NY Times Editorial: Remember Renewable Energy?

I appreciate this editorial for reminding us that Europe and China are cleaning our clock when it comes to investment in and support of the renewable energy (RE) industry. However, at the same time I think that this editorial could have a few more ideas peppered into it. I have called for the same subsidies for RE that the oil and gas industry receive to level the playing field, but I also think that there are other ways (rather than financial) for the government to give a boost to a nascent market. An example would include a federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that would force states to generate a certain portion of their energy from renewable sources by a certain time period. Currently, RE businesses are experiencing feast or famine depending which state we are talking about. Colorado has a great RPS (30% energy from RE sources by 2020), but Wyoming has no standard at all. An RPS from the feds would provide stability to the RE market. Check out this cool interactive map of state by state RE standards.

The last part of the editorial deals with transmission of all of this power and the investment needed to upgrade the electricity grid. But the NY Times said nothing about a different type of transmission called distributed generation (DG). The DG folks believe that instead of building large RE power plants we could put wind and solar PV/thermal on our homes and businesses and in our neighborhoods. Electricity generation is distributed from the many instead of coming from one source like the power plant. We still need newer transmission lines to replace some parts of our aging grid, but using a DG model would go along way to reducing the cost of renewable energy transmission and creating local jobs in our communities.

I'm glad that the NY Times is calling attention to renewable energy. It has fallen off the mainstream media's radar lately in my opinion. And it would be nice to have an editorial from a quality newspaper that illuminates more than the old ideas about how to boost the renewable energy industry. What are your thoughts dear reader?