Slashdot Mirror
US Funds Aggressive Tech To Cut Solar Power Costs
coondoggie writes "The U.S Department of Energy wants researchers and scientists to 'think outside the box' and come up 'highly disruptive Concentrating Solar Power technologies that will meet 6/kWh cost targets by the end of the decade.' The DOE's 'SunShot Concentrating Solar Power R&D' is a multimillion dollar endeavor that intends to look beyond what it calls the incremental near-term to support research into transformative technologies that will break through performance barriers known today, such as efficiency and temperature limitations."
At least an investment that makes sense, instead of wasting taxpayer money in subsidizing the existing inefficient solar panels (and worse, purchasing them abroad where they're produced with the most polluting industry).
http://www.transparency.org
"... that will meet 6/kWh cost targets by the end of the decade ..."
6 what ? 6 panels/kWh ? 6 technologies/kWh ?
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
US gives money to solar tech, but the *Chinese* are cheating.
Is it me or is the word "disruptive" the new buzz word? How can a solar power technology have the word disruptive in it in a good sense anyway?
That's how research investments should always work.
Either low risk, small reward (typically funded by industry), or high risk of failure, but aiming high with benefits for all of society (typically funded by government).
I admit to reading the article (sorry), thus I know it's 6 cents.
A bigger tub of salt would do it. It's not like we're running out of salt.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The tech belongs to Germany, Japan, China. They did the research and raced to the bottom with production lines churning out many solar panels. ....
Add in tax payer/consumer paid feed in rates around the world that made most people who wanted to get cheap units buy in.
What is left for the US to "make"? Anything the US can dream up can be understood in the EU and Asian labs and "linuxed" back into the next gen.
Anything the US tries to build can be done for less outside the US
Can the US return to full employment as a world class patent troll? A few cents on every solar panel shipped or no US market (or any bilateral trade deal friends market) for you...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Limiting the scientists to solar power isn't exacly thinking outside the box is it?
...in order to harvest the power from space, concentrate it and beam it down to Earth.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Even if solar panels were free, solar electricity still has a high hurdle to jump before it becomes competitive with other sources.
The costs include the mounting structure and the power inverter.
The thing that makes solar power feasible may, strangely, be a change in fossil fueled power plant design. As it stands now, fossil plants must stay fired up even when much power is coming on grid from windmills. If those plants were re-designed to be able to do a fast cold start, we could start saving a lot of fossil fuel.
A frightfully naive interpretation. How about this: the whole program is just a wash to put more money in the hands of corrupt politically-connected creeps. Look at the history of government funding solar power in America...any scandals come to mind?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The natural counter-argument is the question: Should the government stop funding research simply because some of the funds will (likely) reach undeserving parties?
It's not black and white. If there's been a history of wasted resources related to this particular objective, then more strict regulation should be enacted (and the natural reply to this would be: regulation is both expensive and corruptible... I guess some middle-ground is necessary).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Thermal technology, drilling into the earths core or close to it works, and is what I would consider clean energy. I always laughed at nuclear power being a clean source when you have tons of radioactive waste, does not seem very clean!
And I cannot remember how or why the federal government got themselves into the debt they have had for years? Oh yeah they like throwing money away, companies already have R&D and investment into up coming technologies to further advance what solar panels can achieve. Just like any other technology there is already a demand and companies competing for better, lower costing panels. Spending this money seems more like a PR stunt then a sound decision, companies already have motivation.
Subsidising research and subsidising sales are two very different activities. Only one of them is economically sustainable.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Look at the history of government funding solar power in America...any scandals come to mind?
You're the paranoiac, you tell me.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
For 1/4 the cost of War in Iraq all of US generation could have being switched to current generation tech solar/wind.
Probably. But they've tried the "let's wait until industry solves it" method for a few decades, and nothing has come out of it, so they're trying something new.
Because cold fusion doesn't seem to be coming any time soon. If it's possible at all, it's a very long term investment, which this isn't.
In my understanding, there are no problems of this kind to solve in geothermal energy. Drilling is well developed, heat exchange too. There's no particular challenge in manufacturing that could make it a lot cheaper if solved. There's nothing much to throw money at.
RTFA. ""The overarching goal of the SunShot Initiative is reaching cost parity with baseload energy rates, estimated to be 6Â/kWh without economic support, which would pave the way for rapid and large-scale adoption of solar electricity across the United States."
Because the result woudln't be something that can be driven on a real road. It would be a single ocupant tin can without AC or anything else.
If you fund 10 startups, 7 of them will fail outright, 2 will limp along in zombie mode before fizzling, and 1 will do ok, maybe good. That is the nature of the VC game. Fund 10 solar panel startups, 9 are guaranteed to fail. So tell your political hack masters to STFU.
Plenty of raw material and you can use solar energy to power the plant...
That's awesome, I'm going to start a new Solar Power company to assist in this research effort.
What should I call it...I was thinking "Solyndra" since that's no longer being used?
-Styopa
In my understanding, there are no problems of this kind to solve in geothermal energy. Drilling is well developed, heat exchange too. There's no particular challenge in manufacturing that could make it a lot cheaper if solved. There's nothing much to throw money at.
Besides which, there's nothing to preclude a DOE funding project for geothermal research.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I wonder if it ever occurred to the well meaning busy-bodies in the government that the professionals in their respective industries might just know a little bit more than they do?
And this funding drive will interfere with their ability to continue that research how, exactly? If you don't fund this research, the outcome is "whatever private comes up with", and if you do fund this research, the outcome is "whatever private comes up with, plus better solar". That seems like a gain to me.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Holy fuck, can these governments start funding some research group that'll come up with a new buzzword other than "disruptive"?
I thought "cloud computing" was the worst yet, but "disruptive" is far stupider. It's clearly the new hype word, with it being plastered all over Slashdot and other media articles lately.
While I generally agree with your sentiment,you're missing slb's point--that this situation is one of the government funding R&D, rather than production, as was the case in Solyndra. Government meddling with production is bad--see Solyndra, ethanol, wind farms, etc. Government involvement in R&D is at least debatable.
Achieving 6c/KWHr for baseload ie available any time you want it 24 hours a day, with solar is a fundamentally hard problem. You're up against the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Solar energy is both dilute and intermittent.
Nuclear is far easier. It is starts out incredibly concentrated. Third generation plants like the AP1000 are extremely safe. If you don't want to reuse the waste it's easy enough to bury it 1 km underground where it won't bother anyone.
It's far easier to change the minds of people than the laws of Physics.
Looks like the USA and Europe will leave it to China to develop cheap nukes and become the driver of human civilization in the 21st century.
Out of which orifice did you pull that figure? And how many multiples of current retail cost per kWh would it be costing us steady state? We'll never know, because you didn't offer anything in support.
This is the definition of a waste of time and money. Several million dollars to exceed the current roadmap target and drop kWh to $0.06 ?
The mean street value of such an advancement in technology is over a billion dollars, easily. But we, the federal government, will pay half your R&D costs up to $2m because we think this is a neat objective and maybe we'll all have fun getting there? Please! That's exactly what Solyndra received over $500 million in loan guarantees for and they produced nothing.
Can you imagine offering Exxon 2 million dollars to find a way to reduce gas prices to $1 per gallon? Oh, they'll take your money no doubt. But I have a feeling you won't get what you came for. Your government, working hard to make sure the buck is passed and no one's accountable. Happy Halloween!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
It is black and white. The government should offer large cash prizes to companies who reach a goal. Working toward a goal without success would pay nothing. We do not have enough funds for everything we would like to do. The money must be spent more wisely.
I suppose somebody in government watched this video.
But the gov't shouldn't be subsidizing anything, it shouldn't be taxing/borrowing/printing and subsidizing with that money. It should leave people alone and should allow them to work it out in the market.
How would gov't know that the best course of action is these solar panels or anything for that matter? What gov't should be doing is stepping out of the way, dramatically shrinking its own spending (now 10% of US population is working for gov't, this includes contractors and military, this gov't force should be 100 times smaller).
But the point is that private sector has to figure out the way, companies must try and fail, most of them will fail, somebody will figure something and if that doesn't happen, then there is no way, and gov't spending is just a waste and another resource mis-allocation.
They really shouldn't be preventing private companies and people from trying more stuff with nuclear power, that's most likely the only true source of energy that we will be able to use once oil and coal and gas run out. Nuclear and at some point thermonuclear. Solar is great for local applications, but it will not replace the constant need for energy that only things like oil/coal/gas/nuclear/hydro can supply. At some point this will become the revelation that people don't have a choice and they have to rely on nuclear.
As I said many times - I want my nuclear car.
You can't handle the truth.
The article is about solar collectors not about panels. Different things with different uses.
