Latest news with #Solyndra
Reuters
16 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Breakingviews - Why green investors keep getting carried away
LONDON, June 26 (Reuters Breakingviews) - To paraphrase Mark Twain, speculative bubbles don't repeat themselves, but they often rhyme. The green technology boom that has imploded over the past three years is remarkably similar to the alternative energy bubble that inflated prior to the global financial crisis of 2008. Both frenzies were driven by investors' unrealistic expectations about how quickly new energy technologies would be taken up. What is now known as the Cleantech 1.0 boom took off in 2005 after the U.S. Congress enacted tax credits for renewable energy. Former Vice President Al Gore's 2006 documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' raised public awareness of climate change. In early 2007 the venture capital investor John Doerr gave a much-publicised TED talk, opens new tab in which he asserted that 'green technologies – going green – is bigger than the internet. It could be the biggest opportunity of the twenty-first century.' Doerr's firm, Kleiner Perkins, later launched a fund to 'help speed mass market adoption of solutions to the climate crisis.' Many other venture capitalists jumped on the bandwagon. The WilderHill Clean Energy Index, launched in 2004, more than doubled between May 2005 and December 2007. Dozens of startups were launched to invest in batteries, solar, biomass and wind energy. An electric vehicle company, Better Place, established in Silicon Valley in 2007, raised nearly $1 billion to build a network of charging stations. Solyndra, an innovative solar panel manufacturer, attracted a host of big-name investors and later received more than $500 million in loan guarantees from the administration of President Barack Obama. No single factor was responsible for pricking the bubble. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 dampened animal spirits; advances in hydraulic fracturing technology led to cheaper U.S. natural gas; Spain and Germany reduced their subsidies for renewable energy; and American solar companies proved unable to compete with subsidised Chinese competitors. Nearly all the 150 renewable energy startups founded in Silicon Valley during the boom subsequently failed, including Solyndra and Better Place. Cleantech venture capital funds launched during the bubble produced negative returns. By the end of 2012 the WilderHill index had fallen 85% from its peak to around 40. By coincidence, that is where the benchmark currently trades. The recent green tech bubble was more extreme. The WilderHill index climbed from 47 in March 2020 to 281 less than a year later. Whereas U.S. venture capitalists spent an estimated $25 billion funding clean energy startups between 2006 and 2011, Silicon Valley splurged more than twice that sum in 2021 alone, according to Silicon Valley Bank. Market valuations were quite absurd. By late 2020, the battery company QuantumScape (QS.N), opens new tab, which came to the market by merging with a blank-check firm, was valued at more than General Motors (GM.N), opens new tab, despite having no sales. The market frenzy is long past. QuantumScape stock is down more than 95% from its peak, while the WilderHill index has fallen 85%. Several listed electric vehicle companies, including truck maker Nikola, have filed for protection from creditors. President Donald Trump's administration is reducing subsidies for renewables and electric vehicles. Oil giants BP (BP.L), opens new tab and Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab are cutting back their alternative energy investments, just as they did after the Cleantech 1.0 boom. The outcome for green venture capital remains unclear but anecdotal evidence suggests that many funds are now changing hands at steep discounts to their appraised valuations. The common error investors made during both booms was to become entranced by extravagant growth forecasts. In his book, 'More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy', Jean-Baptiste Fressoz criticises the application of the sigmoid function – also known as the S-curve – to predict the course of the energy transition. This model describes the adoption of a new technology as starting out slowly, rapidly gathering pace before eventually levelling off when the market becomes saturated. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has used the S-curve in its projections for renewable energy demand and the accompanying decline of fossil fuels. The S-curve was originally discovered a hundred years ago to describe how the population of drosophila flies changes under laboratory conditions. It was later applied, with varying degrees of success, to project human population growth. The American energy scientist M. King Hubbert was the first to use the S-curve to forecast energy production. In the 1950s, advocates for nuclear energy used the model to predict what they believed was the inevitable transition from fossil fuels towards an atomic-powered future. Hubbert also used the S-curve for his famous forecast that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970. Vaclav Smil, a leading energy historian, points out that energy transitions are slow, inherently unpredictable and require extraordinary amounts of investment. Fressoz goes further, claiming that – when energy consumption is viewed in absolute rather than relative terms – there has historically never been a transition. It's true that coal took over from wood as the world's prime energy source in the 19th century, and that later oil and natural gas became dominant. Yet the consumption of all these energy sources continued increasing. The world has never burned more wood than it does today. In absolute terms, coal usage continues to grow. The S-curve has also been used to predict the uptake of various green technologies. As Rob West of Thunder Said Energy, a research firm, observed in a report published last September, both the speed of adoption and the ultimate penetration rate for new inventions are variable. For instance, the demand for refrigerators and television by U.S. households grew very rapidly from the outset, with both reaching penetration rates of nearly 100% in just a few decades. Yet it took more than half a century for gas heating to reach 60% of U.S. households, at which point its market share flatlined. 'It is important not to fall into the trap of assuming that the 'top of the S' is an endpoint of 100% adoption,' writes West. Not long ago, electric vehicles were set to rapidly replace the internal combustion engine, but sales forecasts are now being cut back in developed markets. West anticipates that the eventual market share for battery-powered cars will not surpass 30%. That's a guess. The actual outcome will depend on the state of future technology, which is unknowable. That leaves plenty of scope for green investors to get it wrong again. Follow @Breakingviews, opens new tab on X
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Republicans once blasted 'crony capitalism.' Now it's the plan.
