Solyndra's Failure No Reason to Abandon Federal Energy Innovation Plicy

This post was originally published at the Breakthrough Institute Blog, and was also picked up by the Forbes online business section.


By Jesse Jenkins, Devon Swezey, and Alex Trembath 

Wednesday's news that the California solar cell manufacturer and DOE loan guarantee recipient Solyndra will be declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy has government critics grumbling about clean tech boondoggles and failed government programs. But Solyndra's failure, while unfortunate, is hardly an indictment of federal energy technology policy. Failure is to be expected with emerging, innovative companies, whether they are financed by the government or the private sector. The success of the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) should thus be judged not by any one investment but by the performance of the entire portfolio.

Critics have seized on the news of Solyndra's bankruptcy to condemn the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program, which provided a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009. The National Review's Greg Pollowitz writes that Solyndra's failure shows "why the government should not play venture capitalist." Yet the fact is that, when judged by its entire diverse portfolio of investments, the LGP has performed remarkably well. Indeed, with a capitalization of just $4 billion, DOE has committed or closed $37.8 billion in loan guarantees for 36 innovative clean energy projects. The Solyndra case represents less than 2% of total loan commitments made by DOE, and will be easily covered by a capitalization of eight to ten times larger than any ultimate losses expected following the bankruptcy proceedings.

The broad success story of the LGP shows why federal investment in clean energy is necessary to help early-stage clean energy technologies achieve scale and reach commercialization. The inherent uncertainty in investing in novel technologies, coupled with the high capital costs and long time horizons, prohibits most venture capital funds from investing in large-scale clean energy projects. Financing tools and direct investment from the federal government can help bridge this well-known "Commercialization Valley of Death," and the LGP is an effective way of doing that.

Instead of "picking winners and losers," as the program's critics allege, the program actually reduces risk for a suite of innovative clean energy technologies and allows venture capitalists and other private sector investors to invest in the best technology. Rather than picking winners, the LGP enables innovative companies to compete in the marketplace, allowing winners to emerge from competition. And while Solyndra is shutting its doors, companies like SunPower, First Solar, and Brightsource Energy, which also received loan guarantees and other support from the federal government, are industry leading success stories.

With perfect hindsight, it's all too easy to see why Solyndra proved to be a bad bet: the firm's central innovation, a thin film technology that avoided the use of silicon, proved to be far less important when refined silicon prices collapsed after Solyndra's founding; the remaining installation cost advantages provided by the company's cylindrical solar panels proved too small, and Solyndra was unable to capture the manufacturing cost reductions that have helped other U.S. thin film companies, like First Solar, thrive despite low silicon prices. Perhaps most importantly, intense pressure from heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturers is driving a surprisingly competitive solar market, forcing Solyndra to get costs down faster than the start-up firm could achieve.

It is possible that these fatal factors could have been avoided by better vetting from DOE, or that removed from the pressures of a fast-paced stimulus environment, DOE may not have made this bad bet. But to assert, as numerous conservative commentators have been quick to do, that Solyndra's failure is proof positive of the government's supposed inability to "pick winners" is patently absurd. After all, Solyndra received repeated rounds of investment to the tune of $1.1 billion from some of the private sector's biggest stars, including Richard Branson, the WalMart family, and leading venture capital firms like U.S. Venture Partners and RockPort Capital. Venture capitalists and the U.S. government both placed a bet, Solyndra's entrepreneurs took a shot, and unfortunately for all, they missed. Such is to be expected in the high-risk but high-reward world of early-stage technology ventures. In addition, the loan commitment places the government in a senior position in the result of a bankruptcy, ensuring that DOE will get paid out before the VCs and other investors.

Critics who think the government has no place in supporting technology innovation have a tenuous grasp of U.S. economic history. In fact, the government has a long and successful history in helping America's intrepid entrepreneurs succeed in new high-risk, high-reward technology sectors. As we wrote in "Where Good Technologies Come From," the government has played a key role, either as an early investor or a demanding customer, in the development of virtually every advanced technology we take for granted today, from aviation to biotechnology, to computers and the Internet, microchips, and now clean energy. Indeed, without a visionary government investing in key strategic industries, world-leading companies like Google, Genentech and Boeing would not exist.

The United States was able to be the world's technology leader in these fields because of its forward-looking investments, as well as a relative dearth of competition from economic rivals. In today's clean energy market, however, competition is fierce. U.S. companies compete with low-cost Chinese manufacturers who benefit from generous state subsidies and a robust and comprehensive set of policies to encourage solar manufacturing. Indeed, in 2010 the China Development Bank provided more than $30 billion in loans to Chinese solar manufacturers. China's large clean energy investments have helped reduce the price of solar cells by 42% in just the last nine months, which was one factor in Solyndra's inability to compete.

While the United States may not be able to afford the scale of support for clean energy that China can, it can compete by focusing on what it has always done best: innovation. In the solar industry, the long-term goal must be to drive innovation so that solar can be cost-competitive without subsidy. Fortunately, the Department of Energy recognizes this imperative and has embarked on a new effort--the SunShot initiative--geared toward dramatically lowering the cost of solar PV. The SunShot initiative focuses on bringing down costs by pursuing innovations in four particular areas, including solar cell technology, power electronics that optimize the performance of installations, improvements in manufacturing processes, and installation and system design.

The Sunshot initiative and other key technology innovation programs like the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), embody the kind of smart innovation policy that holds the promise of fundamentally transforming the economy and ushering in a new era of U.S. technology leadership.

