By Paul Chesser, National Legal & Policy Center
The little-reported bankruptcy of a relatively small electric vehicle battery manufacturer last month illustrates the many problems with President Obama’s green energy stimulus program, and why the more appropriate location for the ramblin’, gamblin’ White House might be Las Vegas.
This smaller (compared to other Recovery Act beneficiaries) example is ReVolt Technology, which relocated from Switzerland to Oregon to take advantage of a $5 million Recovery Act grant from the Department of Energy in order to develop and mass-produce a “zinc-air” vehicle battery.
Its technology was developed in Norway where the company was backed since 2004 by Viking Venture Management. According to the Portland Business Journal, ReVolt believed it could “deliver twice the energy of conventional rechargeable battery technologies, such as lithium-ion.”
Federal money wasn’t the only attraction. The company also received $5 million in city and state loans, as well as business energy tax credits. Thus we have another alternative energy failure – much like the many wind, solar and electric vehicle busts that have been archived by Obama administration watchdogs – that went belly-up once the government money ran out.
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Perhaps Obamarama should pay attention to the Swiss govt (which chose not to subsidize this
company), or the venture capitalists, who also passed. Or maybe, just maybe, he should hire someone other than Chu. You know, someone who knows what’s going on in the battery R&D business. Naw, that would make way too much sense for this braindead Chief Executive. The last news that seemed very promising came from Univ of Washington and involved a nano-based battery that seemed to have everything going for it, including ease in using existing battery manufacturing technologies. Was planned to commercialize in less than a year. If it is as good and cheap as its tests indicated, it truly is a revolutionary device. No word since then. The world
desperately needs such a battery, and I don’t mean because of carbon emission reduction.
Our world is largely powered by electricity, yet we still don’t have a practical way to store it.
“Measures proposed in the Bill and consultations include:
Household energy bills to rise £100 on average by 2020
“Green” levy charged by energy firms to rise from £3bn to £7.6bn
Switch to clean energy to cost £110bn over ten years
Bill aims to encourage investment in low-carbon power production
Energy-intensive companies may be exempt from additional charges
Possible financial incentives to reduce energy consumption”
GREEN BRITAIN not looking good
Even if one of these long shot outfits hit and came up with a viable technology what does the tax-payer get out of it? Of course, the principals get paid. I’m sure that the Democrats get their huge kickbacks, but grants don’t have to paid back. I guess the public just gets the benefit at being able to buy the new product at considerable profit to the business.
I’m all for ventures like this. And, yes, we have to fund a hundred failures for each success. So this company failed – that’s normal.
My only complaint is in government’s attempts to pick and choose winners. They are remarkably bad at it. The company was doing quite well under the traditional venture capital model. They might still have gone bankrupt but the angel investors were willing to assume that risk. There was no compelling reason to abandon that funding model and put the taxpayers’ money at risk.
We should be forward-thinking, and alternative transportation energy is part of the picture. The U.S. Government should absolutely encourage and fund those efforts.
Expect lots of failures. Accept them with a smile.
I like the idea of providing some capital to these little startup companies. Regardless of where you stand on AGW, having reliable and practical electric cars would be great. Investing in battery tech seems like a reasonable thing to do. Small investments in companies that are pushing the envelop may pay off tremendously, although the majority won’t – which should be expected.
This is a lot different then funding huge renewable energy ventures that have no chance at profitability now or into the future without continued subsidy.
mikerossander,Torgeir & Charlie feel free to use your own cash and buy shares. Govt fails every time.
So. a fru fru company run by hippies went bankrupt in Oregon. I am shocked!
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Chemical storage of these one way at a time electrons has been a boon for portable devices of a small nature. Electrons are a bit like cattle, you round them up into an area, but they resist stacking, thus batteries need huge areas to store much power and the electric car batteries weigh as much as the car and take up huge space. Like carrying four passengers on your 250cc motor cycle, not conducive to long range.
Science needs to define for us what electricity is and how it works, before we can start to learn how to round it up and corral it properly for future use. The chemical way is a dead end to large storage.
Torgeir Hansson says:
November 29, 2012 at 12:59 pm
We should be forward-thinking, and alternative transportation energy is part of the picture. …
___________________________________
Here is my carbon neutral transportation photo It is the latest technology.
@Gail Combs says:
November 30, 2012 at 5:09 am
“Here is my carbon neutral transportation photo It is the latest technology.”
LOL! Two horsepower. Not much top end there but it does run on biofuel.
[Please, no chemtrails posts. Thanks. — mod.]
@Gail Combs:
Could they maybe claim “Aircraft Quality Aluminum” to make it sound even more high tech? 😉
(Hey, my flashlight does it, so it can’t be that hard to do …)
@H.R.:
Um, those looked like miniature ponies to me… doubt if you get one whole horsepower out of the lot of them… ( but they ARE cuter though 😉
E.M.Smith says:
December 1, 2012 at 1:09 am
@Gail Combs:
Um, those looked like miniature ponies to me… doubt if you get one whole horsepower out of the lot of them… ( but they ARE cuter though 😉
________________________________
Actually 10h (40″) Shetlands.
Ponies have a better fuel conversion ratio than a horse and do not need grain as a supplemental feeding. If I recall correctly 14h is the optimum. Shetlands were used in coal mines in the USA into the 1970’s and in the UK into the mid 1980’s. They would probably still be used if PETA had not started screaming. (they are safer to use in mines) Horses are still used for some select cut logging in NC since they do not mangle the ground as much. Also a well trained logging horse will snake the log from the cut site through the trees to the staging site and return without a handler or snagging the log. Most handlers use a human driven team though. Getting Started in Horse Logging
Here are some of the horse powered equipment seen at Threshers Reunions We may be very glad these guys keep this old technology alive.
Maybe it is time to design a pony driven generator…..
In January 2012, BP finally abandoned its 40 year involvement in the renewable/green energy technology. The technology was deemed not viable.
Re Mervyn on December 1, 2012 at 6:52 pm:
Incorrect. They got rid of promoting solar and making solar panels, where they weren’t competitive, but they still do wind and biofuels.
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9030176&contentId=7055742
Hey!
HAve you read that nice article already, it’s so interesting, please read it here
gerjaison