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I agree with your views, except that 1.DOE should have techies & analysts that could assess technical & financial viabilities of the Solyndra. In hindsight, it is more of a novelty.
2. As in any investment, especially of taxpayers’ dollars, maximum impact and spreading the risk by funding say 100 startups with $5M each, would have been a much more reasonable stragegy.
The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric for the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), The plant had an original price tag of between $65 and $75 million. After being many year behind schedule and a final price tag of $6Billion, the plant was never operated and abandoned.
More recently, Japan has experienced a more frightful result of failure caused by inadequate planning and preparation in nuclear power.
We know from past mistakes that solar is the correct direction to go. We know our politicians would prefer to destroy their opponents without regard for the long-term good of the country. We should learn from our mistakes and move on, without the partisan distortions. It is the industry of the future and we need to be in the game.
Sounds good.
Ron, how do you support your statement that solar is the industry of the future? Or how can I back it up?
The question really is whether it’s the Federal Government’s job to financial back specific green companies or industries.
Most people would refer to this sort of backing as “crony capitalism”.
The best thing that could happen is to leave it to private hedge funds to try to pick winners and losers.
It’s very bad PR for the green industry when Solyndra executives have to plead the fifth amendment on TV (they can’t speak because they would incriminate themselves – for what, you might wonder??)
Joe, the sun provides us with 10,000 times more energy in a year than humanity uses worldwide. We know this so we need to use the perfectly adequate technology to pick up a tiny fraction of this, such as SETC for example (www.solar-etc.com) a company that’s 3 years ahead of other CSP companies and offers NON-intermittent solar power very simply by “bringing the Sun to Earth” so you can use the high temperatures to generate power around the clock and on rainy days.
Another article here is showing that Solar installations in the US are at record levels, suggesting that Ron’s message is effectively being heard by many many operators. No other form of energy is growing as fast, least of all nuclear.
How many trillions of taxpayer money has gone to subsidize the fossil fuels industry? How much money has gone into fusion research? And the energy break-even point still has never been met.
China’s leaders see the most likely future while ours are being well paid to ignore it.
Unfortunately!
Great piece Rona, keep up the good work!