In the face of intense competition in the clean energy sector, America faces two choices. We can abandon our entrepreneurs and innovators in this new strategic growth sector, or we can redouble our efforts to invest in energy innovation, support clean energy entrepreneurs and help American firms compete and ultimately prevail in the global clean energy race. If we walk away now, America will lose out on one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.

National Journal: Surviving the Coming Clean Tech Crash

This post was co-authored by Jesse Jenkins and originally published at The National Journal in their discussion "How Can Washington Green America's Economy?" Cross-posted at the Breakthrough Institute Blog.

Before discussing the best way to green the economy, it’s important to note that the U.S. economy has been greening steadily over the past three years. Buoyed by the policies established and extended by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the largest federal investment in clean tech in American history, the clean energy industry has experienced precipitous growth, as documented by Mark Muro and colleagues at the Brookings Metro program in their recent "Sizing the Clean Economy" report.

Unfortunately, the path of progress may be coming to an end. Our research shows that over 70% of the federal policies and funding support for clean energy that has catalyzed the recent growth of the industry is expected to lapse in the next three years, or has already expired. And make no mistake—clean energy is an industry dependent on government subsidy: tax credits, depreciation and other subsidies compose one third or more of the total after-tax value of most solar, wind or other renewable energy projects, for example. So while ARRA provided a “down payment” on a green economy, as these public investments fade away, we are now more likely to witness a clean tech crash than a clean tech revolution.

As the current programs supporting clean energy, like the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Section 1603 Treasury Grants, approach their expiration, there are a number of steps the federal government can and must take to avert an impending industry crash.

The first would be to get serious about the long-term energy innovation challenge. Until clean energy becomes cheap and cost competitive without subsidy, the pace of clean energy growth will remain constrained and the markets will face continual risk of industry busts if subsidy and policy support changes. We must treat energy innovation with the same priority we afford other national innovation quests, such as the Apollo or Manhattan Projects or the quest to cure cancer. We must invest far more -- eventually on the order of $15 billion annually -- and far more wisely -- restructuring America's energy innovation system and supporting effective new policy models such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs), and new public-private regional innovation consortia.

Second, Congress can establish a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA). CEDA would act as a public investment bank whose mission is to help leverage private-sector investment to bring emerging, innovative clean technologies to commercial maturity. CEDA would bridge the commercialization “Valley of Death” and provide a viable and predictable development path for technologies from the laboratory to grid-scale deployment. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the agency would cost just $1.1 billion over the next four years. While leveraging billions more in private sector investment, the public bank would return profits from investments and financial products to the fund, making CEDA self-sustaining over time.

Another needed policy change is to reform the current clean energy deployment subsidy regime for maturing energy technologies, which today is comprised of a hodgepodge of tax credits like the PTC and the Investment Tax Credit, depreciation benefits and grants that primarily incentivize firms to deploy more of the same, current-generation technology. Instead, we need a smarter new deployment mechanism that is disciplined and designed to drive technology innovation to decrease the unsubsidized cost of clean energy so that it can be competitive without perpetual subsidy. Such a policy could augment a national renewable or clean energy standard (RES/CES) with a set of technology tiers based on technology maturity, which would provide the incentive for utilities to adopt and deploy clean energy technologies across a range of maturities, and demand continual cost reductions from technology firms over time. One way to augment this smart deployment policy would be with a small price on carbon, wires fee on electricity, or oil import fee, which instead of returning a dividend to consumers would generate dedicated revenues for a federal energy R&D fund to help support the continual innovation needed to get clean tech costs down to parity with fossil competitors.

The fate of many ARRA policies remains uncertain, and the unpredictable political machinations of the “supercongress” and ongoing deficit debate in Washington bring yet more volatility to the clean tech policy debate. Nobody expects a second down payment on the green economy on the scale of the last several years. But as current subsidy support runs out, Washington must support the industry by investing more and differently in clean energy innovation to maintain America’s position in the global clean tech race and avoid an ongoing cycle of clean tech boom-and-bust in the future.

Energetics Cliff Notes - Tuesday Edition

Despite my recent obsession with Google+ coverage and Bay Area BART protests, I found time this week for energy news as well.

• My colleagues and I are researching the coming clean tech crash, as subsidies and tax incentives for renewable energy technology expire. As Devon Swezey recently wrote in Forbes, "The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash. The reason is simple. Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas, and in an era of heightened budget austerity the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable."

• Australia, against all odds, has passed a carbon pricing scheme. Leigh Ewbank of Beyond Zero Emissions digs into the new policy, noting that a the CO2 price will require auxiliary policies to drive real innovation and deployment of clean energy technology.

• A new report (PDF) from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation explains why ARPA-E is such a vital resource and should be fully-funded. "Cutting ARPA-E's budget would thwart future successes. A smaller budget would mean fewer projects, a more narrow range of risky projects, more hesitation to explore uncharted ares, and fewer opportunities to attract private sector investment."

• Tomorrow (July 13) the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution is hosting (and webcasting) an event called "Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment." The event signals the release of a new report on green jobs and a new database. Follow along on Twitter (#cleanecon) tomorrow morning.

• I enjoyed this piece on energy storage technology at The Energy Collective. "The enthusiasm for grid-connected energy storage is well-founded. The inability to store electric energy on the grid is, in many respects, the technological limitation that defined the design of our national power grid in the early 20th Century and that continues to account for its basic architecture today. The ability to generate electricity, to store it economically in large quantities, and to use it at a later time, would be the most disruptive technology to emerge on the power grid in the past 100 years."