
Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust - moocow01
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_solyndra/
======
AngryParsley
Peter Thiel had a good analogy in his talk at Singularity Summit:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROrUea0gLlY#t=34m0s>

_As with technology, you have to be able to do more with less. Alternative
energy has to be cheaper. And until it is cheaper, it's going to be very hard
to get it to work. If you had Amazon as a computer company- if you had said in
'96, "Yeah it's gonna cost twice as much to buy a book and it'll take you 6
months to get it, but we're going to get subsidies that are really big and
that will make the business work and that's why you should invest." That would
be quite difficult to work._

Cleaner energy sources will take off eventually, but not until they're
economically competitive with coal.

~~~
comicjk
Actually, competing with coal is no longer enough. They have to be able to
compete with natural gas, which is getting very cheap.

Coal plants are already failing this test:
[http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20120103/NEWS01/2010...](http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20120103/NEWS01/201030354/Cayuga-
Lake-power-plant-owner-declares-
bankruptcy?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE)

------
Turing_Machine
We've had clean, green, safe, carbon-neutral energy for nearly 60 years. Too
bad people have been misled into being afraid of it.

It's called nuclear power.

~~~
mkramlich
There are two calls on hold for you, one from a place called Fukushima and the
other Chernobyl. ;)

~~~
Turing_Machine
Fukushima: despite a massive earthquake, tsunami, fire, and loss of power, no
one died. Yes, the plant was trashed, but just how disaster-proof do you
expect something to be?

Chernobyl: Horrible Soviet-era reactor design that was never approved in the
West.

No member of the general public or plant worker has ever been killed by a
Western-designed power reactor. That's a better safety record than _any other
source of power_. We've got 60 years of experience. There have been three
major accidents, two of which produced no loss of life whatsoever.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_There have been three major accidents, two of which produced no loss of life
whatsoever._

This is an overstatement. A crane at Fukushima fell down killing a few people,
and a couple of workers died of heatstroke (due in part to radiation suits).

As for Chernobyl, you forgot to mention that in addition to design flaws, they
were performing a scientific experiment well outside the safety parameters at
the time of the disaster.

~~~
Turing_Machine
I would chalk those up as industrial accidents of the type that can occur
anywhere, rather than nuclear accidents per se. Other energy technologies kill
people directly. Natural gas explodes. Dams break. Coal mines cave in, catch
on fire, and kill miners with toxic gases.

------
Caerus
I've been a huge proponent of "green" energy for years, and after watching it
for those years, it's becoming more and more obvious the technology just isn't
there yet. The best we can do is pump more money into research and ignore
these poorly planned start ups that are only profitable due to subsidies.
Every major type of renewable energy has some aspect which makes it at least a
decade and several breakthroughs away from viability.

Cellulosic/Algae Ethanol: About an order of magnitude off on cost, many orders
away on capacity. They are still immature technologies but seem to have a lot
of promise.

Photovoltaic Solar: Cost is almost there, but no one has a plan for what to do
when the sun isn't shining. Solar systems can only produce energy for about 6
hours a day, which presents a problem when we need energy for 24 hours. It
doesn't produce energy during peak demand (~5-9pm) to even help with load
balancing. People can currently make a small profit selling back to the grid,
but there's virtually no chance of it providing more than about 5% of demand.

Solar Thermal Collectors: Better than photovoltaic as they can generally
produce power for about 8 hours, then molten salt batteries can provide energy
for another couple; but still not a viable large scale solution.

Wind: Geographically limited, very high maintenance costs.

Hydrogen: Only an energy storage medium, not a means to produce energy. In
most cases there are more efficient ways to use the energy directly without
the additional loss of producing hydrogen.

Corn Ethanol: Energy storage medium, and a bad one. The most optimistic
numbers I've found indicate it requires about .84 gallons of gasoline to
produce 1 gallon of ethanol. Most numbers are significantly worse, in the
1.2-1.4 range. It sounds great if the lower numbers are accurate, but 1 gallon
of ethanol contains ~2/3 the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline so it's still a
net loss. (note: I haven't done any serious research on sugarcane ethanol,
which at first glance appears somewhat better)

Hydroelectic: Great technology that is proven, cost effective, and viable; but
is severely limited geographically and the dams can cause major environmental
concerns.

After years of following the news, studying it, and taking classes in
renewable energy; it always comes back to nuclear. If it wasn't for
legislative bungling, lawsuits preventing new plants, and the occasional
(comparatively) minor failure of 40 year old technology we wouldn't even be
talking about a clean energy problem. I'd love for one of these technologies
to prove me wrong but there is little indication they will in the near future.

~~~
comicjk
Re solar PV, the problem of the sun not shining is just a bigger-scale variant
of load balancing, which has been addressed successfully before. The English
grid does it with pumped hydro storage in this mountain in Wales:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station>

~~~
semanticist
You mean 'the British grid', since if the hydro plant is in Wales it is by
definition not English.

