Government expenditures on energy infrastructure and incentives for energy projects are not new.

There is talk in Washington of using the money to stimulate the economy to improve the energy infrastructure of the United States.

How would this work?

Proposals are for things like a 1930’s style Work Projects Administration (WPA) that would build things like power lines, solar farms and wind farms.  This is a 21st century version of the things that the WPA built during the great depression using the labor of millions of workers on “relief”.

“Over $4 billion was spent on highway, road, and street projects; more than $1 billion on public buildings; more than $1 billion on publicly owned or operated utilities;” -Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

Other proposals are to spend taxpayer money on incentives to increase the use of “green” energy technologies such as wind and solar power and to encourage energy efficiency measures.

Here is a database of all of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy incentives at the state and federal level.  Maintained by the NC Solar Center at the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University.

http://www.dsireusa.org/

If you hear someone calling proposals for the government to get involved in building energy infrastructure or providing incentives for energy related programs as “unprecedented”, you can respectfully point out their error.

There is precedent for large scale federally funded projects for energy infrastructure.  There is also an ongoing effort by local, state and federal governments to provide incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

We need to focus our economic stimulus efforts on achieving endependence.

Endependence = energy independence that ends dependence on polluting fuels.