I read arodb's diary regarding the NYTimes editorial defending the principle of supporting a new industry in energy that promises a much better and sounder economy. The diarist suggested I amplify my comments and post it on its own.
Interestingly, Democrats are averse to confronting the most serious structural problems we have while the Republicans are seizing on the Solyandra bankruptcy as a Democratic administration failure and even better, from their patrons' point of view a swipe at governance and investments that only a good government can make. A controversy, entirely manufactured for taking down rivals, be it fossil fuel's competition or the political opponents is the basis of the so called scandal.
At the time both parties to varying degrees are pushing austerity, refusing to confront the real 800 lb gorilla in the room, (more under the squiggle)
a band of Americans has started protests (http://www.dailykos.com/... ) confronting of Wall Street which the two major parties depend on for "fuel"( money) to power national elections and political success.
I have seen a political/media storm on the spectacle of a pricey collapse of a solar panel maker. Was it an unfortunate bad bet placed by the Obama team? What was the real story?
I followed the arodb diary of the 24th of September responding to the partisan scalp hunting by Darrel Issa, the Southern California Republican himself very enmeshed in deals and scarcely the one to be accusing Dems of "crony capitalism". It was a followup to the NYT editorial and commentaries.
After scanning the 122 comments accompanying weighing in on the NYT Editorial blog, I learned there was a bipartisan effort stretching across the Repub and Dem administrations to assist new clean energy startups or significant players.
Solyandra got help from 2005 from the DOE, even before Obama. Even in california from the schwarznegger administration. But it went down. In spite of a growing market, it failed.
A fast moving field changed the economics of the Solyandra business model significantly. China which in 2001 had little to no solar PV efforts (under 1% of the market) had boosted support so much that: it meant enabled Chinese producers to have 51% market share by 2010. Their success swamped Evergreen and Solyandra by bringing down costs much faster (and their competitive pricing went down even quicker) than the American business models predicted.
That the partisan nature of the critique in the comments thread was in the majority of cases simply empty unsourced invective and sometimes outright blatant untruths..."solar power is only competitive with 500 dollar a barrel oil", "green energy is complete failure", just a scam....etc, etc....connected with an attack on Solyandra failure as a supposed scandal knowingly designed and delivered by the DOE by Obama's direction.
As to another angle left out of the Solyandra saga, the entire rest of the world holds private fossil fuel companies accountable through permits to work in their fields to deliver 20 to 35% of the price of energy in finished form as their price in royalties or profit sharing
agreements: in the USA it is typically 2.5% or less.
The state of Pennsylvania under Corbett, a Republican has specifically ruled out royalties and agreements to share earnings from profits from the gas fracking industry. His campaign for office has been helped by 86,000 dollars from these same companies - that is in the public record. Not known is what items of value or secret agreements there are between this "politician", obviously a tool of the companies and his future earnings during or after leaving office. Why? to conceal how lucrative the enterprise is and how the state of Pennsylvania is being robbed of hundreds of millions, and billions to come if this resource lasts more than 10 or 20 years.
In the case of solar photovoltaics, there has been great growth and advancements and dramatic falls in the price of hi efficiency panels. It is so dramatic in fact that solar thermal, or using sun's energy to boil a working fluid and have a variant of a steam turbine using solar direct heat effects is now more expensive than the equivalent direct electric conversion panels.
This has led to a switch in a 500 plus megawatt Photothermal generator facility planned for Arizona deserts into a photovoltaic setup as the costs of PV panels were simply lowered below the conventional turbine and concentrators and made total sense to change types as recently as in the last year's figures.
These are steady alt energy successes regardless of the failure of one or more companies in the field. The dropping of costs continues, improvements with generous and consistent support like that in Germany and China, the field keeps growing faster, and successes keep coming in spite of risks a cautious or hesitant private investor would undertake.
Last example of a winning industrial investment policy:
The USA needed a railroad line, the most advanced technology in transport at the time, across the country, and serving North and South to open up commerce and development. Many smaller scale private rail projects were poorly conceived and financed and failed or were absorbed by more established companies.
Making a two thousand mile straightaway or line was not a safe bet for any company until the federal government stepped in to back it. The results were outstanding even as many problems and collusion, corruption issues came about. The entirety of the project was successful and the country got a great boost. The problems paled by comparison.
Looking back over the multi year effort, and the upgrades during WW 1 that positioned the USA (USRRA standardization on the best designs, support of simplifying and fixing the most reliable and purpose built engines to help reliability and performance) to make an even bigger effort to recover from the Great Depression. It supported the war conversions of 1940 to 1945 was the most intensive use of the rail network ever, so the part played by Government selected investment is proved hugely significant in any discussion of economic possibilities and positive outcomes.