even more perverse. We're literally subsidizing pollution because coal/gas are tight with out politicians, while cheaper, cleaner forms of electricity generation are rendered purposefully less competitive.
> Whichever way you look at it there's no justification for giving the same tax treatment to both coal and solar.
The same? Not even, fossil fuels get significant subsides on top of paying nothing for the emissions and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
In June 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said $557 billion was spent to subsidize fossil fuels globally in 2008, compared to $43 billion in support of renewable energy.[1]
Worldwide, yes. In the US, not even close. According to the actual EIA report[1] (see PDF pages 15 and 16, table ES2) US government subsidies for fossil fuel power generation are a drop in the bucket compared to renewables subsidies. Solar alone gets more subsidies than all fossil fuels combined.
If these are the numbers that fed into the $557 billion and $43 billion[2] then it appears the US is responsible for a trivial amount of the fossil fuel subsidies worldwide and over 40% of the renewables subsidies.
[2] I know the numbers in the report are for 2010 and 2013, while the big numbers are for 2008. I'm assuming the other numbers have scaled similarly since then.
That report only lists, as it's title suggests: "Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy".
Harvard Medical School estimates that coal costs the US half a trillion (yes, trillion) dollars every year in externalities that the public, not the coal industry, or the utilities, pay the price for. The total accounted for in your document, for all energy types is only $40 billion, more than a factor of ten less.
You can have a fascinating semantic discussion about whether those half a trillion dollars, every single year, are a subsidy or not, but either way they're getting paid by the US public when a bit more "sudsidy" for solar could have avoided them.
The post I was replying to was discussing only direct subsidies, not externalities. The report I referenced is the one the poster's reference referenced. I don't see how an HMS report on the cost of externalities is appropriate to the discussion, considering the worldwide costs are certainly in the trillions if not tens of trillions.
I'm not sure I'm parsing this correctly, are you saying that the cost of coal externalities are irrelevant to this discussion, because they total trillions of dollars globally each year?
Taking that as gospel, in a supposed 'free market' economy why does the US subsidize fossil fuels all? Does anyone have a compelling reason? Isn't absorbing the cost of the externalities enough?
Whichever way you look at it there's no justification for giving the same tax treatment to both coal and solar. One imposes an enormous externality and the other doesn't.
Whether it's a subsidy for one or a tax for the other is somewhat immaterial. The point is that they shouldn't be taxed the same.
Currently coal and gas actually receive massive subsidies, too, while a 30% tariff is slapped on most solar panels imported from China which is even more perverse. We're literally subsidizing pollution because coal/gas are tight with out politicians, while cheaper, cleaner forms of electricity generation are rendered purposefully less competitive.