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Well, some utilities that own old and often dirty fossil fuel power plants are upset that renewables are making it harder for their older, polluting units to stay in business.  Then there are oil and gas industry association leaders like American Petroleum Institute (API) president Jack Gerard, who often talk about wanting a “level playing field” – implying that policies promoting renewable energy are unfair to fossil fuels.

Don’t be fooled.  Renewable investments pale in comparison to the amount of money poured into fossil fuel companies since 1918 to fatten their bottom lines and crowd out competition.  Fossil fuels have received around 75 times more subsidies than clean energy.  Up to 2011 (adjusted for inflation), the oil and gas industry received $446.96 billion in cumulative energy subsidies from 1994 to 2009, whereas renewable energy sources received just $5.93 billion.  An industry that has been enjoying federal tax subsidies for over a century has no standing to argue for a level playing field.   Heavily subsidized fossil fuels may have made sense 100 years ago, when we were racing to build the energy infrastructure of the last century.  But today we’re racing to build the clean energy infrastructure of the new century — and we need to support a new set of industries.  And we’re making real progress.

So it is no surprise that we are seeing a well-funded, industry-backed effort to roll back the policies that have been so successful in developing and deploying renewables.  Take, for example, the latest assault on a series of state laws around the country that have increased the amount of clean, renewable energy these states produce. …….. http://www.edf.org/blog/2013/04/26/oil-and-gas-industry%E2%80%99s-assault-renewable-energy