[T]he gov't shouldn't be subsidizing anything, it shouldn't be taxing/borrowing/printing and subsidizing with that money. It should leave people alone and should allow them to work it out in the market.
Oh the irony of reading this on /.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It's a version of the The Broken Window Fallacy on two levels. You're taking money from the public in the form of taxes that would have otherwise been spent on something besides whatever the government has planned. It might be that someone was doing something more important with their own money than this weeks boondoggle. But now we'll never know.
The other way it's like the The Broken Window Fallacy is that it's taking from the overall research pie and assigning it to something that it would not have otherwise been researching. And so what if "they say it's worth researching" - who the hell are they? What the hell gives them the right to piss away everyone's money on whatever their political agenda demands? And if you subscribe to the idea that these new "green initiatives" aren't politically driven then you're being intellectually dishonest. If this thing is driven by politics that means it's not driven by science.
The science overwhelmingly says nuclear, but the EPA has prevented any new nuclear plants in the last 3 decades. What do you think that does to the cost of all energy products? I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir on nuclear, but step back and see the fetters the government places on us before we celebrate some yet-to-be-misspent taxpayer money. Every year dozens of people die in the installation and maintenance of solar panels and wind generators, that may not mean much to you, but I'm sure it means quite a lot to the people who knew the dozens of dead people and absolutely nothing to the dead person. Meanwhile nuclear has caused zero deaths in its history in this country - but somehow nuclear is unsafe and we need to devoting more resources to solar? What a load of shit! All I see is the government always in the way and what if any solutions they create quickly fall victim to corruption, nepotism and the law of unintended consequences. Rather than dictating from Washington D.C. what all us should be doing, we would be much better off left to our own devices.
China's blue army hacked the plans, ramped up the factories and started selling the panels before the USA got their second beer open.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There is no irony, this could be any forum on any network that didn't have to be specifically using the packet switch protocol designed with a gov't subsidy. It's not like there were no networks before TCP/IP was created.
With DARPA the gov't had a goal of using it for its military, and you don't know how much money is spent that is wasted and never transforms into anything. Sure, TCP/IP is a success in itself, it doesn't mean it had to be this specific protocol.
You can't handle the truth.
How about game changer?
And then you have less research being done, and therefore less chance of success, because only those companies with enough capital to work without pay for years on end can actually participate.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
What have you been smoking? The only reason nuclear power exists is because of massive government subsidies - http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html
How do you think nuclear got started? Once we went beyond coal, gas and hydro the cost of developing new sources quickly got too high for the market to fund. We, as a society, need this stuff to ensure our future prosperity and comfort so we have to encourage development.
You could argue that government is bad at investing in things, but part of that is because it is the only body willing to invest in expensive new technologies where the risk of losing out on your investment is high. Just look at the number of failed ideas that came from nuclear R&D.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You could easily swap "solar power" for "defense systems". The scandals related to government support of solar power pale by a few orders of magnitude to the overt graft and fraud in military research and acquisition. What's your point? Are you suggestion that we shouldn't be funding either?
The only reason that nuclear power was introduced when it was introduced and the reason it works the way it works were government subsidies, that's true. But it's false to say that nuclear power exists because of government subsidies. People were working on this outside of government, the physics and mathematics of this were being discovered and the work was done privately.
What I am talking about is gov't stepping out of the way and removing its subsidies and allowing the market to set prices correctly thus allowing the proper credit to be allocated into the necessary businesses, who then will try to make profit by looking at all different ways energy can be generated. Gov't can always step in and subsidize something it THINKS has to be subsidized, but it doesn't know, doesn't have any idea what market would choose for and at what prices.
You can't handle the truth.
How would gov't know that the best course of action is these solar panels or anything for that matter?
Easy - the US government is (de facto) run by corporations, and corporations are of course private entities.
See, Americans love capitalism. They worship private entities. They see private business as the greatest and most capable entity to make decisions: free market, competition, taking risk, all that jazz.
So Americans see big business as the paragon of capitalism - people who competed and made it to the top by the virtue of their ability to make good decisions.
So people trust the rich to make all the decisions. Those protestors saying "We are the 99%"? I'm sure they are, and I'm glad it's not the bottom 99% who make the decisions - why would we want anything but the top, and therefore the best, 1% to make the decisions? You going to trust the country to some kid who choose the wrong degree, can't find a job, can't start his own business, can't manage his own finances, and can barely maintain person hygiene?
No, we should trust government. Trust big business. Trust the people who through their smarts and good decision making skills, got themselves so rich in the first place. Big Government is Love!
You can keep telling yourself that but in both cases it's cutting the costs to make the product more competitive on the open market. Trust me, I'm from Europe where governments have tried every scam in the book to get away with being de facto protectionist without appearing to breech the rules against it. It all boils down to: is this product cheaper due to money invested at some point by the government or charges levied on its competitors by the government? If the answer is yes, well, if it looks like a duck and it quacks...
No nuclear plant would ever be constructed without the insurance cap. And that's just one of the many subsidies that nuclear power gets.
Yep, till solar becomes available 24/7 it will always be one of the most expensive, unreliable and inefficient ways to power a grid. Same with Wind, geothermal is probably a much better place to invest.
You are espousing another fallacy.
Likely if that money hadn't been taxed away it wouldn't have been spent on research at all.
Arbitrary targeted research into any somewhat promising field from a government trumps no research at all and that one simple fact invalidates your argument.
"come up 'highly disruptive Concentrating Solar Power technologies..."
So they can be used as weapons!
mod of +1 ARGHHH. You need to be stopped.
Yes. Of course the "scandal that comes to mind" ignores the what, 99%+ of those funds that were NOT involved in a scandal there were put to work as intended. Heck, let's be generous to your point and say only 90% weren't scandal-laden. Also, solar power is now beating grid parity in parts of the US, largely thanks to solar incentives and investment over the last several years getting the market going. Not just in the US, but here, in europe, and in china as well. This is a huge moment, where those with enough capital in parts of the us (including the northeast) could choose to "prebuy" their electricity for the next 25 years with PV... WITHOUT incentive... and not lose money compared to grid electricity. In a few more years it's going to be a slam dunk.
Public policy works. Funding research works. Give up the tired, weak whining that it's not perfect. Waiting for teh "free market" to fix it all isn't perfect either, and it cares a lot less for the collateral damage of a sudden catastrophic shift than we do.
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/guest-blogs/pv-systems-have-gotten-dirt-cheap
Sssh, not so loud. You will bring Doc Ruby over here to spew his incoherent anti-nuclear FUD.
You know, I have always pictured Doc to appear like RMS, except more slovenly.
Anyway, I just hope I live to see the second golden age of nuclear plant construction in the US. Then again, I'm already 31 so this is likely insanely optimistic.
Every year dozens of people die in the installation and maintenance of solar panels and wind generators
That argument comes back all the time but it sounds completely ridiculous to me. How is handling solar panels or wind turbines more dangerous than working on a nuclear power plant construction site, or any power plant for that matter? Just enforce similar security measures for workers and you'll get similar fatality rates.
Meanwhile nuclear has caused zero deaths in its history in this country - but somehow nuclear is unsafe and we need to devoting more resources to solar?
Fukushima went inches away from collapsing Japan as a country it seems. Would the wind have blown in the wrong direction (i.e.,inland) during those fateful few days, Tokyo might have had to be evacuated for decades possibly. That's where nuclear energy is unsafe, markedly more than any other form of energy generation.
Now you may say that newer designs, or more probably future designs do mitigate the risks, but unless you can come up with a design that cannot possibly lead to any widespread contamination, even in the face of human stupidity, corruption and greed, all of which we are not going to get rid of anytime soon, then you're disingenuous IMHO if you deny the inherent risk with nuclear energy.
Risk by the way that the people who make a living from estimating risks, i.e., insurers, have properly assessed, and thus simply refuse to bear.
Look at the history of government funding solar power in America...any scandals come to mind?
You're the paranoiac, you tell me.
I'll do it for DNS-and-BIND; here's one - Solyndra.
Here's the next one - Fisker
I think you knew at least one answer when you made your post. If the US government supports a particular business, it should be on strict, well known criteria; not because some "civil servant" will personally benefit. Basically, Solyndra is a "cute and green" version of Halliburton and Steven and Allison Spinner, Steven Chu, (and others) are the Obama administration's version of Dick Cheney and Richard Perle. At least no one died from the Solyndra scandal (that we know of).
It makes more sense to simply exempt taxes on the amount of R&D that a company does for particular technologies and sales of a particular product.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
It's not success or failure that makes the business of government lucrative for the elite at the top -- it's volume. The more money passing through their hands, the more leverage they have to exploit that cash flow for personal gain. It doesn't matter if the project fails outright. As long as that money passes through their hands, they win.
