Sen. Bernie Sanders on his new 10 million solar roofs bill

[kristopher]

On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill aimed at getting 10 million new solar rooftop systems and 200,000 new solar hot water heating systems installed in the U.S. in the next 10 years.

Cleverly titled the “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act” (PDF), it would provide rebates that cover up to half the cost of new systems, along the lines of incentive programs in California and New Jersey (not coincidentally, Nos. 1 and 2 in installed solar in the U.S.). It also includes measures to insure that those who receive assistance get information on how to make their buildings more energy efficient.

Sanders currently has nine co-sponsors: Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).

The bill would accelerate what is already a fairly rapid pace of growth for distributed solar power. Distributed energy has a number of advantages over its central-plant competitors (both clean and dirty): it’s faster to build, avoids the need for expensive transmission lines, can use already developed land, and enhances community resilience and self-reliance. It’s also labor-intensive, creating more jobs per dollar of investment than its competitors—a feature that may make it more attractive during a recession, when Democrats are turning their attention to unemployment.

I chatted with Sen. Sanders about the bill, the growth of solar, and his colleagues’ peculiar fixation on nuclear power:

Q. How much would your program cost?

A. http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-04-a-chat-with-bernie-sanders-on-his-new-10-million-solar-roofs-bil/

[global1]

1. Any Provisions In The Bill To "Buy Only American Solar Systems"?....nt

[Cleita]

2. Oh damn, I love him. He must be channeling me. I've been preaching this

since before we had an energy crisis and that was before *it was President.

[Hekate]

3. Yay Bernie Sanders!!! Kick and Rec!

[SlingBlade]

4. K & R

[NNadir]

5. I'll bet it will work as well as Governor Hydrogen Hummer's billion trillion solar roofs bill.

Which is: Not at all.

55 years of billion trillion quadrillion solar roofs bill have just produced complacency, wishful thinking, and billions upon billions upon billions of tons of dangerous fossil fuel wastes dumped into the atomsphere.

In fact, Bernie Sanders lives in a State where ignorance is destroying the production of dangerous fossil fuel waste capacity that easily exceeds all of the solar toxic waste machine panels in the United States.

[kristopher]

6. BTW, the bill is available for download at the link in the OP. NT