There has been a lot of discussion recently on the Department Of Energy’s upcoming disbursement of energy related stimulus money.
The DOE has even divided the general allocation of energy grants into 10 categories:
• Energy Efficiency: $5 billion
• Greening Federal Bldgs: $4.5 billion
• Renewable Energy: $2.5 billion
• Smart Grid: $4.5 billion
• Clean Coal: $3.4 billion
• Next-gen Biofuels: $0.8 billion
• Basic Science: $1.6 billion
• Batteries: $2 billion
• Advanced R & D: $0.4 billion
• Nuclear Cleanup: $6 billion
While the 33 billion in grants and 134 billion in business loans is a massive achievement, that will hopefully lead to some great innovations and clean tech projects… where is the incentive for those that can help our energy crisis, but that don’t have a new wind turbine that needs funding?
It’s clear that reducing packaging, sustainable manufacturing / material choices and of course reusing / recycling can have a large impact on the overall energy consumed in America, but from what I see, our government has not yet tapped into incentivizing those types of efficiency gains.
Outside of the clean tech companies, the rest of us that can help could fall into one of two categories.
1. US Companies, that with the proper tax credits or stimulus money incentives, could further reshape their supply chains to use less energy and be more eco friendly.
2. US Citizens, that with similar types of monetary incentives on their personal taxes, could reshape their homes and personal choices to fill recycle bins, create compost piles, buy American, use less water….etc.
Most people in general are aware of the bottom line cost savings to justify using less energy, (i.e. using less = saving money) but with the entire country focused and properly incentivized on this shared goal, we’re surely going to get there much quicker than our current plan, that unfortunately has 98% of American’s waiting and watching on the sidelines.
Is this type of government incentive possible? Are there any packaging or general manufacturing lobbying groups out there that could petition this sort of stimulus package in D.C.?
Any thoughts or further discussions on this topic are very welcome.
Thanks,
David
As the founder of Excellent Packaging & Supply, I have been interested in producing domestically all of the products we now have to bring in from China. We market our BioMass Packaging® foodservice program nationally to mass feeders. Although we have plenty of Sugarcane Bagasse sitting in huge piles in Louisiana and Florida, we have to bring in plates made from sugarcane in China.
Ag waste materials (ultimately any biomass) are cheap and available feedstocks for both fuel and packaging. These would be green jobs, however the infrastructure for producing these products does not exist in America.
After reaching out to the new White House to let them know we would devote our volume to products made domestically nothing is happening. Where is all the stimulus money going?
The technology for turning any biomass into a plastic chemical precursor is right around the corner. Every region has its biomass that grows every year. I wonder why we aren't harvesting the brush in Southern California for fuel, instead of watching it burn and spending millions to put it out. A little common sense use of money before the catastrophe would help avoid the expense of the catastrophe.
I would like to know where is the stimulus?