Lo and behold, this is precisely why all governments expand in power and revenue throughout their lifetimes, never willingly or permanently relinquishing power or revenue. For the elite at the top of the pyramid, the only thing that matters is keeping that cash flowing.
I recently heard that the reason solar is becoming so popular is that water costs in certain areas are starting to increase significantly. That means the cost of any power generation that requires water for cooling (like nuclear generation) are seeing their costs uncontrollably increase.
Add to that the fact that more and more people are starting to work from home and small/distributed power generation (like solar plants) starts to become more and more cost effective.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
You can always pretend the free market "would have" done something. Electric infrastructure. Roads. Internet. Pure research. But that doesn't mean it will. If you want viagra, the free market will deliver that. If you want to avoid a catastrophic shock to the system when energy prices spike with no ready to deploy alternatives already going, however, it can't. That takes years and years of development and deployment and a serious focus to get going, in conditions that are not yet "economical". But then, the day it IS economical, you just blunted a serious depression or even complete societal collapse that could have occurred when oil spikes to $200/barrel for an extended period of time, because you have a solution that can be deployed and in fact is ALREADY BEING deployed.
PV is there, today, in many areas of the US. It will be cheaper than grid electricity more and more often over the next several years. That would never have happened without government subsidies and incentives. and it very well may save mankind in the next few decades, with no hyperbole at all. Maybe it won't, and we'll only have renewable energy to help make the earth cleaner and healthier... shucks. what a waste.
Here we go with the 'disruptive' shit again. What the fuck?
I wonder if it ever occurred to the well meaning busy-bodies in the government that the professionals in their respective industries might just know a little bit more than they do?
Actually they talk to a lot of professionals in the industry before making such decisions. It's not some magic number they research find out things like what cost level would be needed before the industry would be viable, what cost numbers are achievable, and how long the industry professionals think it would take to achieve these goals. I know its en vogue to assume government is some sort of nameless entity full of stupid but in reality there are actually lots of well educated hard working people there trying their best. Sometimes they get it wrong but sometimes they don't too. Just like enterprise.
Are you seriously trying to propose that nobody died during the construction, maintenance and everyday operation of a multiple major industrial power plants? What you are probably stating is that nobody has died from radiation from a nuclear power plant. I suspect the same is true of solar. No deaths from runaway solar power generation.
Nice try though.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
If Geothermal doesn't have any technical barriers remaining, and Google's recent map shows us where to drill, and everyone says it puts out way more than enough energy for our needs far into the future...
Why the hell are we bothering with anything else? Why aren't we just pulling the plug on all other alternative energy and putting all those people and all that money into the task of massive geothermal plant deployment?
I don't have to pretend, that's what free market DID do before intervention by government, that really started in 1913.
Free market DID create all sorts of things and it DID provide all sorts of research. From airplanes, to cars, to telephones (so the phone infrastructure), and electrical power plants (and that infrastructure) and roads and rail roads as well, which were destroyed during the ridiculous 'new deal'.
The transistor is all pure research, but it was useful and it was done privately. Same with thousands of other things, from chemicals to electronics to medicines and metallurgy and tools and even rockets. Even physics and math and chemistry and medicine models, not just practice, but theory. Gov't was in fact tiny before it got itself the power to print money and collect taxes that were not proportionate to people's spending, but instead proportionate to people's earnings, which threw gov't, as a spending item off balance with the rest of the economy.
Roads are done privately all the time, I like driving on private roads, they are never closed and they are always better than public. The Internet's precursor were really phones, and the infrastructure there was private UNTIL gov't stepped in and destroyed it and created one giant monopoly destroying thousands of competitors in the process.
If you want to avoid a catastrophic shock to the system when energy prices spike with no ready to deploy alternatives already going, however, it can't.
- actually it's gov't complacency, liking to protect its preferred monopolies and power is what causes the shocks. Market without gov't distortion knows about the coming change in energy by looking at prices, the futures contracts and options. All that gov't tries to do leads to higher prices, but unfortunately that's just inflation and it confuses the market, doesn't let it know IN TIME whether there is a need for more energy production and for new investments into any sort of alternative energy resources.
There WILL be a shock and it is going to be caused by the government that can't even understand simple arithmetic.
As to oil spiking in price - only in DOLLARS, but it's falling in price in real money, because there is less usage of oil overall in US because of the depression US is in (also caused by gov't resource misallocations and moral hazards and money printing and regulations that cause massive spikes in labor and other business costs in basic terms.)
You can't handle the truth.
Look at the history of government funding solar power in America...any scandals come to mind?
Ok then what we need is a solar X Prize. It seemed to work well for space so why not. We need to get small and mid size companies competing for a prize that is funded by the department of energy. Also there should be some stipulation that requires the equipment to be made in America. Surely we have some smart people in this country that can make such a thing happen.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Hold on, hold on, that insurance shouldn't be there subsidized by any government. The cost of investment must include the cost of insurance, and you are wrong thinking that a private entity cannot get into that.
There are plenty of things that are even MORE expensive than nuclear power plants that are done privately. The cost of building a new microchip fabrication facility is at least in the same ballpark.
At least with gov't out of the picture, there would have been adequate insurance bought (which is also the same moral hazard of fake gov't insurance that BP fell into with the 70million USD liability cap and the banks with all the mortgage guarantees and home owners with all those initially cheap, variable rate mortgages and the SS ponzi scheme and Medicare and wars, all of these are gov't guaranteed and all of these are failures.)
You can't handle the truth.
By the DoE concentrating on funding solar panel technology shows the current administration lack of understanding of 21st century energy issues. It's not about electricity, it's about oil and perhaps the approaching lack of it. Why is this administration consider solar the panacea to future energy independence? It's not, it's electrical storage not electrical generation. There are many advances in storage technology this past decade and they receive a trickle of funding. But there are other forces at play here, I wouldn't be surprised if big oil tells the DoE. 'Ok, we endorse these technologies for research that won't harm our bottom line so go with that'. If you think that doesn't happen, well, keep watching TV news.
http://herbopen24hours.blogspot.com or http://tolietman.blogspot.com
It's a version of the The Broken Window Fallacy on two levels. You're taking money from the public in the form of taxes that would have otherwise been spent on something besides whatever the government has planned. It might be that someone was doing something more important with their own money than this weeks boondoggle. But now we'll never know.
That's an interesting point, but you're assuming that the government haven't considered this very point and that they may even be counting on it. Maybe their data indicates that the additional tax burden, which will be spent on improving the kind of technologies that are going to be as important in the next 100 years as oil was in the last 100 years, would otherwise be spent on cheap, imported, electrical gadgets. In the broken window parable the assumption is that money not spent on glaziers would otherwise be spent elsewhere in the local economy. In reality we know that a good portion of people's disposable income goes on toys, and that those toys are frequently imported. On your other point I would agree wholeheartedly that nuclear is the only realistic shot term answer. I can't understand this insistence on hiding from the fact, it's been obvious for at least the last two decades.
As it happens I am old enough to remember Ike beating Stevenson and the introduction of the Atoms for Peace program. I think we should take care if we try to conclude the subsidies were focused on *developing* nuclear power, per se. The geopolitical issues were the real drivers and I am not thinking precisely of the threat posed by Stalin. Now I did look at your link. The part that really amused me was the proposal to assess nuclear plants for protection against terrorist threats and avoiding nuclear proliferation. This is all so familiar. Post the Kennedy assassination, these sort of policy issues, applied indirectly, made nuclear non-economic, and now you want to put the nails directly into the body of the industry. I guess I could comment on terrorist threats and non-proliferation, but ...
The argument goes like this: if the private sector invests in something risky and fails, it is Capitalism and it is Good; when the government does it, itis Socialism, and it is Bad.
All the argument is specious: CEOs invest in their golfing friends' companies, and they don't invest their own money: they invest the shareholder's. Think of the governement as a very large, highly diversify corporation (really, it is not very diversified, it mostly does insurance and has an army; but it also has a whole buch of minor subsidiaries doing a bit of everything). The question is, since the government is this huge corporation which cannot go bankrupt, what should it invest in?
Clearly, high risk, long-term stuff. In a way, like IBM. The only problem with those failed investments (and if you invest in high-risk stuff, you will fail most of the times) is that they clearly were way too application oriented and short-term!
On a more philosophical note, it is wholly reasonable that the governement does the high-risk stuff: it cannot fail. Also, we expect corporations to be profitable every quarter, whereas the government has the luxury of needing only to stay solvant -- which, when you can print your own money is not overly difficult.
The obvious solution is to build a Space Elevator to the Sun, build a big pipe along it, and boil water on the Sun and bring back the steam to Earth to spin turbines. Because, space!
