David Victor's Essay on the Clean Energy Crisis
Is clean energy headed for a crisis?
11/02/2011
Brad Plumer,
The Washington Post, Wonkblog
Lately, Republicans have been on a tear against government funding for clean energy. The fact that yet another company backed by federal loan guarantees — Beacon Power, a flywheel storage company — just filed for bankruptcy won’t help matters. And, today, the Energy Department’s watchdog, Gregory Friedman, is telling Congress that the agency was ill-equipped to hand out the $35 billion gusher of stimulus money it received two years ago. Way back in 2005, there was a broad consensus in Congress that the government had a role to play in funding new alternative-energy sources. Now? Not so much.
But if the government isn’t going to give alternative energy a boost, won’t private investors step up? Not necessarily. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new report out from Third Way, which argues that U.S. venture capital is currently in “crisis,” dropping 26 percent below 2007 levels in 2010. More specifically, the report found that investments in clean tech have been extremely erratic of late — dropping 44 percent between 2010 and 2011. Increasingly, investors have been shying away from start-up energy firms and focusing more on established companies. On the whole, the report offers a gloomy take on the future of clean energy.
Click here to read the full article.
Related Links
David Victor is Director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR). Looking across a wide array of issues from environment and energy to human rights, trade and security, the Laboratory explores when (and why) international laws actually work.
