The federal photovoltaics commercialization program
This dissertation presents a political and economic history of the federal government's program to commercialize photovoltaic energy. Chapter 1 is a detailed history of the program. Chapter 2 is a brief review of the Congressional roll call voting literature. Chapter 3 develops PV benefit measures at the state and Congressional district level necessary for an econometric analysis of PV roll call voting. The econometric analysis is presented in Chapter 4. Because PV power was more expensive than conventional power, the research and development program was designed to eventually make PV a significant power source. The decentralized R D program pursued alternative approaches in parallel, with subsequent funding dependent on earlier programs. Funding rose rapidly in the 1970s before shrinking in the 1980s. Tax credits were introduced in 1978, with the last of the credits due to expire this year. Major issues in the program have been the appropriate magnitude of demonstrations and government procurement, whether decentralized, residential use or centralized utility generation would first be economic, the role of storage in PV, and the role of PV in a utility's generation mix. Roll call voting on solar energy (all votes analyzed occur from 1975- 1980) was influenced in a cross-sectional sense by all the influence predicted: party and ideology, local economic benefits of the technology, local PV federal spending and manufacturing, and appropriations committee membership. The cross-sectional results for ideology are consistent with the strongly ideological character of solar energy politics and the timing of funding increases and decreases discussed in Chapter 1. Local PV spending and manufacturing was is significant than ideology or the economic benefits of the technology. Because time series analysis of the votes was not possible, it is not possible to test the role of economic benefits to the nation as a whole.
- Research Organization:
- California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, CA (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6908183
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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