Just more than a dozen years ago, Republicans' talking point was that the president of the United States should not have promoted a politically connected but troubled company. When Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, GOP lawmakers seized on the catchphrase "crony capitalism" to bash him for giving a speech to workers at a solar panel manufacturing plant run by Solyndra, which had received a loan guarantee under his economic stimulus program. After the company went bankrupt, Republicans argued that records showed the loan guarantee was rushed (true) and the company was backed by Obama donors (mostly false). Now, in President Donald Trump's administration, crony capitalism isn't an attack line; it's the plan. On Tuesday, Trump sidled up to a shiny red Tesla Model S in front of the White House, clutching a handwritten note that said you could drive off in one today for 'as low as $299/month.' The goal was to boost the company run by his biggest donor, billionaire federal contractor and special government employee Elon Musk, after its stock dramatically collapsed because of an ongoing boycott, uncertainty from Trump's trade wars and poor sales of its ungainly Cybertruck. Trump even wrote a check right there for the $80,000 car and said he would buy one for his 17-year-old granddaughter. If a social media influencer had posted a video like this, the Federal Trade Commission might require it to come with the hashtag #sponsored and an admission that it was a paid promotion. This was "sponcon" on the White House lawn, to use the shorthand term for sponsored content. And it was crony capitalism for the richest person on the planet, whose wealth happens to be tied up in Tesla stock. To be clear, presidents have long promoted American businesses. Teddy Roosevelt supposedly coined the Maxwell House ad slogan "good to the last drop" after having a cup, and Joe Biden once took a Ford F-150 Lightning for a spin, saying "this sucker's quick." (Sadly, the Ford Motor Co. did not pick that up as a slogan.) But neither Maxwell House nor Ford executives worked in the White House. Neither made massive donations to a presidential campaign. Trump was trying to help his top political ally by using the White House as a backdrop for free advertising, like some President's Day car sale come to life. In fact, the closest precedent in U.S. history comes from Trump's first term, when he posted a photo giving two thumbs up from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office with cans of Goya beans and other products in front of him. In that case, too, the president was trying to boost a company facing a boycott over its association with him, as Goya's CEO was in hot water for having praised Trump. At least in that case, we know that Trump actually likes taco bowls. But this week's commercial for Tesla came after years of bashing electric cars, which he has said will leave you stranded in the desert, "cost a fortune" and are only "good if you have a towing company." He'd even specifically lambasted Teslas in the past, saying they "don't drive long enough" and the self-driving options "crash." Beyond just the cheap sales pitch, Trump had some chilling words that portend an even more serious effort to shore up Tesla. During the event, Trump ramped up his response to the spate of vandalism against Teslas in recent weeks, saying that "violence against Tesla dealership will be labeled as domestic terrorism" and that any vandals who are caught are "going to go through hell" for "harming a great American company." And in a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump said that "radical left lunatics" are "illegally and collusively" boycotting Tesla. In Trump's first administration, his staffers would have interpreted these comments as hot air. In his second, they're far more likely to treat them as marching orders. His hyperpartisan acting U.S. attorney in D.C. has already threatened a private university for its diversity policies and a U.S. senator for a mildly inappropriate comment made years ago. And Trump now has a Justice Department that he hopes to turn into his own personal law firm. For now, it is still legal to exercise your First Amendment right to protest Tesla or simply refuse to buy its products. Ill-advised vandals will still be charged with misdemeanors in state court, not federal felonies that can carry a sentence of up to life in prison. And Tesla is still a private company that just happens to be owned by the president's BFF, not the recipient of its own massive federal contract. But we'll see how long that lasts, and whether any Republicans who lambasted Obama's supposed "crony capitalism" want to stop the real version that's happening right in front of them. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Ari Melber Says It's Important Not to Lose ‘Your Ability to Be Outraged About Lies' Amid Trump-Musk Corruption
MSNBC's Ari Melber didn't downplay the situation facing, uh, the country during his show on Wednesday, but he did have some advice for people looking ahead to pushing back against Donald Trump and Elon Musk: 'Maintaining your ability to be outraged about lies and the misuse of tax dollars' is crucial. That point came after a lengthy look into Donald Trump's relationship with Musk, as typified by Tuesday's Tesla promotion at the White House. 'The headline you've probably heard, markets are slumping, and it's hitting Elon Musk's Tesla extremely hard, a crash there, the steepest drop in five years, landed for that company this week, as Musk has been doing just about everything, but spending full time running Tesla, working with the government, working with political speeches and appearances, instead of focused on his companies, where so many people expect him to keep track of the stock,' Melber said. 