Sep 17 - Richmond Times - Dispatch

Government help is needed if America is to significantly shake its dependence on a fossil-fuel-based economy, a prominent solar- energy expert said.

You have to "prime the pump" to make other forms of energy into practical economic alternatives to fossil fuels, Donald Aitken told an audience at Virginia's Sustainable Future Summit yesterday in Richmond.

Aitken is an affiliate faculty member at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and the founder and former chairman of the department of environmental studies at San Jose State University.

"If you leave it to the market, you are not going to get [alternative energy sources] going," Aitken said. The government needs to change policy and provide economic incentives for new energy sources if any meaningful change is going to occur.

He suggested that supporters of alternative energy stress its benefit for the nation's safety and security.

Aitken used Germany's, Japan's and California's successful efforts to promote solar energy as examples of what Virginia could do to jump-start solar and other renewable energy sources.

Germany, even though it has a climate similar to that of Seattle, Wash., has become the world leader in solar energy.

The key has been a consistent long-term policy, Aitken said. Germany has set a goal of converting half of the nation's energy use to new, renewable energy sources by 2050, according to the German Embassy.

Germany is phasing out nuclear energy and is sharply increasing taxes on oil and natural-gas use. To promote solar energy, Germany requires utilities to pay homeowners 45 cents per kilowatt hour for power that their rooftop solar panels put onto the grid, or almost twice the 25 cents customers pay for a kilowatt of electricity, Aitken said.

Consumers in Japan, like those in Germany, pay high pollution taxes on electricity. By contrast, some Virginia consumers pay rates as low as 4 cents per kilowatt hour for power generated by coal, a low price that new energy sources would find hard to compete with in the absence of government incentives.

Japan, for example, subsidized solar-installation costs to promote that alternative. But any incentives created by Virginia would have to fit the state's particular energy mix, Aitken said.