Clinton to Start $1 Billion Renewable Energy Fund

antifoidulus writes "ABC news is reporting that former President Bill Clinton has announced the creation of a $1 Billion investment fund devoted to renewable energy. This will be an investment fund as opposed to charity, and Clinton has said that 'The Green Fund would focus on reducing dependence on fossil fuels, creating jobs, lessening pollution and helping to reduce global warming, all while making a profit.' Former World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn will be managing the fund."

Comments

Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides being a great investment with a likely massive return, something like this would make me feel a lot better about investing in managed accounts. Some of these funds you have no idea what kinds of companies you're gonna end up owning peices of-- and quite honestly, there's a lot of 'em that might have some chance of return (oil company, anyone?) but it just isn't worth the guilt...

Re:Where do I sign up?

[LaughingCoder]

Besides being a great investment with a likely massive return

The concept is not new. "Green" mutual funds have been around forever. They all have the same thing in common ... poor returns. Now, this doesn't make it a bad idea, and perhaps with Clinton's name attached to it that may boost awareness somewhat, but I think anyone who invests in this fund needs to think of it as "doing the right thing" for a small return, rather than treating it like a "real" investment. Of course knowing how ambitious the Clintons are, once can't help but suspect this is more about Hilary's run in 2008 than it is about saving the planet.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

But I believe that generally these types of socially-conscious funds inevitably wind up sacrificing returns for "principals".

Considering that in general most funds, socially-conscious or not, underperform the market indices, I think your conclusions are erroneous. I don't have the data to do a comprehensive survey, but considering that it is easy enough to find other high-performing socially-conscious funds like the paxworld family, I'm more willing to believe that the group of such funds as a whole at least mirrors the general market for funds than I am to believe that it trails it.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[KenSeymour]

Perhaps non-green corporations can financially out perform green ones because they can pass on the environmental costs on to future generations and the government.

Iron Mountain Mine in northern California. It is an abondoned open pit pyrite mine. Whenever it rains, it produces sulphuric acid, combined with heavy metals, which would eventually feed into the Sacramento River, if it were not for two intervening dams. During heavy rains, the polution does get past the dams before being sufficiently diluted.

For the rest of time, someone will have to operate a combination of a lime neutralization plant on site, combined with releases of water from the dams timed with large seasonal flows from Shasta Dam. This site was actively mined off and on from the 1860s through 1963. At one time, the site was the largest producer of copper in California.

Another EPA document gives a explanation of the problem, photos of the neutralization plant, and some history. Here is a quote from that document:

When extraction of the ore was suspended from the
various stopes above the Lawson, the ground was in
very bad shape, and the conditions regarding heat
and gas were so terrible that it seemed advisable to
abandon any attempt to work from that level.
In fact it was a case of walking away and leaving the
job for the next generation" (William F. Kett,
General Manager, Mountain Copper Co., August 1944)

Mining at the site was abondoned, at least in part, because the ground became too unstable to mine it anymore. So when the mine was operated, the company was profitable. I don't know the relationship of the company that did the mining to the current owner of the site.
But it is possbile for a company to cease to exist once the mine is worn out. So the companies that mined this site were profitable while the mine was open, mostly by avoiding paying for the environmental damage they caused.

The EPA has successfully gone after the current owner of the site. In my mind, it is not fair to have a company that did not create the problem pay for cleaning it up. But it is also not fair to have taxpayers pay for it either. Once all the ore is gone and the mining company folds, there is no way to go back and make the owners pay for the damage they caused.

So maybe green companies might underperform non-green companies TODAY. But that is true because often they can skip out on paying all the costs of their activites. The Sacramento River provides drinking water for a significant portion of the population of California. I was astonished when I heard of this site.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[An Onerous Coward]

But I believe that generally these types of socially-conscious funds inevitably wind up sacrificing returns for "principals".

As another poster pointed out, the performance differential is in part because green funds are more likely to invest in businesses that are willing to absorb the costs that they could have simply passed on to the rest of society. If we assume that Fidelity and Green Century are run by equally capable and equally lucky groups of people, then the difference between the rates of return is entirely due to the rat-bastardy behavior of the companies that Fidelity is willing to invest in but Green century is not.

If you're willing to sacrifice principles for a slightly higher rate of return, then you never had the former and don't deserve the latter.

He went on Fox News to Talk about this...

[macadamia_harold]

Clinton taped an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace about this today, which is scheduled to be aired Sunday. The interview is supposed to be about the energy initiative, and his charitable work; instead, Chris Wallace ambushes him out of left field with some bullshit hardball question about Osama Bin Laden.

It's hilarious, because not only does Clinton attempt a diplomatic answer, but when Chris Wallace won't let it go and birddogs him, Clinton completely pwns Wallace, then goes back on topic.

I'm curious to see if they actually air it.

Re:He went on Fox News to Talk about this...

[HoosierPeschke]

That's the funniest thing I've read in awhile. I wasn't a fan of Clinton when he was the President, but am more now with all the charity he's doing. And it's always a pleasure to watch ANY media get punked.

Re:He went on Fox News to Talk about this...

[macadamia_harold]

Yep. Too bad, once they actually had Bin Laden cornered, Clinton decided not to do anything because he was afraid that it would look like we was trying to distract the nation from his sexual indescretions.

Yeah, Bush's strategy of waiting around until Osama keels over from natural causes was much better.

One part doesn't make sense!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is charity NOT an investment? I think that helping people live longer than 20 years is a great investment, more minds to think shit up! But that's just me.
I do like this idea though, Mr. Clinton!

