THINK TANKS: LOAN GUARANTEES COULD STIFLE NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE

摘要

Though the loan guarantee program for new energy projects has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress, a group of conservative think tanks said last week that the program should not be expanded. "Loan guarantees distort the marketplace. They artificially discount the cost of a project, which allows the loan guarantee recipient's project to be market viable at a point where it otherwise wouldn't be,"Jack Spencer, nuclear energy research fellow for the Heritage Foundation, said at a panel discussion on Capitol Hill. "What that essentially does is it allows the recipient to focus on other measures, even the next subsidy, rather than addressing the underlying issues that give rise to the need for a loan guarantee to begin with." So far, the Department of Energy has offered an $8.3 billion guarantee toward the construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Vogtle site in Georgia, a $2 billion guarantee to AREVA for a proposed enrichment facility in Idaho and numerous smaller guarantees for renewable energy projects.