Solyndra isn't the first dud for U.S. government officials trying to play venture capitalist in the energy industry. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation. The hydrogen car. Clean coal. These are but a few examples spanning several decades -- a graveyard of costly and failed projects.Not a single one of these much-ballyhooed initiatives is producing or saving a drop or a watt or a whiff of energy, but they have managed to burn through far more more taxpayer money than the ill-fated Solyndra. An Energy Department report in 2008 estimated that the federal government had spent $172 billion since 1961 on basic research and the development of advanced energy technologies.
See? The Energy Department is trying to set us off foreign oil! They just need a little more time. And money.
What does Washington have to show for these investments? And should the government even be in the business of promoting particular energy technologies? Some economists, executives and financiers -- as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- argue that the government must play a role because certain technologies have non-financial benefits, such as producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions or easing U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
But not conventional technologies, like tar sands, pipelines to Canada, or fracking natural gas.
But others argue that the history of government attempts to reach for the holy grail of new energy technology -- a history that features both political parties -- is not inspiring.
Several detailed failures are at the link.
Despite this track record and the recent Solyndra failure, Energy Secretary Chu remains undeterred. Citing examples from Civil War-era railroads to airplanes to semiconductors, he has defended government's role in funding new technologies and promising companies.
"Americans have always led by looking ahead. Even in the midst of the Civil War, when our country was under incredible stress, we planned for the future," Chu said in September. "President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, which authorized generous public financing for two private companies -- Union Pacific Railroad Company and Central Pacific Railroad Company -- to lower the investor risk in building railroads in unsettled territories. In 1869, the first Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, revolutionizing transport in this country and opening up a world of possibilities for industry."
That's one summary of 100 years of history. What about a history professor's views?
Enter Stanford University professor Richard White, a historian of the American West who wrote "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America."
"I admire Steven Chu a great deal, but his knowledge of the Pacific Railway Act unfortunately appears to be about equal to my knowledge of high-energy physics," White said in an interview. He said the legislation produced a disaster far larger than the lifeless factory that Solyndra has left behind. White said that Union Pacific and Central Pacific became two of the most hated corporations in the West, spawning political opposition wherever they went. Within 10 years of giving them land grants and loan guarantees, the federal government reversed its policy and eventually sued to recover its investment. The litigation dragged on into the 20th century.
It DID 'open the west', however, fulfilled Manifest Destiny, and provided a cheap outlet for the agricultural products of the west coast.
Many policy experts say some of government's biggest energy investment payoffs have come in the small stuff, such as testing the use of magnesium alloys to make lightweight car batteries more efficient or developing ballasts that make compact fluorescent bulbs more efficient.
Funding research, not mandating results.
Still others say that the nearly $40 billion paid out by the federal government so far to subsidize corn-based ethanol is a success story; ethanol has displaced more than half a million barrels a day of petroleum.
Woo-hoo!
But that benefit must be weighed against whether ethanol has driven up corn prices, along with evidence that it may be worse than oil from a greenhouse gas perspective.
Rats!
Doing all this requires massive sums of money -- and an acceptance of the inevitability of frequent failure.
Yeah! Think of Thomas Edison and the light bulb. Without government support, he ... never mind.
That could be a tough sell in Washington, given the downfall of Solyndra and the unsteady status of some other recipients of Energy Department assistance.
Coming up: More O-bumbles!
Massachusetts-based Beacon Power, maker of a nifty and effective -- but unprofitable -- method of using flywheels for electricity storage, filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 30. Ener1, a maker of lithium-ion batteries and a recipient of an Energy Department grant, was delisted by the Nasdaq Oct. 28 because of its low stock price.
An interesting read, and one benefit of Mrs. Bobby's WaPo - they do some independent work: the author covers energy for the WaPo.