We've already hit the tipping point with $1/kw and falling PV. PV has no moving parts, a long service life and works well at the point of consumption (households). It is not so much more expensive than fossil fueled utility power after cost of carbon and power distribution is taken into account. Utility scale solar requires huge amounts of land. We should only do that after our southern facing roofs are covered in panels (or north for the aussies).
We need better batteries, not better solar power. A cheaper, denser battery that supports transportation uses and a dirt cheap, high capacity battery for time shifting loads is what we need.
No nuclear plant would ever get any insurance without a goverment backed cap - this is a simple economic fact.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/true-cost-of-nuclear-examined-in-new-study_100002882/
This is an excellent demonstration of the type of work that the government can do to better our economy and decrease our dependance on fossil fuels. *Golf clap*.
Actually, this is what I want my government to spend money on. This would be a large investment for a smaller entity, and frankly might not be worth it. For a relatively small amount (government wise), we ALL gain. There is risk. By having the gov. take that risk, we spread it around so it won't hurt any other particular entity. This sounds fine to me. Tony
This is not about PV. This is about thermal solar collection, which also allows the storage of energy (focus sunlight on a tower, melt salt, store reasonably large amounts of energy in molten salt so as to be able to continue generating during the night).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
LOL I love Slashdot.
government decides to vomit money in effort to save economy.
+ scam artists concoct company to score off this free money by forming company.
+ company evaporates with $500 million of guaranteed gov't loans in 2 years.
+ everyone points fingers.
+ government announces new piles of money being shoveled at a problem
+ someone references the issue
= flamebait!
-Styopa
TODAY no nuclear power plant would get insurance, but if gov't wasn't there providing fake insurance (and all insurance that gov't provides is fake, it only relies on money printing, not on any actual insurance, as in interest bearing assets). If gov't is not subsidizing an activity, the price for activity goes down due to increase of competition, because subsidies imply various regulations that prevent competition.
If nuclear power was too expensive today, it would only mean one thing: the pricing structure of nuclear power is not worth the effort. But you don't know any of this, because the market is completely distorted by the government.
You can't handle the truth.
And while the Manhattan project was successful, we could have spent the time, money, and intellectual capitol on some other wickedly-high-explosive.
What you fail to appreciate with that line of reasoning is the supplemental benefits of the technologies we did develop. Tcp/ip didn't end with DARPA, and Manhattan didn't end with weaponry.
The question is, since the government is this huge corporation which cannot go bankrupt, what should it invest in?
That bit in the middle seems doubtful these days...
Well let's see, there was DARPA that a few years ago made the most efficient solar cell to date, and years of defense research that developed breakthrough after breakthrough for solar power for satellites to provide America with satellite reconnaissance and navigation. Things you use today.
To campaign against these programs that given you technology you use every day and produced real results and scientific achievements, and have allowed America to maintain its technical edge for many years... you wouldn't have anything you'd like to tell us, would you... red?
Oh, it cannot go bankrupt: it can always print money to pay its debt. That this is not always desirable is a completely different issue. Also, it cannot be repossessed.
Now interestingly, it can still be sold or given away. So arguably, the brinkmanship of the GOP during the debt ceiling debate was nothing less than treason: nothing forces a sovereign government to pay its dues, and certainly, nothing forces a government to pay its dues in the most painful way possible for itself.
Government has duties to its people. Making up excuses to get rid of various parts of your duties which you don't like is treason.
It's funny because you think that a company sees a difference between a tax break for $1 Million and a check for $1 Million. Your tax break is my government program. Either subsidize it or not, but worrying about whether it's tax breaks or a check is just being pedantic.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Or will Obama be allowed to pull a Solyndra and funnel money to campaign contributors without the mandated oversight?
As long as at least one of them is built in the mohave desert and is called Helios I, I'm all for it.
Without government subsidies, taxes and expenditure you wouldn't have nuclear power at all. No one in the private sector can afford to insure it. Pretty much all nuclear power generation in the world is/was backed in some fashion by the government.
This. At the peak of their research time lines the Manhattan project and the Apollo projects reach 0.4% of our GDP spent JUST on those individual projects. I would submit that this kind of commitment is what it will take to get solar/wind/whatever to "the next level." Either way the technology is going to improve and we'll eventually get "there." The question is how long we want to wait and what kinds of resources are we willing to commit to it?
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
it's not like there were no networks before TCP/IP was created
They all sucked massive balls. TCP/IP or something filling a similar role was necessary for an Internet to take off like it did.
Genuinely curious here - is there any evidence that giving small companies that didn't have enough capital to participate themselves will actually produce results? In other words, has this kind of investment ever worked in the past? Can any specific examples be brought forth of small companies doing research on government payroll that reached breakthroughs that the larger companies did not?
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Also, it cannot be repossessed.
Beg to differ. Armed or peaceful revolution is basically this.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
The sun has done a pretty good job of powering 4.5 Billion years of life on our planet and is no more or less available today than it has ever been. To this day the sun does more work on this planet than any other energy source (most of which are really just stored solar energy anyhow). I'd be careful about making absolute statements such as "it will always be."
Solyndra was 5% of the project in question.. dunno what % the other one ways but I think the 90% is a fair number. The scandal is about some hokiness with the loan itself, nobody has mentioned whether or not Solyndra did meaningful research or was granted valuable new patents.. my understanding is that they bet big based on the commodities markets and it flopped. It's not as if Solyndra never made any serious attempts at making valuable solar technologies.. so "scandal-laden" is (potentially) just political nonsense. If someone did something illegal wrt the loan then they should be punished, but that has little to do with whether or not the Solyndra investment was worthwhile to us as a society.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Ah, but no. You always owned your country. If it was mismanaged it is because you, the shareholder did not perform your role as a watchdog well enough. Hmmm, I like this view of the governement as a corporation: it makes so much sense. Government is mismanaged exactly in the same way companies are mismanaged by egotist CEOs under no oversight by the shareholders...
Repossession would be invasion or the official relinquishing of powers to a corporation. Both of which are illegal.
Companies don't care about the long term survival of human civilization. Just next quarter, or at most by the time the CEO retires/leaves.
The government's role IMHO is to make sure small groups of short-sighted greedy humans don't ruin it for all of humanity in some multiple of hundreds of years.
I see the governments role as solely devoted to these kinds of projects. They should get the hell out of nit-picking every little thing with consequences 5 years away and worry about the things that will carry on the human legacy far into the future.
You may hate to admit it, but only "group-think" can carry on civilization after we are all long gone.
If you think oil prices drops are anything but natural fluctuations on an ever-rising overall price curve, you are not paying attention to the overall trend.
If it takes massive depression to dampen oil pricing, that is a pretty damning indicator right there. Or are you suggesting that crashing the world economy is a viable solution to energy prices?
What I really want to know is where is the evidence that without government intervention people and corporations do not due lots of successful research?
Did the government help invent the wheel? Did they bring about the iron age? Cars? Aircraft?
There are things the government is good at. Militarizing existing tech, Creating new Military Tech, Areas of research where there is no private industry working (Space and the Internet in the beginning), Stuff like that.
When the government gets involved in handing out cash to companies already working on stuff it is always bad. Bad. Very, very BAD.
In other words it is not good.
Companies spend way too much hiring lobbyists and going after grants and changing laws.
They do this because if they do not they are left behind by those who do.
The government can not be in the business of "Picking Winners".
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I don't have to pretend, that's what free market DID do before intervention by government, that really started in 1913.
See, this is the point where we know you're a liar, to yourself if nobody else.
Governments have been intervening for years in various things, whether it be Roman Roads, Egyptian or Chinese Flood Control projects or even Spanish expeditions to the Indies. You can try to argue that they weren't able to act as much if you like, but no, the free market did not respond as well as you think.
And it had problems too, as the Tulip bonanza will tell you.
Now? Now the world has changed so much that the old models aren't accurate, but one thing hasn't, people.
Roads are done privately all the time, I like driving on private roads, they are never closed and they are always better than public.
Bwahaha.
Always?
Just ask the folks in Indiana who complain about their toll road.
- actually it's gov't complacency, liking to protect its preferred monopolies and power is what causes the shocks.
Gov't? Try organizational, or personal complacency.
That's why your dream of a reactive free market will never fly. People, whether in the government or not, prefer to stick in the mud rather than leap to dry land.
99%+ of those funds that were NOT involved in a scandal
Haha, you are so naive. Of course there are other scandals in the pipe from this blatant Democrat crony enrichment program (and yes Republicans are worse). Fisker and Tesla, and more to come. I'm from Crook County, IL, and I know how the scum work. You "progressive liberals" opened the sewer by voting in Obama (who is neither progressive nor liberal but a bitch to the wealthy fat cats) and now the chicago turds have flowed into washington.
Yes, the tired whining about my tax dollars going to electric sports cars in finland, and a campaign contributor to the president, who pocketed the money.
Fuck off.
