In his commentary airing this week on WAMC Northeast Public Radio, Pace Energy & Climate Center Executive Director Franz Litz takes a closer look at the political kerfuffle surrounding Solyndra, the California solar manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy two years after being awarded a $500 million federal loan guarantee.
The irony in all of this bluster is that congressional Republicans, and some moderate Democratic senators from coal-dependent states, prevented the last Congress from passing genuine comprehensive climate change and energy legislation. That legislation may have eliminated the need for government to pick winners out of many vying for government subsidies.
In the absence of a real bi-partisan comprehensive energy policy, we are left with the approach Bush started and Obama has continued. If we are going to support the burgeoning clean energy industry in the United States, we are going to have to take some risks. The alternative is that we sit back and let China grow its renewable energy industries with hefty subsidies, and create the jobs that come with them. We’ll end up buying our energy infrastructure from China.