We could do so much better

[bhmit1]

The United States uses 360 million US liquid gallons (1.36 gigalitres) of gasoline each day.

If the above wikipedia entry is accurate, that would mean raising the gas tax by 3 pennies would raise the same amount of funds per day. It would also make alternatives more competitive and ensure that as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, the renewable energy has a source of funding. As an added bonus, people that adopt new technologies aren't taxed and the tax will eventually disappear.

I'm saying this as a libertarian, someone that hates taxes and big government. But this is exactly where government regulations and taxes should be used, when the free market doesn't value the environment and causes long term damage without intervention.

Re:We could do so much better

[kfg]

I love windmills. I hate windfarms. Windmills are a viable energy independence technology. Stop thinking that energy necessarily has to come from some massively centralized third party.

Make . . . your . . .own.

KFG

Re:Finally...

[kfg]

Even though fossil fuels may be deemed as evil the working guy/gal at these places would probably like to remain employed.

I'm perfectly willing to teach them to fix/build bicycles, show them what sort of fuel/comfort stations cyclists would find useful and spend money at, what sort of road system would better suit cyclists rather than cars, how human muscle can be used to transport goods, make electricity, etc.

"Paradigm shifts" always result in increased employment, although to take advantage of them one might have to learn some new skills.

For many of the workers in the car based economy these new "skills" would amount to nothing more than learning the new set of lies appropriate to selling the new product.

KFG

That makes me want to cry.

[Grendel Drago]

It's like... foreign oil is an abusive boyfriend. And we're its bitch. So back in the 1970s, there was that oil crisis, a big fight. And we went over to our sister's place, and she was all, "honey, you don't need him", and we cried on her shoulder a lot and said we didn't need him; were going to start a new life without him.

But the foreign oil bought us flowers, and said it was sorry, and it was morning in America. And now we're back in the same boat we were thirty years ago, and we're acting like no one could have possibly seen this coming.

You know, Brazil is energy-independent. They followed through on what Carter promised but was voted out before he could deliver on, and the program was plagued by various problems for decades on end... but as of a few years ago, it works. We could have had that. But we didn't.

And I still don't see what was horrible about that speech. Could someone point out to me why that speech cost him the Presidency?

Re:That makes me want to cry.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I still don't see what was horrible about that speech. Could someone point out to me why that speech cost him the Presidency?

There was nothing wrong with the speech; the problem is with our electorate. The US has been overrun by asshats. Haven't you witnessed the last few elections? People in the US think it's their God given right to drive monster trucks with a big flag flapping in the back. Intellectuals are frowned upon. Creationism is on the ascent. We violate the Geneva conventions. Every day, millions of people pay tribute to bigots like Bill O'Reilly. Greedy self-interested Republicans vs. snivelling cowardly Democrats. Yuck.

That's good stuff.

[Grendel Drago]

I doubt it'll actually convince anyone, but it's nice to see someone actually thinking on his feet.

'Course, they'll probably cut it down to:

WALLACE: Blah blah blah bin Laden.

CLINTON: I failed to get bin Laden

And that'll be all.

Mentioned on The Daily Show the other day

[TooMuchToDo]

Clinton was on The Daily Show the other day, chatting with John Stewart about how powerful the internet was for charity (and how much was donated over the Internet for those affected by Hurricane Katrina).

He noted that if every family in America donated $10-20 to a fund/concern devoted to alternative enegery, we'd be rid of using oil in short order. Good to see he actually moved forward with the idea.

Re:Americathon

[j-pimp]

At what point does America need the charity to bail it out? And can we skip all the nasty bits until then?


I hope a private charity bails the gorernment out. Government is getting bigger and bigger. Nothing seems to be shrinking it. Maybe if Clinton's charity is successful, government will deregulate energy and shrink itself in embarassment.

Here is what a government should do:
1) wage war
2) pave roads
3) keep a police force
4) fire and emergency response

Here is what government should not do:
1) Healthcare
2) tax unless absolutly neccessary.

Actually no.

[skids]

GE is mainly expanding its foreign labor wind turbine manufacturing. What you thought they'd go and hire all those steel and line workers the big 3 are laying off? Naw. Everyone knows American labor is overpriced and underskilled.

Everyone except, say, Gamesa, Suzlon, and Clipper Wind and all the other foreign-owned companies from other industries who seem to have no problem at all opening plants in the U.S. like say Toyota. They seem to be able to turn a profit off American employees. Go figure. Maybe it's U.S. corporate management that is overpriced and underskilled.

Re:Never thought I would say this...

[be-fan]

I think part of the reason was that Europeans understood Clinton. Clinton thought like a Westerner. He was interested in the economy, trade, diplomacy, and understood that all of these things involved compromises between various entities. This sort of pragmatic mindset has been a hallmark of European thinking for literally hundreds of years. American politics, on the other hand, is intensely ideological. Whereas European politicians argue about things like farm subsidies, American politicians argue about highly abstract (and mostly irrelevent) things like the sanctity of this or that. Europeans are interested in what's "good" or "useful", while Americans are interested in what's "right".

Re:Finally...

[hamburger lady]

first off, 2 years is not 'just in time'. in politics, 2 years is for fuckin ever.

second, the democratic party isn't 'in deep trouble'. they seem to be holding their own against the GOP in spite of a cohesive plan for most everything. i'd say the GOP is starting to slip down the slope into 'deep trouble' territory.