5%? The total amount of money in the plan was 40 billion and some change. Solyndra got half a billion in loan guarantees.
That's closer to 1-2% than 5%. 90% is thus not a fair number.
And if nobody you have heard from mentioned what Solyndra did with the money, that's your fault for not seeking out information. They already had the research, the patents, and a product they were selling. The investment was to build a larger factory.
Which they built. So no, despite rampant Republican accusations to the contrary, they did not commit fraud.
Nor did anybody do anything illegal with the loan. It's just a structured risk investment, the government decided it was worth the risk of stepping to the back of the compensation line for bankruptcy in order to spur other investors.
What happened to cause Solyndra to falter though? Massive Chinese subsidies that dropped the price of another kind of solar panel to the point where Solyndra's technology wasn't cost-effective. So nobody bought it, much like any other kind of price-dumping.
But thank you for buying into the ever-changing narrative instead of checking out the facts.
I am not sure the GOP wanted us to default on our debit. What I think they wanted was to force a reduction in spending.
They did not get it.
What the government has done as a whole. Republicans and Democrats alike is treason.
They are knowingly spending the country into a debit it will not be able to repay.
The republicans give away cash to big corporations.
The democrats give it away to unions.
I am neither a union nor am I a big corporation. I am just a lowly tax payer.
I do not get back a big check to make up for all I paid in federal income tax every year.
I definitely do not get back more than I paid.
I am being screwed. I am being stolen from. I help pay the bills. There is no appreciation. Only the demand for more stuff for free.
I get tired. Some days I think, "How can I be so stupid? I will just do bad get fired and take a 2 year paid vacation."
But I can't. I have values. Those people in the streets holding signs saying "I am the 99%" are bullshit.
They are not. I am a single male. I make under $50k a year in So Cal. I am not rich.
But I pay. I pay State and Federal income tax. I pay State and Local sales tax. I pay Gas tax, a tax on money I invest, a tax on things that I buy that the government dose not think I should.
I pay so some guy who "Won't work a shitty job at McDonalds or Walmart" can get money from me for 99 weeks, so he can get food stamps and buy steak I can not afford.
I am tired. I work. Excuse me for saying this but....
When some broke fucker in line in front of me at the supermarket is buying shit with my money that I can not afford for myself, while I bust my ass and he sits at home playing PS3 on his small 42" LED Backlit LCD Flatscreen TV I sometime feel myself getting angry.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I think the more likely result is that without government intervention there would be no nuclear power at all.
How exactly do you insure it? There's no defined bound to how much a disaster may cost, which means that any insurance company would be insane to accept. Earlier in the thread there was a mention of the possibility of having Tokyo evacuated. How do you see an insurance company covering that? And what would the insurance payments be?
The gov't intervention into economy actually causes the short term thinking, my journal is filled with thoughts on this exact topic, here is an example.
No, it's not the role of government to finance gigantic projects, because then you'll have non-stop gigantic projects to the detriment of the rest of the economy, and by the end you will have produced nothing, but you would have moved lots of earth around with lots of shovels.
You can't handle the truth.
The irony is that you still don't seem to recognize the positive role of government. Libertarian lunacy: willfully ignoring the things that the government has done correctly.
One good thing about this result is that it can be tested. Do it for a few programs, see if they succeed or not. If they don't, no harm.
But the government didn't create "The Internet" as we know it today. It provided the money to some researchers to create a resilient network for military purposes. It was the private sector that glob onto and made the network viable, and then expanded it to what we now know it for.
Only an extremely small percenta of the packets ever transferred across the Internet touched a government router. Well, that is if you exclude the illegal and unconstitutional wiretaps.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
till solar becomes available 24/7
Last I checked, the sun shines 24/7 pretty damned reliably.
Or did you mean in your location? In which case, how much oil is available in your location naturally? zip, zero, zilch. It's trucked in.
What we really need is research into energy 'storage' so that we can truck in or store solar power for night time use.
And that technology will take research and development sponsored by the government because private industry won't do it until it's economically profitable. By that time, oil/coal/gas will cost 3-4x as much and it will be much more expensive. Start now and it will be cheaper in the long run.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Well, the tax break is universal to all companies researching in that field, while a check would probably be going to particular 'favored' companies. I get your point that, in principle, the two are the same, but I don't think in practice they would be; there would probably be less cronyism in a tax break.
Because the result wouldn't be something that can be driven on a real road. It would be a single ocupant tin can without AC or anything else.
Hell it wouldn't even be a tin can. It would be a composite structure with wheels that looks like sort of like an egg that is only strong enough to support the body shell, wheels, engine and small female drive. It would be powered by an engine comparable in size to the one on a self propelled walk behind lawn mower. You could probably walk as fast as it drives and would have to use the pull cord to start it, plus you wouldn't be able to run the engine for long stretches of time, only enough to get up to speed and then you coast to a stop. Yes in high school I participated in a high mileage vehicle competition and this is what those "cars" that get 1000+ mpg do. We participated in the unmodified category (the engine is untouched) and would get 400 to 600 mpg and ran a car that was a couple layers of fiberglass over thin wood lath (1/16th of a inch) as the form. The engine used was a Briggs & Stratton with a displacement in the single digit cubic inches. The driver was always one of the guy's girlfriend who was in dance line or gymnastics and weighed under 100 lbs. The "car" was built to fit the driver to minimize size and weight.
The best you could expect from a real car would be in the 100-200 mpg range and the vehicle would still be on the small size (think Fiat 500, Smart FourTwo, or original Mini not the bloated BMW Mini size). We could build a car that got this type of mileage, but it would be expensive and sluggish.
Time to offend someone
Don't believe the overblown alarmist crap in the media. We have been in worse position, like when Reagan about destroyed the economy in the 80s.(near 11% unemployment)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
yes, and beyond that fact, how much money that gov't spends actually doesn't grow anything, ends up wasted?
All the wars?
You can't handle the truth.
But the gov't shouldn't be subsidizing anything, it shouldn't be taxing/borrowing/printing and subsidizing with that money. It should leave people alone and should allow them to work it out in the market.
When it was left to the "people" they invest it in China and India because the labor is cheap, there is no environmental regulations, no pesky work place safety ... In the end you will have third world wages, third world pollution in the USA. Race to the bottom it is called. It is best not to run that race.
Keep printing dollars and subsidize this, spend the money inside USA. Eventually corporate America will get tired of lending us money to buy cheaply made chinese crap. Money is just a man made construct. There is nothing wrong in printing a trillion dollars to pay off our debt to China. That actually teach them the stupidity of oppressing their own people to make plastic trinkets to sell to America. They might actually build a middle class in their own country.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
that's not true at all, people worked with nuclear materials for a few decades prior to the WWII, and the market takes steps that are correlated to the market attractiveness of the solution, given the price/value ratio, so it's clearly not true at all that there wouldn't have been nuclear power, because if this is just about cost, realize that costs are relative. The only thing that matters is how much return can an investment generate, and certainly private entities are very much capable of putting billions of dollars on the line. Even when it's just one company - look at Intel and look at every large oil producer.
Large companies make billion dollar decisions all the time, how they use their money and how they don't use it. It's the market that sets the prices, and absolute numbers don't matter when we talk about profit margins.
You can't handle the truth.
Subsidising research and cutting corners in production are two very different activities.
FTFY. Though I also agree that what you said is true, let us not forget that one of the reasons Chinese-made goods are so much cheaper is they care fuck-all about worker safety and pollution.
I agree that they are very similar in that they are both costs to a government, but they aren't the same. A tax break as I described it isn't fixed, so it isn't a $1 million = $1 million. It's limited only by the amount of the desired behavior (in this case, R&D or production of an item) that companies are willing to put forth. Also, since taxes are a percentage, it's leverage in that the opportunity cost of the tax break is a percentage of the desired result, so it's more "bang for the buck". Also, if you don't have x dollars in your budget for a subsidy, the tax break is much easier to do. Future opportunity costs are a lot easier for governments to pay for since they don't need to have the capital on hand.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Lunacy is you, thinking that the minimum return that you got on that government investment was worth it, given how much was NOT invested in private sector and was NOT produced based on all the taxes that gov't steals from the people's incomes.
How much money was wasted and how many lives destroyed just in wars? How many government projects went nowhere?
You can't handle the truth.
Conveniently forgetting the fact that Bob Taylor shopped the TCP/IP network idea around to every major computer company in the country, and they all refused to participate because they were afraid an open network might hamper their competitive edge. THAT, my friend, is how the free market works (or in this case, doesn't). Don't pretend private enterprise would have come up with an open network even close to the Internet we enjoy today, because the fact is they could have, but didn't.