'Meanwhile, Trump and Musk's alliance is now using your taxpayer resources and the White House itself for the extremely odd, controversial and allegedly possibly corrupt presentation that you see here,' he continued, referring to said White House Tesla promosion. 'The pair spent 30 minutes at the White House on what many called an obvious ad and conflict of interest, where the President United States hawked Tesla at the White House to an invited group of reporters,' Melber continued. 'Trump also basically suggesting he was shopping for a new car, and hawked the products an intrepid photographer showing that Trump's notes revealed a price list of Tesla cars, meaning this was quite specifically a sales job for one company owned or tied to his own political ally.' Melber made the point that this 'obviously' involves a big , a big part of Musk's wealth,' and added that the notes 'read like a Tesla sales pitch.' Soon after, he noted how in addition to the brazen corruption of this, it also breaks a specific promise both Trump and Musk made recently, that Musk would 'recuse' himself if ever U.S. policy and Musk's business interests became connected by policy. Melber then contrasted the current situation to that of the failed solar power company Solyndra, which received a $539 million loan cosigned by the Obama administration in 2009 but declared bankruptcy in 2011. An investigation ultimately determined there was no evidence of wrongdoing or illegal or unethical political influence. Nevertheless it was a big issue in the 2012 election, with Republicans accusing Obama of using his office to promote the company illegally. :The federal government picked a winner, and it turned out to be a loser,' Melber said about that situation. 'Now Republicans defend, some even cheering, Trump hand picking his view of a winner on the White House lawn for a political ally, while Musk uses X, the platform he bought to stream, to broadcast the appearance of what some see as a political favor.' 'It's not what a free market looks like. We are witnessing, in a very blatant way, the fusion of selected businesses that are on the winners list and the government, which is using your taxpayer dollars at the very time that this administration's policies are crashing the markets, including Tesla, and all of this done by these people who very publicly and falsely claim they would recuse over any conflicts, the first step catching them, maintaining your ability to be outraged about lies and the misuse of tax dollars and fact checking,' Melber concluded. The post Ari Melber Says It's Important Not to Lose 'Your Ability to Be Outraged About Lies' Amid Trump-Musk Corruption | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Energy experts blast failed billion-dollar DOE project as 'financial boondoggle,' 'disaster'
A major solar power plant project that was granted over a billion dollars in federal loans is on the road to closure, with energy experts blasting the project as a "boondoggle" that harmed the environment. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in loan guarantees to finance the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a green energy project that consists of three solar concentrating thermal power plants in California. The facility was touted by then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz as an "example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy." But after 10 years, the federally funded plant is now on track to close. "Ivanpah is yet another failed green energy boondoggle, much like Solyndra," Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Despite receiving $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees, it never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected while still relying on natural gas to stay operational." Energy Sec. Wright Issues Day-1 Orders Targeting Oil Reserves, Appliance Rules, 'Nuclear Renaissance' "Now, with its power contracts canceled, Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government-subsidized energy schemes," Isaac said. Read On The Fox News App Ivanpah consists of three individual units, two of which were contracted by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in 2009 and scheduled to run until 2039. Experts Say First Week Of 'Trump Effect' Is Derailing Global Climate Movement's 'House Of Cards' In January, PG&E announced plans to cancel its agreement with Ivanpah 14 years early, determining that "ending the agreements at this time will save customers money compared to the cost of keeping them through 2039" – ultimately putting Ivanpah on notice for closure. "The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster," Julia Dowell of the Sierra Club, an environmental activism group, said of the power plant. "Along with killing thousands of birds and tortoises, the project's construction destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat along with numerous rare plant species," Dowell said. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal." This comes after another DOE-funded green energy project, Solyndra, went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration. "Green projects have a long history of expensive taxpayer-subsidized disaster that is getting more so," Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute and former Trump EPA transition team member, said in a statement to Fox. Milloy suggested that further green energy failures could come from projects funded by recent Democrat-backed legislation that aims to push the green energy agenda. "Soon we will be looking at failures of larger magnitude than Green New Deal spending. No green project relying on taxpayer subsidies has ever made any economic or environmental sense," Milloy said. "It's important that President Trump stop the taxpayer bleeding by ending what he accurately calls the Green New Scam."Original article source: Energy experts blast failed billion-dollar DOE project as 'financial boondoggle,' 'disaster'
