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Summary
- The tech industry has been fixated on irrational manias like cryptocurrency, NFTs, and artificial intelligence, while renewable energy innovations are transforming traditional industries.
- Government policies and subsidies have been crucial in driving the development and commercialization of green technologies.
- Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are rapidly growing and becoming cheaper, leading to new business opportunities and solutions for a sustainable future.
Key quote:
Renewable energy is cheap and getting cheaper, especially solar. In places with large solar penetration, the power can be so abundant during the day that its price drops almost to zero. That’s a problem for a traditional grid, but also an opportunity. In addition to compensating with battery storage, scientists (in government as well as the private sector) and entrepreneurs have been cooking up all kinds of new business ideas harnessing this dirt-cheap power to revolutionize manufacturing markets long considered mature.
For instance: Here’s a company with a plan to replace fossil fuel industrial heat—which accounts for about a quarter of all energy use—with “hot rocks” heated with renewable power. Here’s a company building two green steel plants in Mississippi and Ohio, the first of their kind in the U.S., thanks to a federal grant. Here’s another company selling power line monitoring devices that can allow the grid to transmit up to 40 percent more electricity. And here’s a company proposing to use green energy to create iron out of the toxic “red mud” by-product of aluminum refining—while cleaning up the mess in the process. And those are just a few among thousands of examples.
Importantly, nearly all these developments were catalyzed or directly caused by government policy. The Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and bipartisan infrastructure law have directed a flood of subsidies at green energy and manufacturing, building on decades of federal support for green tech. Many of today’s breakthrough technologies reaching commercialization were originally developed in government labs, or with government grants. The Loans Programs Office in the Department of Energy is directing hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to the most promising green companies.
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Read the full post at The American Prospect.
