You can't invest in generic "alternative energy".
If the government incubates and ENTIRE industry, like alternative fuels or energy storage for cars .... incubating the alternative car industry
There are multiple potential alternative car industries. There's CNG, various EV's, hybrids, hydrogen powered cars, and more.
There are multiple potential alternative fuels and energy sources. Corn ethanol is one. Others are wood pellets, algae, switchgrass, hydrogen, cng, solar, wind, fusion energy, tidal power, geothermal, and more.
In order to make investments in these things, you have to commit money to specific things. Money allocated to all the potential alternative energy sources and alternative car technologies is necessarily going to involve making a lot of bad bets. Some of these things won't work out at all and some won't work out as well as others. Yet each will develop constituencies - investors, suppliers, employees, users - who will lobby to continue government investments perpetually and even grow those investments for their own reasons just as is happening now with corn ethanol.
I'm saying we ought to avoid more corn ethanol fiascos. We ought to learn some lessons from this. It would be great to figure out a way to limit our losses on the losers. I pointed out one way but even I don't think its realistic given political realities. I think governments involvement in alternative energy will necessarily involve creating many many more corn ethanols perpetually dependent on ever increasing government investment. This is a big reason I sound so down on alternative energies. |
