Why Is Wall Street Profiting From Clean Energy Tax Credits?
Tax credits don’t give people money for solar panels and wind turbines up front. That’s where investors come in.
GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images
An early example of a wind farm, in 2006
Since they were first introduced in the 1970s, tax credits for renewables have helped scale up and dramatically reduce the cost of clean power in the United States. But in recent years they have also created opportunities for a small handful of major investment banks to skim billions off the top, extracting lavish fees and control over clean energy projects as part of deals shrouded in secrecy. Public power providers who serve nearly a third of retail electricity customers have trouble accessing clean energy tax credits at all.
Photo: Asadr1337 / Wikimedia
Noam Chomsky on his new book, the Capitol coup attempt, 2020 unrest, and the prospects for progress under Biden.
U.S. politics has recently been roiled by converging crises, from the pandemic and uprisings over racial justice to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. What are the prospects for progressive politics under the new Biden administration? Noam Chomsky takes on climate, race, immigration, and revolution in this edited version of a radio conversation between Chomsky and
Alternative Radio host David Barsamian, conducted on March 15, 2021, in Oro Valley, Arizona. Established in 1986,
Alternative Radio is an award-winning weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to public radio stations. Its archive features one of the world’s largest collections of Chomsky talks and interviews.
buen vivir and
sumak kawsay (“good living”) are written into the constitutions. While mechanisms for enforcement still need considerable strengthening, these principles establish a powerful alternative to extractive practices, offering a legal and ethical platform for legislation based on harmony both with nature, and between humans.
In Europe, large-scale thriving cooperatives, such as the Mondragón Cooperative in Spain, demonstrate that it’s possible for companies to prosper without utilizing a shareholder-based profit model. With roughly a hundred businesses and 80,000 worker-owners producing a wide range of industrial and consumer goods, Mondragón proves that it’s possible to succeed while maintaining a people-focused, shared community of life-affirming values.
buen vivir and
sumak kawsay (“good living”) are written into the constitutions. While mechanisms for enforcement still need considerable strengthening, these principles establish a powerful alternative to extractive practices, offering a legal and ethical platform for legislation based on harmony both with nature, and between humans.
In Europe, large-scale thriving cooperatives, such as the Mondragón Cooperative in Spain, demonstrate that it’s possible for companies to prosper without utilizing a shareholder-based profit model. With roughly a hundred businesses and 80,000 worker-owners producing a wide range of industrial and consumer goods, Mondragón proves that it’s possible to succeed while maintaining a people-focused, shared community of life-affirming values.