The government isn't any different than the company in this regard: X dollars in subsidy has the same exact affect on the books as an X dollar tax break. Tax breaks are easier to market, but there's no difference on the bottom line between the two.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
In a month, I'll use 200kWh on electric and average about two thirds that again in gas. Say 400kWh per month.
I don't buy the cronyism argument because cronyism is not unique to government work. There's just as good of a chance of someone stretching the definitions of their work to be included in the tax break where they really shouldn't qualify in the spirit of the goal.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
A billion dollars is tiny. Tokyo has 13 million habitants in it. A billion would amount to all of $75 per habitant. That's what, a couple days at a hotel? And of course such a number of available hotel rooms doesn't exist.
No, seriously, think about an insurance company really having to pay for Tokyo becoming unhabitable even for a few years. All those people will have lost their housing, therefore at the very least you need to get 13 million people a new place where to live.
NO, Solyndra came into problems when silicone prices dropped.
At the time, it was a good risk to take. That risk being backing a loan, not making the loan.
Look at the company numbers and what was happening. The facts of what happened do not look like any shenanigans on the part of the government. Might executive at Solyndra lied to the banker? maybe.
Your Fisker ,ink is borken. Are you talking about scissors or the car?
"It makes more sense to simply exempt taxes on the amount of R&D that a company does for particular technologies and sales of a particular product."
Only is you have no clue on how business works.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" Government is mismanaged exactly in the same way companies are mismanaged by egotist CEOs under no oversight by the shareholders.."
except it isn't. for the vast majority of items and project, the government manages better then corporation.
IN a corporation, 80% of the projects will fail. NO one watches them, and they have the advantage of not having to disclose them. While the remaining 20 percent gets touted by marketing and sails.
IN the government, 99% of project are successful, but no one markets those. 1% fail, and the media is all over those. Now, the media should be all over those, but some perspective should be given.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The argument goes like this: if the private sector invests in something risky and fails, it is Capitalism and it is Good; when the government does it, itis Socialism, and it is Bad.
I didn't make that argument. I made the point that Crony Capitalism (regardless of administration) is Bad.
Think of the governement as a very large, highly diversify corporation (really, it is not very diversified, it mostly does insurance and has an army; but it also has a whole buch of minor subsidiaries doing a bit of everything). The question is, since the government is this huge corporation which cannot go bankrupt, what should it invest in?
Clearly, high risk, long-term stuff. In a way, like IBM. The only problem with those failed investments (and if you invest in high-risk stuff, you will fail most of the times) is that they clearly were way too application oriented and short-term!
Governments and business ventures are simply not the same in their purposes, but that's a different discussion. I agree that they have similarities. I also agree that governments are well suited for taking these kinds of risks, look at NASA and DARPA as examples of overall successes. The problem is when the programs are not adequately controlled; the money is given without adequate due diligence. However, governments aren't the only ones who can do large scale, long term R&D.
On a more philosophical note, it is wholly reasonable that the governement does the high-risk stuff: it cannot fail. Also, we expect corporations to be profitable every quarter, whereas the government has the luxury of needing only to stay solvant -- which, when you can print your own money is not overly difficult
That last part is a problem; look at Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe as examples. There's a lot more to staying solvent than merely printing money; too bad some current EU member states and the US governments (over the last 20 years, not just any one administration) and Central Banks weren't prudent.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
First, I admitted my ignorance wrt what meaningful technology they had so I find your accusation of malice towards me silly.
Secondly, Solyndra does have fishy things going on with its loan. The original loan was fine and was structured in such a way that if the company failed the government got paid first. Then they came back and re-financed with a structure that meant the government got paid last, after the private investors. If the people responsible for that refinance (government people) knew that the company was on the brink of failing and they restructured the loan to favor the private investors at the expense of the government then there's something illegal going on there. I doubt very seriously that it goes on up to Obama, but it is worth looking into. And no, it's not the scope of scandal that the conservative media is trying to make it out to be, but it's something that should be looked into.
Seriously, switch to decaf.. most of what I wrote i the GP post was in line with what you're saying. I have to believe you went on auto-pilot in the first sentence and failed to read my post to completion.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
I fully agree. What I meant is that the mechanisms for failure are the same in governments and corporations. But yes, governments are frequently better run than corporations -- except for the marketing part. Governments (democratic ones, that is) really suck at marketing.
Malice? What malice? I attributed it to incompetence, not malice. You clearly didn't bother doing any research, but just took the story you were spoon-fed.
Still that way. So yeah, we can hold a Congressional hearing on the problem, and waste time and effort chasing non-existent fraud, or I dunno, we could look for something really bad, like the fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan perpetuated by military contractors to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
ha, you are talking about the current systems, current power plants that have the MORAL HAZARD of government 'insuring' them (which is nonsense, government can't insure anything, it only relies on the ability to tax and then to borrow and to print, gov't doesn't have any interest bearing assets, nor should it.)
The point is that you are looking at the current state of affairs and extrapolating that the private sector would do it the same way, with brutal force that government is able to apply.
I think private enterprise would not go the same way at all, and by the way, so much of the cost of running a plant (and it doesn't have to be anything that is currently operating) is about security of the fissionable materials not making it into the 'wrong hands' - an entire government created problem.
You know, they weren't going for a nuclear power plant, they were going for a bomb. In fact they already did destroy 2 Japanese cities in that process and former USSR government destroyed a huge territory as well as many lives with Chernobyl, so much for government insurance.
You can't handle the truth.
It's not treason. Stop it.
The republican don't compromise. The fact that we know exactly what needs to be done to get out of this, and they refuse to do so because they can use it a a wedge to continue their lies about SS and Medicaid.
You're view of food stamps is wrong. It's shows complete ignorance or the situation.
Also, it's not 'you're oney' one it goes into the tax pool, its everyones money.
Yeah, your angry, I get that. I'm just saying it is an anger based on complete ignorance.
How much did that guy [pay into the system before he was unemployed? How much is he getting? Does he have 3 room mates so he can afford to eat a little better? Is he actually eating better?
You're whole view is based on a snapshot.
It's like find a picture of a smiling family in Hiroshima taken at 8AM on August 6, 1945 and concluding they are going to have a happy life.
Now, while some people will do that, most do not.
After the tech bust, I was unemployed and in Ca. The social programs were critical to me not just loosing everything. It allowed me to spend 60 hours a week doing things related to finding a job. Something I could not do is I was working a shitty min, wage job. As a result I was able to find a high paying job and pay taxes.
Now, lets go beck to that snapshot thing.
While getting assistance at one point had you looked into our dining room you would have seen us eating filet minion and lobster.
I suspect that would have made you angry, and claimed the whole system is broke and I am a lazy SOB.
What you wouldn't NOT know is that we had bought some Frozen steaks and Lobster before I was unemployed, when I was a software engineer contractor($$cha-ching!). So once a week I would thaw some and have a treat.
You would also see me playing wow at night! OMG, he is spending my money on Wow! What you did not know is a friend bought me a year subscription when I went unemployed. He know that it was a great stress reliever, and I had contact in the industry that also played.
If you kept following me, A couple times you would see me at some very expensive restaurants. oohhh, how that would make your blood boil! What you did not know is that it was an interview, and the company interviewing me paid. What you would also not know is that I would go to the restroom, and ask the waitress to discretely box my food when I say I was 'done' so I could take it back to my wife.
I wonder what you didn't know about the person in front of you at the store?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I am suggesting that government is protecting the status quo and that oil prices are now down due to depression in real terms, but are up in counterfeit currency due to government creating all that inflation.
My point is that right now the prices are going higher due to government printing money. But you are right, on a decade to decade level, the prices for oil go higher due to higher demand. Government shouldn't be subsidizing any energy company or any other company or any individual, but it also shouldn't be taxing income. All of that non-spent private income is used as savings and then as investment, it should only be taxed when people stop growing the money and start spending it. That's the way to ensure a thriving economy, that has many various businesses going on at the same time, many of them looking at the energy production as well.
The government is going to tax everybody (directly or with inflation) and to spend on something it believes is a good idea (however it arrived at such a conclusion, but it's definitely not a market signal that told them.) I am certain there is an element of corruption there, somebody is going to run a company, pocketing a bunch of money and really producing something or maybe not, it doesn't matter, what matters is that something is being subsidized, while the real economy is being diminished and this will make the energy crisis worse, not better.
You can't handle the truth.
It doesn't matter, all of those companies would have eventually ended up in the same place - having to interoperate. They would have come to that conclusion eventually on their own, but if gov't wasn't allowed to spend money, how much would have been saved?
How many projects does a government start, that NEVER do anything, never end up with any outcome at all? That's all wasted money and it's all hurting the economy, not helping it, because the failure is not limited to some small private entity, it's distributed to everybody.
You can't handle the truth.
Its a BIG irony.
Consider the proprietary nature of the protocols others were based on, the lack of openness. Those would not have had such a significant boost and growth if they were allowed to grow into just another compuserve.
