Cash for Infrastructure
[An important (but little-discussed) fact about stimulus is revealed here. Despite all the noise, much funding is only beginning to take effect, and some is still unspent.]
A year and a half after the federal stimulus bill budgeted $80 billion for new energy technologies, the investment is providing much-needed momentum for clean tech. But what will happen when the money runs out?
"But by far the largest energy expenditures in the stimulus bill support the demonstration and commercialization of new technologies. Loan guarantees, tax credits, and cash grants will supply tens of billions of dollars to advanced battery factories, solar power plants, and biofuel refineries (see "Taking Stock of the Stimulus")--large speculative projects for which tight credit and depressed financial markets would have made private funding nearly impossible...
[Many tend to view this issue through the lens of a vanished economy, when long-term risk capital was readily available at predictable cost. That no longer pertains. The economic environment will color everything we do, for years to come.]
... Meanwhile, any comprehensive plan for energy innovation will need to deal with a simple technology fact: most existing alternatives to fossil fuels are currently too expensive to replace them to any significant degree. And yet the transition to lower-carbon fuels must begin immediately if the direst effects of global warming are to be avoided. Many economists favor carbon pricing, in the form of a direct carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system; either would effectively force companies to pay for carbon pollution, raising the cost of fossil fuels and making alternatives more competitive. But even some of the strongest advocates of carbon pricing acknowledge that, as Harvard economist Robert Stavins said in a recent interview, it is "essential but not sufficient." In other words, we'll still need energy innovation.
Of course, an "energy miracle" is always possible (see Q&A), but to count on a radical breakthrough is to ignore the immediacy of global warming--and the amount of time it takes to fully commercialize energy technologies. A technology that's still in a researcher's lab or on a venture capitalist's whiteboard is at least a few decades from making a major impact on climate change. If the climate scientists are right, any such solution will be too little, too late."
technologyreview.com
Jim |
