I may be misunderstanding you. You argue for ending oil subsidies. I agree. I see no mention of ending other energy subsidies. I agree, let anyone buy any car that suits their needs, but the subsidy for the Volt is intended to tilt the playing field. If the real cost, including development costs subsidized by government were factored in, not to mention the funds expended in just keeping GM afloat, even the government would not be a purchaser.
The same goes for the subsidies for alternate energy. It is intended to make oil costs similar to other forms of energy. Alternate cannot stand on its own, much of it never will. In the meantime, cheap NG and less expensive oil is available if the government keeps out of it. Government presently has apparently eased up on nuclear construction permits, but I will wait to pass judgement until the first KW rolls out of the plant. Plenty of other ways to stall anything the government wants to.
Well, I don't know how much of the GM bailout went in to developing the Volt, do you? The bailout was for the whole company, not just the Volt project.
Alternative energies such as wind and solar need battery storage before they can stand on their own. But other solutions like industrial flywheel systems can hold energy for up to 3 days with little energy loss. Still, it's a good idea to have base energy systems like nuclear and NG plants that can run 24/7. Other alternative energies like wave, hydro-electric, and thermal-electric can also run 24/7 and need no such backup.
Economically, it is ridiculous to think that wind and solar can
never compete with fossil systems for price. The price for both is dropping like a stone. Already, wind is competitive with coal, and in some instances, is less expensive than coal. Solar is getting there. As more manufacturing facilities become available and larger orders are placed, the price will continue to drop. We've witnessed this with practically every new technology to ever appear on the market. I don't understand how people could be unaware of this.
Even though the price for alternatives is coming down, it still needs time to develop. You suggest eliminating subsidies for both fossil fuels and alternative (and doing this right now) and seeing who wins. On the surface that may seem like a fair test. Well we all know that's a trap, don't we? Oil has 100 years advantage of development time and during that time it's only competition was the horse. No real competition, in other words. Manufacturers for the various oil equipment have been operating full swing for 100 years with a guaranteed market. Alternative energies are only gaining traction for the last ten years with severe competition (not just the horse in this case) from oil, and a market uncertain about changing over. So eliminating subsidies and then testing the market isn't a true test. A true test would have both developed simultaneously with no existing infrastructure and no supporting manufacturing facilities. In such an instance alternative energy costs would beat oil costs by several orders of magnitude. Consider the following...
I want to make enough energy to power 100 cars for one year. Let's assume the cars for both gas and electric are already ready, but absolutely nothing else. We assume this because we're only interested in comparing the source energies, not the cars.
To produce Gasoline from fossil fuel (oil), we must do the following:
1. Spend millions of dollars looking for oil with satellites and highly trained geologists
2. Having found the oil, spend millions of dollars drilling for the oil with highly trained and expensive specialists and expensive, unique equipment.
3. Having successfully drilled the oil I need to build a pipeline or supertanker to move the oil to the refinery, and spend millions of dollars building these things
4. Spend
many millions of dollars building a refinery
5. Spend millions of dollars building a fleet of trucks to ship the gasoline to various points where the cars can use them. This is my distribution phase. Note: that I do NOT add in the already existing highway system cost.
6. Spend
many millions of dollars making gas stations where the cars can get their energy
Done.
To produce Electricity from Alternatives, we must do the following
1. Spend millions of dollars building a solar plant.
2. Spend LESS than a million getting power lines from the plant to the already existing power lines (remember I didn't add for building highways either).
3. I could build charging stations, but most cars are charged up at home using their own money, so I don't pay for it.
Done.
This is only an example so it's rather simple, but I think it clearly demonstrates that oil-based energy requires FAR more infrastructure and FAR more startup costs than solar or wind plants. Oil has operated for more than 100 years with HUGE subsidies every year, and alternatives have only operated for a decade or so with far smaller subsidies. To claim wind and solar are poor tech because they don't compete, this very instant, is like living with blinders on and failing to understand the whole picture.