SOLAR LOBBY FY-80 SOLAR COUNTER-BUDGET (in millions) Note: Items in parentheses are discussed only in passing in this text. 54-948 0 - 80 - 57 OVERVIEW The Solar Counter-Budget developed by the Solar Lobby is roughly twice the size of the budget the Carter Administration requested. A 100 percent increase may sound extravagant in an economic era in which the tight-fisted have the floor. But recent events combine with longstanding pro-solar arguments to say otherwise. On March 27, OPEC raised the price of oil by $1.20 per barrel and gave full leave to all OPEC member countries to collect any additional premiums that "they deem justifiable." On March 28, an accident at a 906-megawatt nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, left plant-workers contaminated and nearby townspeople the psychological victims of a close call. While America's large coal reserves seldom make headlines, their use entails risk too: burning all the coal supplies we have would release enough carbon dioxide to upset the world's climate. Doubling the solar energy budget more than doubles our indemnity against disruptions we can no longer afford. Sunlight will never cost us anything. Solar sources are not vulnerable to theft or embargo. And proximity to a solar collector will never give cause for alarm, much less for evacuation. Against informed reason, federal energy policy and the federal energy budget continue to give most support to those energy sources whose use gave rise to the current energy crisis. According to a DOE-contracted report conducted by the Battelle Institute, cumulative federal subsidies to conventional sources of energy have surpassed $200 billion-more than 100 times the amount solar energy has received. This year alone, more public money will be spent on nuclear power than has been appropriated in 200 years to all renewable energy sources (save for hydropower). The Carter Administration's budget request for fiscal year 1980 does nothing to right the balance. In the Department of Energy's "Budget Highlights," the FY-80 document is cast as a pro-solar budget. But this bit of juggling amounts to a public relations ploy, not a true redirection of priorities. (Adjusted for inflation, the proposed budget authority increases by only 6.5 percent the inadequate level approved last year.) By including the recently enacted solar tax credits in the budget document, DOE apparently hopes to obscure both the inadequacy of its own solar programs and the amputation performed by the Office of Management and Budget on the DOE solar budget. To be sure, no comparable statistics on tax credits were made available on subsidies paid to developers of con |