China defense transparency

Military open to media scrutiny
By Cheng Guangjin and Li Xiaokun (China Daily)
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Beijing - Increased transparency on China's defense spending is not only a government initiative but also a result of a high level of media coverage, meaning that the claims made by some Western countries that China's military is shielded from public scrutiny are groundless, according to a top expert on military affairs.

"Now China's national defense expenditure is not only an issue dealt with by the government, lots of mainstream Chinese and other media organizations are carrying huge amounts of military information," Chen Zhou, from the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Military Science, also a member of the think tank behind China's White Paper on national defense, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

Related readings: Full text: China's National Defense in 2010 China sticks to defensive national defense policy  China issues white paper on national defense

For example, reports on the test flight of China's stealth fighter jet appeared on the Internet minutes after the aircraft's debut.

Beijing unveiled a 12.7 percent increase in its 2011 defense budget of 601.1 billion yuan ($91.4 billion) earlier this month.

Chen noted that China's defense expenditure as a proportion of its overall GDP, between 1.4 to 1.5 percent, was below the global average of between 2.5 and 4 percent. Statistics also showed that China's defense expenditure per soldier in 2009 was $30,600, compared with $481,000 in the United States, $410,400 in the United Kingdom and $172,700 in Japan.


"The increase in our defense budget is at an appropriate level. We have two guidelines when planning the defense budget, to meet the needs of both national defense and the national economy," said Chen.

The increase in defense expenditure in recent years is actually to make up for losses in the 1980s and 1990s, when China focused on economic construction at the expense of military development, Chen noted.


China recently allowed more family members of military personnel to join their spouses, which would help end the separation of nearly 100,000 service persons from their spouses.

The military will make efforts to provide housing and employment for family members, which means that young couples, even if living in the most expensive Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, will get government-subsidized apartments.

China said some Western nations make a habit of attacking China by criticizing its increased defense spending.

"Such accusations are unacceptable. The critics either do not respect the facts, or they do it for other reasons," he said.

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Are Solar Power Incentives A Nasty Regressive Tax On The Poor/Misinformed?

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By GORDON JOHNSON

Image by Getty Images  via @daylife 

Lately, a lot of attention has been given to the solar industry due to the unfortunate set of events which have unfolded in Japan as a result of the earthquake. The prevailing theme among journalists, mis-informed Wall Street analysts’, and investors who have a positively biased view on the solar industry is that due to the problems with the nuclear plants in Japan following the earthquake, this form of renewable power should be abandoned in favor of power sources such as solar.

The fundamental problem with this thesis is that it is impossible to replace distributed (i.e., power this is accessible equally at all times of the day) baseload (i.e., energy produced at a constant rate) nuclear power with intermittent (i.e., energy that is only accessible during certain times of the day) peakload (i.e., power sources that provide the most output at select times of the day) solar power. Furthermore, given nuclear power costs roughly $0.015/kWh, while solar power costs closer to $0.25/kWh, if all of the world’s nuclear plants were to be replaced by solar plants, the cost to the rate-payer would go up by nearly 25x (we do not think this would bode well in countries facing high unemployment – U.S., France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.). Stated more simply, if you were to replace the world’s nuclear power with solar power, you would only have power during the day when the sun is shining the brightest (if a rain storm, or large cloud, happened to pass over, you would suddenly not have power – this could be a problem in less sunny regions). In addition, your cost of electricity would rise by roughly 25x. Under this backdrop, it seems many of the arguments suggesting solar energy can replace nuclear are delusional at their core.

Now, to the question posed in the heading of this entry: Are solar power incentives a nasty regressive tax on the poor/misinformed? Well, first, it may make sense to know what a regressive tax is. More specifically, in terms of individual income and wealth, a regressive tax imposes a greater burden on the poor than the rich – there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer’s ability to pay as measured by assets, consumption, or income. Stated differently, a regressive tax tends to reduce the tax burden of people with a higher ability-to-pay (i.e., the rich), as it shifts the burden disproportionately to those with a lower ability-to-pay (i.e., the poor).

So, how do solar incentives work? Well, there are a number of schemes in which solar power is “incentivized”. However, the most popular form of solar incentive globally is in the form of a feed-in-tariff (FiT). Under a FiT incentive structure, renewable energy generators (homeowners, businesses, pension fund investors, private equity investors, etc.) are paid a premium by the utility buying the solar power generated by their roof-top system, on top of the cost of generating the solar power. As a point of reference, it is important to remember that while natural gas costs roughly $0.035/kWh, and coal costs approximately $0.05/kWh, with nuclear power at $0.015/kWh, solar currently costs about $0.25/kWh. Thus, if you are using solar under a FiT incentive structure, you are being paid by the utility $0.25/kWh for the solar power you are producing, plus an additional “premium” as high as $0.25/kWh, making the total cost to the utility subsidizing this incentive significantly higher than it would have otherwise paid using more traditional forms of electricity.


