Eric Janszen: Get Ready for The "CleanTech" Bubble
Claiming that America's economy is lurching ever more quickly from economic bubble to economic bubble, the founder of iTulip predicts a surge in alternative energy and infrastructure spending – sort of a green bubble. Writing for Harper's [sub], Eric Janszen defined the main economic drivers of "the cleantech bubble:" the need to recover from recession, weakness in the dollar, loss of petrodollar liquidity, loss of energy security and peak cheap oil. As a result, consumers will be faced with a bewildering array of fuels and vehicles: biofuels, electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, photovoltaics, wind turbines, ocean wave energy, geothermal energy, clean coal and even nukes. Janszen sees these technologies becoming the hot, overvalued commodities of the new bubble. At the same time, he predicts corporations will plan and (God forbid) implement the new energy infrastructure to power expensive new vehicles and public transit. Responding in the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas – USA , commentator Dave Cohen notes that venture capitalists (VC) are already looking to invest in what they call “the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” Fortunately for cutting edge companies like Tesla Motors, there's a VC born every minute.
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I heartily agree with this assessment. The lack of any clear path forward from oil, the involvment of Silicon Valley engineers and VC's, plus the political might supporting some less than practical solutions garauntees a splintered market. The real scary thing is the inevitable costly, dubiously beneficial systems that will be implimented using our carbon taxed dollars, like Al Gore's new mansion.
All I got from AGW was this lousy T-shirt, not even a decent energy policy.
Wind can certainly be done right, but the profit motive has so far led Mighty Wind to some environmentally brain-dead decisions. I know we'll do "Clean" Coal and Nukes, but I'd rather see private industry have so much confidence that they put up the money themselves.
No NO NO! No more goddamn taxes. You hear me? No more! You want innovation in clean/renewable energy? End the ethanol mandate and subsidies and then let the market go to work. Make the barriers of entry less onerous (like for nuclear power in any of its forms) and you'll be surprised how fast things will get done.