Right in the Face of the Solyndra’s failure Obama Gives More Money to Solar projects
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DOE awards more than $145M for advanced solar technologies under SunShot Initiative (Solyndra 2.0)
02 Sept 2011
greencarcongress.com
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding more than $145 million to 69 projects in 24 states to help shape the next generation of solar energy technologies. Funded through DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the projects will also improve materials, manufacturing processes, and supply chains for a wide range of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells and components of solar energy systems. Some of these investments also support efforts that will shorten the overall timeline from prototype to production and streamline building codes, zoning laws, permitting rules, and business processes for installing solar energy systems. America is in a world race to produce cost-competitive renewable energy that can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, create manufacturing jobs across the nation, and improve our energy security. The projects announced today under DOE’s SunShot Initiative will spur American innovation to help reduce the costs of clean, renewable solar energy and re-establish US global leadership in this fast growing industry. —
Energy Secretary Steven Chu The SunShot Initiative seeks to make solar energy systems more cost-competitive, without long-term subsidies, by reducing the cost of these systems about 75% by the end of the decade.
The new awards are targeting improvements across the research, development, and demonstration pipeline, from next generation technologies 7-10 years away from commercial readiness, to scientific and technological improvements which can be rapidly implemented within 5 years. The six categories of projects are: Extreme Balance of System Hardware Cost Reductions: Nine projects to receive $42 million. These projects will conduct research and development of new balance of system (BOS) hardware, or solar system components including power inverters and mounting racks but excluding solar panels or cells, that is inexpensive, safe, and highly reliable. BOS accounts for more than 40% of the total installed cost of solar energy systems and represents a major opportunity to achieve significant cost reductions. Foundational Program to Advance Cell Efficiency:
Eighteen projects to receive $35.8 million. Combining both the technical and funding resources of US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, this joint program will support research that aims to eliminate the significant gap between the efficiencies of prototype cells achieved in the laboratory and the efficiencies of cells produced on manufacturing lines. The projects under this award address cost and efficiency barriers, advance fundamental PV cell research, and develop materials and processes for more efficient, cost-effective photovoltaic cells. Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems: Advanced Concepts: Eight projects to receive $25.9 million.
These projects will develop electronics and build smarter, more interactive systems and components so that solar energy can be integrated into the electric power distribution and transmission grid at higher levels. These technologies will help advance a smart grid that will handle two-way flows of power and communication, in contrast to the one-way power flow and limited communication that exists today. Transformational PV Science and Technology: Next Generation Photovoltaics II: Twenty-three projects to receive $22.2 million. These awards will fund applied research into technologies that greatly increase efficiency, lower costs, create secure and sustainable supply chains and perform more reliably than the current PV technologies. Investing in new classes of photovoltaic technology feeds the industry with the new innovations it will need to compete in the future and will help achieve the goals of the SunShot Initiative. Reducing Market Barriers and Non-Hardware Balance of System Costs: Seven projects to receive $13.6 million. These awards will provide funding to create tools and develop methods to reduce the cost of non-hardware components for installed solar energy systems. These projects will develop software design tools and databases that can be used by local jurisdictions and installers, and tools to streamline building codes, zoning laws, permitting rules, and business processes for installing solar systems. SunShot Incubator: Four projects to receive $5.8 million. These projects will fund two different tiers of transformational projects. The first accelerates development of new technologies from concept to commercial viability. The second level of funding supports efforts that shorten the overall timeline from laboratory scale development to pilot line manufacture.
The SunShot Incubator Program is an expansion of DOE's successful PV Technology Incubator Program, launched in 2007, which to date has funded $60 million in projects that have been leveraged into $1.3 billion in private investment. Solyndra. The announcement of the new awards comes a day after high-profile solar company Solyndra, which had received a $535-million Federal loan guarantee under the Obama Administration’s stimulus program, ceased operations, laid off its 1,110 workers and filed for bankruptcy. The
Administration is standing by its support for renewable energy (Bloomberg), but the failure (Solyndra was the third US solar company to go under in a month) has created a new political football. House Republicans are intensifying an investigation into Solyndra (Washington Post).
Solyndra was backed in part by capital from funds associated with George Kaiser, a Tulsa billionaire and Democratic fundraiser. Frank Rusco, a Government Accountability Office director who helped lead a review of the Solyndra loan and the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, said the GAO remains “greatly concerned” by its 2010 finding that the agency agreed to back five companies with loans without properly assessing their risk of failure. The companies were not identified in the report, but the GAO has since acknowledged that Solyndra was one of them. —Washington Post, 1 Sep 2011 In a 2 Sep editorial, the Los Angeles Times poses that Solyndra’s failure raises two important questions:
Should the government be in the business of picking winners and losers by providing loan guarantees to risky energy ventures? And is President Obama using stimulus funds to reward his political contributors? To the first, the answer is a qualified yes. Solar and wind projects aren’t the first to benefit from loan guarantees; Washington has been offering them to nuclear power plants for decades. Research and development of alternative forms of energy are expensive and often need more support than private investors are willing to provide, but such investment is worthwhile not only because it stimulates job growth during a downturn, but also because in an era of climate change and worldwide turmoil over oil and other fossil fuels, it’s in the national interest. Moreover, competing countries, notably China, are outspending the US on clean-energy subsidies, and falling behind will only cede the future market to them.
But that isn’t meant as an excuse for the Obama administration. If it failed to do due diligence on Solyndra, it deserves a political black eye. To the second question, we’d like to see the results of the House energy committee’s investigation. Given that Obama promised to fund clean-energy ventures during the 2008 presidential campaign, it’s no surprise that green-energy venture capitalists such as Kaiser raised money for him, nor is it worrisome that many companies backed by those investors benefited from the stimulus. But if there’s evidence that political rather than business considerations played a role in funding decisions, Obama will have much to answer for. —LA Times, 2 Sep 201 |
