An interesting observation by Austin, Texas energy writer Robert Bryce who pointed out that U.S. solar subsidies are 302 times more than subsidies for nuclear power.
Actually, his Wednesday column was a correction from what he had written days earlier.
Here’s how he described his newfound mistake:
Solar subsidies are even bigger than what I reported here last week. A lot bigger.
On September 22, I published my calculations on solar subsidies. I found that federal incentives for solar energy were 200 times greater than those given to nuclear when calculated on an energy-produced basis. I arrived at that number by combining data from the Joint Committee on Taxation with domestic energy production numbers from the Statistical Review of World Energy.
However, after further review, my calculations were too conservative. They were too low by half. Data published last month by the Energy Information Administration show that subsidies for solar in 2022 were 302 times larger than those given to nuclear.
Before continuing, I must credit my friend, Joseph Toomey, who alerted me to the August EIA report. You “didn’t need to run all over town trying to find the energy output data,” he told me via email. Joe was right. The EIA report, “Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Years 2016-2022,” contains numbers for domestic energy production (Table A1) and energy subsidies (Table A5). Joe also pointed me to a good piece he published on LinkedIn last month, in which he made similar calculations to what I posted last week.