In my May 10, 2013 Santa Maria Times editorial about proposed new oil drilling in the Orcutt Hills, I wrote that renewable energy should be subsidized as the primary energy source for our future. Another editorial writer in The Times asked how this would be funded.
Answer: the same way energy technologies of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries were funded – by the federal and state governments. As the emerging technology of the 21st Century, renewables should be subsidized the way other energy technologies have been throughout U.S. history.
In the late 1700s, Congress enacted a tariff to protect the fledgling coal industry from British imports, giving American producers a major cost advantage. Pennsylvania exempted coal from taxation, publicized its advantages, and conducted geological surveys showing companies where it was located. By 1837, 14 states had followed Pennsylvania’s lead.