In sports, 
the ‘psych’ game often can have as much — if not more — importance than actual physical engagement. Come to the starting line positively certain that you’re going to lose and, well, you’re likely to be watching others’ butts crossing the finish line. And, even worse, be so despondent that you don’t even go to the line, you have guaranteed that you won’t have a chance to surprise the crowd with an upset victory. And, refuse to acknowledge that there is even a competition and, well, don’t be surprised when others’ burn past you on the running track.
As Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has often put it,
“When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat. I believe we can and must compete.”
When it comes to tackling 21st century challenges and seizing opportunities, too many seem determined to deny that there is a race worth engaging in and, often in the same breath, seem to suggest that the United States isn’t in a poisition to compete in the race.
Right now, listening to the Congressional hearing with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the misguided national discussion (at least by part of the political system) comes through clearly. Rather than, universally, asking:
What can we learn from Solyndra to be more effective moving forward to foster a more competitive and prosperous nation in the years and decades to come?
Instead, after 100,000s of thousands of emails and $10+ million of investigation and countless skewed news stories and repetitive misleading news releases, the Republicans on the Committee remained focused on scandal mongering (where ‘scandal’ seems not really the issue) rather than on fostering identifying lessons to help the nation and government work better in the years to come.
To be clear, Solyndra’s technology works and is even elegant. And, considering the market conditions in terms of solar power raw materials looking back several years, Solyndra’s approach looked like it could be a breakthrough path for providing cost-effective solar power in the face of those costs. In the interim, the resource costs nose-dived (counter the predictions of at least some in the field) and the Chinese government massively invested in solar power systems. These combined to rapidly drive down the costs of solar pv electricity systems, which undercut Solyndra’s basic business model and thus drove it out of business. In the face of high resource costs, national investing in a path to be successful even with those costs certainly was (is) a reasonable path of risk management even knowing that if an ‘unsolveable problem’ is solved, the business model will collapse. Investing for return includes risk and Solyndra was a risk bet by the nation (and many private investors) as part of a portfolio to provide high returns for the years to come.
Sadly, the key issues related to climate change risks and clean energy opportunities only emerge in questioning from Committee Democrats.
In the end, Secretary Chu highlights
We are in a high technology race that is in the sweet spot of the United States.
In this $100s of billions market, do we want to be buyers or sellers. And, the United States has the technological capacity to be sellers.
1 response so far ↓
1 sailrick // Nov 17, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Good post
The GOP congressmen who are making all the noise about Solyndra, are themselves engaged in perhaps the oldest and biggest crony capitalism in history, the one with the fossil fuel industry. And I would say, that is what motivates their attacks on clean energy (with Solyndra as poster child) to begin with.