This is kinda like referring to a project in Texas as Mexican.

~~~
chc
More like referring to the USSR as "Russia."

------
OstiaAntica
"Clean Tech" is a big scam...politically connected VC like Doerr ripping off
U.S. taxpayers to fund crony capitalist boondoggles like Solyndra and Fisker.
The VC get all the upside, and taxpayers have all the downside.

If the elites really cared about solving climate change, they would advance
honest, technology-neutral policy solutions like a simple tax on carbon
production. Instead, from battery cars to ethanol, Green Tech has been an
excuse for a multi-billion dollar money grab.

~~~
startupfounder
WRONG! Clean Tech and Green Tech are not scams, they are investments in our
future. Just like any other technology the US has invested in. Like any
investment some are good and some go south.

If you want to complain about our government "wasting" money and trillion
dollar money grabs look no further then the Department of Defense:
[http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/03/13/opinion/13opcha...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/03/13/opinion/13opchartimg.html?pagewanted=all)
(note the numbers in this graph are in billions, not millions)

Solyndra was a rounding error in what the US Government wastes on defense.

VCs are like the government, they only win when companies win. Just like the
government VCs loose many, but win big on a few. Government wins when the
companies they "invest" in create American jobs. I am not even going to go
into you putting "simple" and "tax" next to each other in the same sentence.

~~~
OstiaAntica
Nearly every single American green energy program, from the 1970s to today,
has failed, or is in the process of failing. Some, like massive ethanol tax
subsidies and mandates, have significantly damaged the environment. Battery
cars are a passing fad that are also bad for the environment-- they rely on
coal-fired plants for electricity, and much of that power is wasted in
transmission. And the batteries are hazardous.

The fact that DoD is a bigger waste of money is not a defense of Clean Tech.

The real solution is getting the big incentives correct-- tax pollution, and
get the government out of the business of picking technology and playing
venture capitalist.

~~~
mkramlich
> Nearly every single American green energy program, from the 1970s to today,
> has failed, or is in the process of failing.

Solar is booming and doing much better than in the 1970's, and there have been
many breakthroughs combined to helping getting the cost per watt way down.

> And the batteries are hazardous.

You do know gas and oil are hazardous and toxic right? You do know that the
extraction, processing and consumption of oil and it's byproducts are putting
very large amounts of bad stuff into the air we breathe and water we drink,
right? You did hear about the various huge oil spills, including the BP Gulf
disaster, Nigeria, etc?

The whole point of government, one of many, is is to act as a neutral guardian
for society's shared resources and common benefits. Individuals and businesses
are relatively free to pursue their own interests, but only so far as it does
not harm others (ideally), or bring about Tragedy of the Commons kinds of
situations. Thus, some regulation, and some punishment/reward mechanisms are
in place to help maintain or bring about the kind of world we want to live in.
This should be pretty clear, and has no malevolent intent.

I do find it funny that some folks never complained that Big Oil was getting
subsidies, incentives, breaks, special treatment, etc. but when it comes to
solar, wind, anything intended to be a cleaner or renewable energy source,
suddenly there are complaints that government is distorting the market place
or picking winners. The difference, clearly, is which technology or industry
one would personally rather see favored. Put me down for favoring energy
sources that are renewable or better for health. This should not be some kind
of radical position, because the benefits are pretty clear.

We agree that taxing pollution is probably a good thing for government to be
doing. But the oil/coal industries world-wide are fighting such things, and
they spend lots of money on Congress. And the Republican Party, in particular,
does their bidding almost every time a relevant bill comes along.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Look into the environmental impact of producing solar cells. Semiconductor fab
chemicals are nasty stuff, and when you think about how many square miles
would be needed for solar to make any significant impact...

------
pocoloco
The guys at The Automatic Earth[1] explain that after the multi-decade credit
run up enabled by cheap oil would come when peak oil is reached. Once there
the financial system is not able to sustain itself without cheap credit it
will collapse and a sustained credit deflation will ensue. In this deflation
all assets will decrease in price but the difficulty to obtain cash will be
harder making them effectively very expensive.

This, they explain, will have the effect of making oil cheap to the point that
there won’t be enough money to invest in maintaining the current
infrastructure and even less to invest in green tech. Once the bad debts are
cleared and growth returns the true effects of peak oil will be felt
everywhere.

In summary, they say, don’t get your hopes up with clean/green tech. It is too
little too late and it simply cannot replace oil. And nuclear energy is no
better once you take into account the energy required to build, operate and
decommission reactors and also dispose of radioactive waste in a safe manner.

They have in my opinion one of the best analysis available in the intertubes.

[1] <http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com>