Free market would have shut down the internet as unprofitable if it was owned long ago since it was not fully under their control. What business wants to help their competitors make money? Who wants to let people do lots of stuff that doesn't get them money yet still costs large sums of money? (remember when having to set up a server, even in the early internet days it took a $50k Sun Server?).
If they tried to monetize it, it would have died a slow death (see other business telecommunication information networks). The modern internet came about because of its decentralized, non business constrained nature. Things like that can only come about from Government funding, since a business is RARELY so generous with its money unless it directly or indirectly profits them. And if you're not seeing the benefit, you're not looking hard enough, why else do companies make big PR releases when they give big donations?
No, it should be looked into by the Justice Department, the same way that the military contractors and bankers should be looked into.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Yes, I have a clue about how business works; I ran a contracting company for 3 years and learned some things the hard way; after that, I sold my interest to my business partner and went to a job with fewer headaches.
I agree that my knowledge of tax incentives is limited, but many governments have tax breaks for R&D.
Also, I'm referring to the car; this page should be up - http://news.discovery.com/autos/fisker-green-car-solyndra-scandal-111025.html. It's a safe bet that Fiskars (with an "a", not an "e") isn't getting subsidies for making scissors, but hey, they may be too.
Oh, it's silicon, not silicone that you are referring to; check your spelling and grammar before you insult someone. Perhaps you're just being "snarky".
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
...actually subsidising sales is economically sustainable if you wipe out your competition....
who the hell are they?
Experts in the field.
"otherwise been spent on something besides whatever the government has planned."
But they don't pool it, so they can't have an effect. This helps stop the big companies from become the all powerful gatekeepers;which is what happened in many industries before the government stepped in.
"but the EPA has prevented any new nuclear plants in the last 3 decades. "
The vast majority of people don't want it, and politics is responding to that.
You are correct, a modern nuclear plant is really the safest cheapest option. The failure here is not educating people about new nuclear technologies.
Very long term, solar will be the way to go. But until then, nuclear is the way to go. preferably with thorium.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Agree, with caveats. The gov't cannot and should not be trying to pick winning technologies. However, it (we!) need considered laws to protect us from the rapacious and the polluters. That's a long list - everything from corporations that spill oil or defraud investors down to speeding drivers*. (Doing that job requires a lot of staff, though 10% of the population seems like too many.)
Laws should require those who propose energy tech to provide transparent and *independently audited* information about risks, cost, and benefits. Police should have funding and motivation to enforce the laws, and courts should create serious problems for people who break them. We need real disclosures and formidable sanctions in those laws, and they cannot be written by an industry lobby.
How about if a corp wants to put nuclear waste or fracking chemicals or pig shit in your watershed, corporate H.Q. drinks only water from your well.
* Consider which of those groups kills more citizens.
" Tokyo might have had to be evacuated for decades possibly."
umm, weeks, maybe months.
Nuclear technology is a spectrum of technologies.
I would build new 4th gen reactors and I would have them run by the government, and monitored by ta different government organization (EPA) and approved watch dog groups.
approved meaning they need to have bonafide nuclear experts doing the monitoring.
As we have seen, private corporation can not be trusted to run nuclear plants. They will cut engineering and safety covers to save money.
Thorium substantial lowers the risk of an issue, and the overall effect og the issue. And new one woudl be built to now safety standards.
Weapons-grade fissionable material (233U) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;
Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment, whereas natural uranium contains only 0.7% fissionable U-235;
Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming,[22] so fission stops by default.
I do now want another 1960s technology based nuclear reactor built.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" No deaths from runaway solar power generation."
beside skin cancer?
But yeah, his argument isn't very sound.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, sure, but VCs have a lot of skin in the game - usually a bunch of their own money. The government is spending tax dollars. Or, lately, printed money. Where the money is spent is much more important that what it gets spent on.
The government has a horrible record in funding energy projects. It spent billions (when a billion dollar was real money) on shale oil and solar projects in the seventies and ended up with nothing at all to show for it. Fund ten solar projects, and most likely all ten will fail unless they're kept alive with government funding. There's tons of money waiting on the sidelines right now, so any technology with a chance will be funded by an actual VC.
You should actually read into Solyndra, its another spin machine scandal with nothing to it. Thin film tech is really risky with big potential payoffs should somebody get it working; much of it is invented by gov funding anyhow-- cheap mass production seems to be an area we won't let gov do research-- we keep having to outsource that work as we ruin our gov research by trying to outsource that too. As we continue to decline we won't notice the causes and will just do more of the same until maybe after we run it all into the ground then realize what was wrong; although, I expect tea bagger nuts to just keep trying to dig a deeper hole claiming at some point we'll be going upwards somehow (maybe after coming out on the other side of the planet?)
Hell, the US tire industry is dying because China is subsidizing their tire industry with the purpose of killing our industry and Obama couldn't even get a good tariff in place (watered down compromise was all he got... only delaying the rate at which our businesses die.) Chinese solar is trying to kill the world solar market so they can dominate it; Solyndra was partially a result of this. (note the bad gov report cited online was from 2010 not from when the loan was given; not to mention that it was ignoring that thin-film is a cutting edge new tech that costs 4-6x as much.... not that we'd recoup if we fixed that because China would just copy the tech while claiming they are protecting our I.P. )
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
See: Robber barons.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The natural counter-argument is the question: Should the government stop funding research simply because some of the funds will (likely) reach undeserving parties?
Where's the counterargument? Your use of the term "some" ignores the degree of corruption. In the case of solar power, we have obvious private research even if government is not involved, a degree of known corruption (such as the Solyndra scam), and just the fact that government investment in solar power just doesn't make a lot of sense (there's no vital national interest at stake).
If there's been a history of wasted resources related to this particular objective, then more strict regulation should be enacted (and the natural reply to this would be: regulation is both expensive and corruptible... I guess some middle-ground is necessary).
Or one can discontinue the activity in question (in which case regulation becomes obsolete). The "more regulation" idea ignores that the usual problem is lack of enforcement not lack of regulation.
That's cobblers. Private oil, coal + gas interests have bribed and corrupted so much of the debate about global warming in there own short term greedy 1% interests that it is time for the guvmint to stop taking those bribes and start thinking about us 99% who are going to get creamed when global warming really kicks in.
By the way, all these calculations about cost are currently worthless as they do not take into affect the considerable harmful effects that putting billions of tonnes of CO2, ash and heavy metals into the air and into the water we drink. Professor Mendelsohn a fellow of Ezra Stiles College has done some interesting work on calculating the actual cost benefit of lots of industrial work and burning coal to make electricity actually comes out negative.
The transistor was not done in a free market environment. It was the result of a regulated monopoly, as were the other results of Bell Labs - which happened to be the most productive R&D organization in the world. Which disappeared as soon as Bell was broken up.
Many other technical advances were spinoffs of government spending - military and NASA. Airplane development is and has always been the result of military R&D spending. It is why the US has dominated that industry since WWI.
Electric power plants are again funded by government regulated monopolies. The #1 component of the US road system, the interstate highways was built primarily as a national defense measure.
Much of the rail system in the US was funded by gov't guaranteed bonds (I am related to Collis Potter Huntington so I should know).
Basically the things that you are claiming as the results of market driven enterprise .. are NOT.
More waste of taxpayer money. Ignoring all the moral and legal sisues of stealing from people and giving to those who didn't earn it... The companies making solar cells have a vested interest in making them as cheap as possible to manufacture. It allows them to lower prices and still make more profit, making their product more competitive. Government intervention is unnecessary and wasteful, and as with Solyndra can have unintended consequences and outcomes. Stop with these subsidies and lower taxes by a proportionate amount. Maybe when I have more money in my pocket I can afford to do some alternative energy projects of my own to be less dependant on the grid. The more government intervenes, the less I can afford such things.
Wait, you're not wiggling out of this one. Answer this simple question:
How do you insure against the possibility of Tokyo going the way of Chernobyl?
Here's my attempt: Katrina cost 108 billion. About 1 million people were evacuated. So that gives us a cost of about 100K per person. So scaling that up to Tokyo size gives about 1 trillion USD to evacuate.
Except if it went the way of Chernobyl, it'd cost a lot more, because you can't just go back and repair the infrastructure. And I imagine it's harder to find room for 13 million people and to organize the whole thing. The logistics are mind boggling.
I'd say that this is the very lower bound. If 13 million people just lost their home, I think 1K USD for each is about the reasonable minimum to give them maybe a few months worth of food and housing very optimistically speaking, while still leaving them completely screwed.
So let's say some company decided to insure the powerplant for 1 trillion. Optimistically, a nuclear powerplant can be made for 5 billion (googling suggests the practice is more like 20). Let's say the insurance company calculates that at most they'll have to pay that in 100 years. That means that they have to charge at least 2 billion per year, and they'll want some profit, too.