Thus, the cost to the utility appears to be significant, right? Well, it’s not that simple. That is, what the utility does when it pays the person who is using the renewable energy under a FiT program is simply redistribute the difference in what it is paying the renewable energy user (i.e., $0.35-$0.55/kWh) and what it pays for more traditional forms of energy (i.e., $0.045/kWh) to all of its ratepayers; in essence, the utility is not paying the exorbitant cost of incentivizing solar, but rather the collective ratepayers in any region which implements solar incentives are. This begs the question… can’t everyone equally share in the benefit of this structure? Well, unfortunately, due to the high cost of solar, the answer to this question is no. What do we mean? Well, when considering at present, the cost for a solar system is approximately $5.50/watt, and the average home installation is 5.5kW, the cost to anyone considering such an installation is $27,500 up front. Furthermore, given a solar system is a 20-year investment (meaning the returns on these systems are calculated over a 20-year period), the first 5-to-10 years of your investment in a home solar roof-top system, you will be cash flow negative. Admittedly, for those ratepayers in a FiT area who have a spare $27,500 to invest, which they don’t need access to in 5-to-10 years, an investment in solar makes a lot of sense (you are paid to use power). However, for the bulk of Americans who do not have a “spare” $27,500 to invest over a 20-year period, for which they will be cash flow negative for 5-to-10 years, solar is not an option. Despite this, however, because the utility redistributes the cost of solar to all ratepayers, whether you are using solar or not, you are paying if you live in a state that has significant solar incentives (i.e., California, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, etc.). As such, despite you not being able to afford putting solar on your roof, you are effectively being forced to subsidize your “rich” neighbor who does have the resources to put solar panels on their roof. Stated differently, a solar incentive is a form of a regressive tax on the “poor”. This begs the question… do many of the “poor” people in the States who have passed solar legislation understand this dynamic? Likely not.

When you add to this dynamic the fact that the majority of solar modules are produced in China, with U.S. solar module makers First Solar (FSLR) and SunPower (SPWRA) producing the majority of their panels in Malaysia, Germany, and Vietnam, the idea that solar installations in the U.S. create American jobs is another mistruth (this is an understatement). In fact, First Solar’s 290MW Agua Caliente Solar Project, which will receive nearly $1.5 billion in tax-payer funded money from the U.S.

government, and is being supplemented, for the most part, by modules produced in Malaysia (thus, effectively, creating jobs in Malaysia using U.S. taxpayer dollars), being constructed in Yuma County, Arizona, will only create 15-to-20 full-time U.S. jobs (a cost to the U.S. taxpayer of nearly $85.7 million per full-time job; this does not appear like a good return on investment for the U.S. taxpayer).
Another form of incentive, more widely used in the U.S., comes in the form of a loan guarantee, or tax credit. While these differ from FiTs, they are effectively the same thing… money taken from the taxpayer used to subsidize high-cost solar power.

In short, the way solar incentives work is by taking money from the poor to subsidize the rich homeowners, businesses, and investors who can afford the high upfront costs of installing solar power (a reverse Robin-Hood structure), which is among the most expensive forms of energy available today. While the solar industry has grown considerably, increasing its lobbying power globally, which in-turn has allowed for a massive expansion in marketing (with the key selling point being you must support solar to stop global warming), it remains among the most costly and inefficient forms of electricity available when observing: (1.) cost/kWh compared to other forms of electricity (i.e., wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, etc.), and (2.) usage (solar power is only available when the sun is shining, and declines in output with less intense sunrays and cloud coverage).

While it goes without saying that many of the same people who support solar in the U.S., and other countries, don’t fully understand this dynamic, as they see material spikes in their electricity bills, despite limited job creation associated with the massive solar plants being constructed in their backyards, this could become more of an issue.

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TNB in Limbo-Legal notice shocks landlord!

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Surprised: Sien showing the legal notice which he received for “stealing electricity”.

By QISHIN TARIQ qishin.tariq@thestar.com.my

Landlord perplexed over TNB’s demand to pay RM3,500 for ‘electricity theft’



KUALA LUMPUR: A landlord who settled about RM5,000 in electricity bill arrears chalked up by his errant Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) tenant thought that would be the end of the matter.

Stanley Sien, 51, said he was irked with TNB's inaction against its staff, despite several complaints that they had run up the arrears.

He then paid up the arrears, repaired his badly maintained terrace house in Puchong for RM16,000 and signed a new tenant in 2009.

Then came the shocker last October a legal notice from TNB demanding Sien to pay up RM3,452.49 for “stealing electricity”.

 

“After I paid the outstanding arrears, there was an understanding with TNB that the file would be closed and there would be no more extra charges.

“However, despite the mutual agreement, I was shocked to receive the legal notice later,” he said.
“It was their own employee who stole the electricity, so why should I pay?

“I had so much problems with the TNB tenant who did not even pay my rental for more than a year.”
Sien said the TNB worker concerned had been able to reconnect power supply on his own whenever it was disconnected.

“I don't know how he did it,'' he said, adding that he had filed several complaints to TNB to contest the initial arrears amounting to RM5,000 but was told nothing could be done since his tenant had reconnected the supply himself.

When contacted, TNB said it was investigating the complaint.
TNB chief operating officer Azman Mohamed was unavailable for comment as he was overseas.