The bloom is off “green” in this withered economy
The Prius had become commonplace. Politicians crammed windmills into campaign commercials. Talk of fluorescent lights shifted from how they make skin look pasty to how they save money.
Green was golden.
Then gas prices tumbled and the economy caved in.
Green is now suddenly optional.
When theyre buying at all, consumers have shifted back to roomy low-mileage vehicles that come without the extra cost of hybrid technology.
Alternative energy makers look to the Obama stimulus package to put their idling industry back into gear.
And consumers and businesses are edgy about spending any money up front — even if the long-term economics make sense — when the near-future looks so lean.
People are a little hesitant, said Bob Solger at the Energy Savings Store in Prairie Village, which designs and installs solar and wind energy systems.
His business has hardly cratered — Solger said customers still see the value of the improvements — but its harder to close a deal with the economy stuck in reverse.
Since the global economy slowed and oil prices tumbled, last years panic about $4 gasoline has been slowly replaced by relative indifference to the cost of fueling the family car. There is a danger we get lulled into thinking gas is going to stay under $2, said Eli Hopson, an auto analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Yet we may be lulled all the same.
Small cars and hybrids are dogs right now, agreed David Cole, the chairman of the industrys Center for Automotive Research. People aren’t buying much right now, but what they are buying is bigger cars and trucks because thats what they like best.
January auto sales were off more than a third from a year before. That means more older, less efficient cars on the road.
The Democrats economic kick-start package has about $50 billion for energy programs, much of that for renewable sources, $4.5 billion for better efficiency in federal buildings and $6.3 billion for states to cut energy use.
Yet analysts see no easy path to restoring America’s green lost momentum.
A boost in federal tax credits — from 10 percent of the cost of putting in a solar power system to 30 percent — drove a 74 percent jump in business nationally in 2007. Last year saw 50 percent more growth.
Obama campaigned on the idea that green technologies would offer many new jobs.
But those industries were, in fact, anticipating losing more than 100,000 jobs if the tax credits expired. Solar and wind energy manufacturers and installers already have been cutting workers.
With solar energys tax credit due to expire this year and with the economic downturn, the industrys prospects for 2009 looked, well, cloudy.
Even with the restoration of the tax incentive in Obamas plan, the industry is anxious.
Were used to paying for energy costs as we go. You turn on the light and you get the bill every month, said Monique Hanis, a spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association.
New technologies that make the most of fuel and contribute the least toward pollution sometimes pay for themselves. Sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they pay off only with government subsidies.
But they nearly always require spending today to save money and energy tomorrow. That means what seems merely pricey in good times can appear prohibitive in a recession.
When Step One is to take $30,000 and put it on your roof, it can be a tough sell even if the government gives you back 30 percent of that money in a tax credit, said Marchant Wentworth, a clean energy lobbyist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The industrial market for solar power is, in some ways, stronger. Land-use and grant applications are at record levels. The largest group of solar energy projects ever is now planned for desert ground near Los Angeles in a deal between plant maker BrightSource and Southern California Edison.
Uncertainty also has hit the makers of the turbines and other equipment that make monster-sized modern windmills. The industry is hopeful that tax credits will keep up momentum. (Kansas ranks 10th in wind power generation, although fifth in potential.)
We were seeing the warning signals, because of the lack of financing, the projects in the pipeline for 2009 couldnt make it to the finish line, said Christine Real de Azua at the American Wind Energy Association.