Additionally, where do you get this idea that this will lead to cheap nuclear power? Such a deal will never, ever happen without regulations that are much more stringent than governments impose. Because you said it, companies can't print money like the government. Which means a sane company will make very, very sure that the above scenario won't happen. Which means that besides the 2 billion per year you'll get a mountain of regulations to comply with, inspections, and so on. Just like home insurance may require you to have a smoke alarm, powerplant insurance will require you to have reliable systems and procedures.
So, there's my ballpark. Now your turn. Don't give me bullshit about moral hazards and your opinion of the government, I don't care. Just explain how exactly insurance for all of Tokyo is supposed to work in your ideal world without government interferrence. Please produce some ballpark estimate of the cost of the powerplant, the amount of insurance purchased, and the yearly payments for it.
You're right about the article. What's been surprising to me, though, is that PV has actually gotten cheaper than even industrial-scale solar thermal in the last few years. More than one large-scale facility out here in the desert has scrapped their plans for concentrating thermal plants, and is instead just buying a stack of panels. The best bang for your buck isn't in the big thermal plants anymore, thanks to the relentless decrease in price for photovoltaics.
There's a difference here, though. We knew space travel with a returning vehicle was possible, it was just that a private company hadn't done it.
With solar we're trying to push the boundaries of what's possible, not just replicate existing technology.
Shhhh. Corporations are supposed to be super-competant, and government workers are supposed to be bumbling monkeys in this guy's religion.
You aren't being sensitive to his religious dogma!
A-men to that! I used to work with SNA.
TCP/IP is a thing of beauty in comparison.
then you are not trying hard enough and you are bound not to be pushing new barriers.
Lets take just what I do know.
He was using public assistance money to buy some nice steaks.
Fuck him. Buy hamburger and chicken thighs on my money. Not steaks.
As far as it being "Everyones Money"
A recent study showed that 47% of American pay $0 or Less in federal income tax.
Many people get back a check that is much more than they paid in.
That is 47% of the voter out there have no skin in the game.
That is a problem.
I did, that's how I know it's a legitimate scandal. In this I am not addressing the issue of whether the government should be involved in venture capital, only the Solyndra scandal. The law authorizing this was signed by Bush, so the program itself is not Obama's blame/credit depending on your view. Only the improper handling of this one case is completely his.
You have the basic facts.
Law enforcement is trying to find out if the company misrepresented its finances to get the loan, but that's a deflection. Before the deal, while attempting to do that due diligence, the OMB figured Solyndra would run out of money in -- you guessed it -- September 2011. So the Obama administration had the disastrous numbers, yet went ahead with the deal anyway.
If that's not a legitimate scandal, I don't know what is. Political pressure from the White House pushed through a deal that shouldn't have happened, likely breaking laws and regulations in the process, resulting in a massive loss of money to the taxpayer.
The idea of course is to destroy the competition then fuck the customer to get your money back.
Because it's expensive to set up. With PVs there is almost certainly a way of producing them cheaply that we haven't figured out yet. That can be researched. So you find some bright team with an idea that sounds good, and give them some money hoping that they might have figured it out.
With geothermal though, what you do is bring a lot of heavy, expensive and complicated machinery and dig a very deep hole. The oil industry already mastered that art. Maybe it can be done 5% cheaper, but it's extremely unlikely that there's anything that can be done to make it much cheaper. If there was, the oil industry would have researched it already.
TBTF?
jack the ex-cynic
The argument goes like this: if the private sector invests in something risky and fails, it is Capitalism and it is Good; when the government does it, itis Socialism, and it is Bad.
When someone else spends their money on something, good for them. If it works out, great, if it doesn't, that sucks.
When someone else spends my money without my consent, that's typically called theft. And albeit that in some cases that's acceptable, it's the exception. So when everyone wants to use my mney to fund whatever bologna project that they want done, yeah it's called socialism, among other acceptable definitions.
All the argument is specious: CEOs invest in their golfing friends' companies, and they don't invest their own money: they invest the shareholder's.
All people who gave their money to that CEO to do that. No coercion.
The question is, since the government is this huge corporation which cannot go bankrupt, what should it invest in?
The government can go bankrupt. Ask Zimbabwe. Also the government is not suppose to invest money, other than the things laid out in the constitution. Which most of the crap that they spend their money on, is not.
On a more philosophical note, it is wholly reasonable that the governement does the high-risk stuff: it cannot fail
Seriously, it cannot fail? Have you ever opened a history book? And no, it's not reasonable, again that whole constitution thing.
You're view of food stamps is wrong. It's shows complete ignorance or the situation.
I've seen examples similar on the abuse of food stamps. Seeing people pay for soda with food stamps at a convenience store was probably the worst. They'd then turn around and buy a couple packs of cigarettes and a bottle of some alcoholic beverage with their own cash and go out into their new "modified" car. I'm sure there are people that are at both ends of the spectrum here. Ideally foodstamps would be more like WIC (Women Infant & Children) vouchers (wife and I were on that briefly between the time I graduated and found my first job) where only specific items could be purchased.
No. simply sovereign. A government fails only when it abdicates/is conquered/is overthrown.
Thus it may take risks a corporation cannot.
Great, good luck getting that to happen.
They don't want to admit their was fraud, and half the time when it is uncovered, you get something like Rick Scott being elected governor of Florida instead of being hung on the courthouse steps.
Sure... maybe you should care a bit more about what happens with how the money in investment (in particular retirement) funds is spent. At least governments are somewhat open and accountable...
Has Zimbabwe stopped existing? it vanished in a puff of whatever libertarians smoke? This is the fundamental difference between states and corporations. No matter what you do, as a state, as long as you stay independent, people can't repossess you. States do not fail unless they get conquered.
Also, this imbecilic notion that the right thing should not be done on the grounds that some piece of paper written many centuries ago did not specifically specify it needs to die. And that is equally valid for all religions.
(Usually) only the ones tied to larger companies don't give two fucks. Foxconn, for example.
Many smaller production houses in China are actually goddamned careful and don't cut corners. LG-LED, for example.
Maybe you should get your passport, and go out to Guadong or Shenzhen to CHECK ON YOUR MANUFACTURER, instead of typing your ill-educated nonsense.
It's what smart businessmen do - check the sources themselves.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm speaking to you right now as one of those small companies.
I've packed 300w of LED into a 30mm x 30mm area and kept it cool enough to remain stable, on air alone, something nobody else could do.
My own investors wouldn't give me the money to do it.
It took $3,000 from the USGov't to make and perfect it.
Most other companies would spend millions just to achieve the same result.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Sure... maybe you should care a bit more about what happens with how the money in investment (in particular retirement) funds is spent. At least governments are somewhat open and accountable...
You missed part about me not being able to do anything or have any say over it. the government can fund the entire NBA and i'm helpless to stop it short of moving out of country. The government is forcing me to pay for something, the CEO only wishes he had that power.
Has Zimbabwe stopped existing? it vanished in a puff of whatever libertarians smoke?
Their money basically has.
This is the fundamental difference between states and corporations. No matter what you do, as a state, as long as you stay independent, people can't repossess you. States do not fail unless they get conquered.
So states can't fail, unless they fail?
Also, this imbecilic notion that the right thing should not be done on the grounds that some piece of paper written many centuries ago did not specifically specify it needs to die. And that is equally valid for all religions.
You're right, we just need the government to do whatever it wants, unconstrained. You know what's that's called? that's called a dictatorship. The constitution was written to prevent those very things, and does decently at, except people like you just want to ignore it whenever it doesn't suit them.
If they want solar power to be 6c/kWh, why don't they decrease inflation and stick with current technologies?
Looking at the one laptop per child project, I think cheap solar innovation needs to be run by a not for profit or charity. The gov't could contribute by matching donations which will skew demand less and others will be more likely to help by surrendering patent rights. The biggest single hurdle to cheap solar is IP rights tied to special materials.
Good to hear the view from bankrupt Europe. See, the US is less bankrupt because it is more conscious of the government wasting money.
Your view is overly rosy regarding innovation emerging from government subsidies. Most of the technologies we take for granted came out of the private sector not from direct government subsidies.
Ah. A successful micro-investment, for sure, but I was referring more to the 500M (Solyandra) type investments. I was genuinely curious as to whether or not that level of investment pays off in smaller companies, or if our best bet with large amounts of the public treasury is to go with the proven larger companies.
Also, good job.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Craig Venter (first to decode the human genome and create artificial life) thinks it is possible to engineer artificial algae to consume CO2 and produce crude oil. He estimates that (5) industrial size plants in the US could replace all fossil fuel oil. The beauty is his system would plug right into the existing refining network.