Powering the world’s economies with clean energy will be humanfolk’s next large-scale, holy shit technological feat—it will, in many ways, be similar to the global establishment of the Web. Eventually. But it’s also going to be a hell of a lot harder to engineer. Clean energy, after all, is not the internet. To better understand why, allow me to recount an already fairly well-known parable about an envelope-pushing clean tech company that went belly up and distracted the nation from this otherwise important and fast-progressing project …The short-sighted among us scoffed when the high-profile solar company Solyndra closed its doors. The company was attempting to bring to market a pioneering technology, which, while risky, stood to produce a major advance in clean power generation. Its cylindrical thin film solar tubes were poised to generate more electricity than typical rooftop solar arrays, which are laid out flat. See, the cylinders can collect sunlight coming in from all angles, not just from above. Scientific American described Solyndra’s product back in 2008:“The company says that the solar cylinders—paired with a roof painted white to better reflect sunlight—can collect 20 percent more sunshine than their conventional flat counterparts. The estimate is based on 50 kilowatts worth of the tubular cells that the company installed on its own roof. As it stands, Solyndra’s CIGS solar cells convert as much as 14 percent of the sunlight that hits them to electricity and, all told, Gronet expects that a Solyndra system will deliver twice as many kilowatt-hours of electricity from a given rooftop.”
Which would have been amazing. If it could be made affordable to the American consumer, it could have amounted to a revolutionary leap for solar. Alas, it couldn’t—cheaper and cheaper Chinese PV, combined with some poor management decisions, left the company unable to compete on the solar market. And so it failed, like the countless other tech companies with a good idea but bad luck/poor business acumen that line the annals of innovation.But since Solyndra received Government Funding, the Tea Party equivalent of heading to the crossroads at midnight with an old guitar, the story blew up. Ideologue after ideologue condemned Solyndra and then lambasted green energy in general, and opposing clean energy investment became a shibboleth for modern conservatives. They pointed to each clean tech company that failed afterwards with glee.One of those companies, Beacon Power, made flywheels that were good at storing energy generated from renewable sources like solar and wind, which don’t supply baseload power to the grid. It too was deemed uber-promising, an important piece of the technology pie in lighting up our grid with cleaner and cleaner power, until it declared bankruptcy. And it had received $43 million in loan guarantees from the federal G. The right again erupted.But here’s the thing. Private sector venture capitalists purchased the ailing company, seeing a vast potential for long-term profitability. Third Way explains the import of this purchase:Venture firm Rockland Capital bought Beacon Power's assets and sees the company as a technology winner and moneymaker. The Federal Government won't make the return it could have with a small, well-timed capital infusion instead of letting Beacon go broke. Beacon, however, is still providing jobs, stabilizing our grid, and making money for the capital that's undaunted by the "radioactive" cleantech industry.And then the money shot: “Clean energy isn't the internet, it requires long-term vision and patience to thrive, but those who have that, whether it's the government or private investors, will be rewarded as the demand for renewable energy grows.”Building up clean energy infrastructure expensive, time-consuming, and complex. It requires large-scale manufacturing operations and extensive supply chains, harnessing an ornery and aging power grid, and competing with a dominant fossil fuel industry that can sell power for dirt cheap. A handful of MBA grads can’t just design an app in their dorm room and change the way we take photos or organize the best cat videos or whatever in the clean power sector, though there are plenty of big young brains finding their way into renewable startups.
But most of those startups don’t have access to the necessary capital to finance their great solar or wind or geothermal project ideas, because they’re expensive as hell, compared to say, laptops, software and intern pay. There’s not going to be a Zynga or a Rovio of clean energy without some serious outside investment; and few private companies are willing to make a bet on something that’s as “politically toxic” as clean energy. Yet demand for clean energy continues to expand, especially as the list of nations and states tackling climate change with carbon limits grows—California, Australia, the EU, New England, etc. Coal is dying off. Oil is drying up. Clean energy is immensely popular.There won’t be any Groupons (thank God) in cleantech, but smart, long-term investment will absolutely make some clean energy backers filthy rich. Everyone just has to remember: renewable energy isn’t the internet, and it never will be.
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