Taxpayers Should Be ReVolted by Green Business Subsidies

by John A Charles Jr. Monday, October 29. 2012

Last week another publicly subsidized “green business” company filed for bankruptcy in Portland. ReVolt Technology had received $6.8 million in state and local subsidies, plus another $5 million from the Obama administration, for its electric car battery technology, but could not get the product to market.

One would hope that the repeated failures of subsidized companies would induce a modicum of humility among the political class, but this does not appear to be happening. The director of the Portland Development Commission, which approved a $1.3 million loan to ReVolt, told The Oregonian, “It’s obviously disappointing, but we certainly know we’re going to have a few of these.”

Taxpayers should be outraged by this attitude. The Oregon Constitution prohibits public investment in private companies, so none of the companies being propped up with taxpayer money should have ever received a penny in the first place. Yet, the Portland Development Commission is fully expecting to have more public money lost in private sector bankruptcies.

There is an important role for government to play in technological innovation, but it’s not to serve as a venture capital fund. In the daily competition among market participants, government should simply call the balls and strikes and enforce the rules of the game. Players should come from the private sector; and the best products should be determined by consumers in the market process, not by government cronyism.

John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.

Learn more at cascadepolicy.org.

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Rupert in Springfield

I suppose the only reasonable thing to ask at this point is – if these clowns can predict the weather 100 years why can they not manage to predict the failure of a company in a mere four years or less?

It is time to end theses green welfare programs, or at the very least call them for what they are – welfare programs for the well connected. There is something obscene in the taxpayer funding investment where a class of idiots claims to be able to predict the temperature with amazing accuracy but can’t predict that which they are investing all out money in.
- DavidAppell
  
  Educate yourself — no one is claiming the ability to predict the weather 100 years in the future, let alone trying.
  - Rupert in Springfield
    
    >Educate yourself — no one is claiming the ability to predict the weather 100 years in the future
    
    Sure you are. Please, stop belaboring the obvious. Most AGW believers predict on a long enough time scale that they will not be around to answer for their nonsense. 100 year out predictions are not at all uncommon.
    - DavidAppell
      
      No, they are not.
      
      1) There are no predictions being made — they are projections, based on assumptions about greenhouse gas emissions that, in turn, depend on demographics and socioeconomic factors.
      
      2) The projections are of climate, not weather.
      
      3) The projections still have a large uncertainty — the IPCC’s projection for average global surface temperature in 2100 has an uncertainty band of over 3 degrees F for the low emissions scenario, and over 7 F for the high emissions scenario.
      
      As I wrote, educate yourself.
      - valley person
        
        Your suggestion for Rupert to educate himself runs into the proverbial cup runneth over problem. Rupert thinks he is educated already.
      - Appellsauce
        
        Says the man who flunked out of grad school at light speed.
      - valley person
        
        I flunked out of grad school? And at light speed?
        
        What…has Fox News run an expose on me? Is it on youtube?
      - 3H
        
        National Enquirer.. right next to the article about the Bat Boy. I just read it in line.. really..
      - valley person
        
        I missed it. I’m also on the faculty of the school I supposedly flunked out of. Isn’t that weird?
      - 3H
        
        But.. your school only exists on the backlot of a Hollywood studio, right? Right next to the one where they filmed the Apollo Moon landings.
      - Appellsauce
        
        Tomato, Tomatoe. Split hairs much? a projection IS a prediction.
      - DavidAppell
        
        False — a projection is not a prediction, but (in climate science) assumes a certain pattern of greenhouse gas emissions, which depends on how the future uses energy (how much of different types). The IPCC has about three dozen such scenarios, each with an associated projection. No one can predict which scenario will come to pass.
        
        In fact, since the last IPCC Assessment Report, the world has been emitting more CO2 than even their highest scenario assumes.
      - valley person
        
        No dude…a projection is a model of what happens if certain parameters hold up over time. A prediction is a statement that something will actually happen, presumably because some set of parameters will occur. No climatologist has ever predicted either the weather OR the climate 100 years in advance. Many have built models projecting what MAY happen based on assumptions about greenhouse gasses and various feedbacks.
- granola girl
  
  Agreed Rupert. David, if you and yours want a green world, why don’t you take up a cause and go after China who is the largest polluter in the world, or maybe cut down the old growth forests, and kill the cows to cut down on the methane levels. Some of us older and more wise tax payers can see a shell game for what it is. It has been proven, that earth’s climates go through cyclical changes, Al Gore certainly is not the best salesman for your agenda, flying around solo in his jet.
  - DavidAppell
    
    False — China’s per capita carbon pollution is only 40% of the US’s.
    
    Nor is there any proof whatsoever that our current climate change is natural — it can only be explained via man’s emissions of greenhouse gases. And a lot change is in store.
    - Rupert in Springfield
      
      >Nor is there any proof whatsoever that our current climate change is natural
      
      Largely because if you are the one making the claim, that it is unnatural, then it is not up to everyone else to prove you wrong because you make an assertion.
      
      Please, if you are going to maintain you have some sort of PhD at least don’t insult everyone’s intelligence with this sort of nonsense.
      - DavidAppell
        
        Rupert, your degree envy is showing again. Lying about other people’s accomplishments won’t change your own disappointment that you studied what mommy and daddy wanted you to study, instead of what you were truly interested in.
        
        There are only a few natural factors that force climate — orbital factors, solar intensity, volcanoes. None has changed anywhere near the magnitude to explain the warming we’re seeing, nor do any natural oceanic cycles.
        
        Increases in greenhouse gases are expected to cause warming, and of the magnitude we’re seeing. And their changes to the Earth’s radiative budget are as expected.
Bob Clark

It’s maddening to live in the city of Portland, because the electorate here is so educated they’ve lost a sense of skepticism or street wisdom. Simple dictums like “if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t; and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”; these time tested type dictums don’t receive proper weighting by the general electorate of Portland. You would think after a decade of PDC loan portfolio writedowns at a rate even in excess of the banking industry mortgage industry writedowns, this educated electorate might get a statistical sense of these policies being abject failures; but I’m not seeing it. (Then too city auditors have released reports over the past decade critical of such public use of monies.) Maybe it’s the intoxification of federal stimulus, state lottery monies and other government largesse showered on downtown Portland which wash away these failures.
Somewhat related:
I sure wouldn’t vote yes on the city of Portland’s measure 26-146, establishing a so-called income tax (only marginally removed from being a head tax, if that). Once established, Portland city hall can easily hike this income tax for other dubious purposes (besides its current “do-it-for-the-children-disguise”). It’s kind of funny Commissioner Fritz said in voting in favor of 26-146, Portlanders should have a chance to vote [themselves a new type of tax]. One might retort, we should also be given the chance to vote ourselves a tax decrease by eliminating many of the city’s non-core bureaucracies like the PDC and the Bureau of Sustainability. Funny how the City Commissioners and Mayor frequently abhor citizen votes inplace of their representation but when they have the upper hand as in Measure 26-146 and need a direct vote for legal reasons, “the citizens should have a chance to vote.” (the campaign in favor of 26-146 receives substantial public monies, especially from the city of Portland; making for an unfair election).
- Oregon Engineer
  
  Bob, I say let Portland vote as much tax as the “Public” feels the need. As I have before “Last one to leave, turn out the lights”. I don’t live in Portland. The down side is that other cities may try to do the same thing. The local residents can address that if it comes.
Oregon Engineer

If the “investment” subsidy is unconstitutional how exactly did the private company get state subsidy? Obviously our legislators are asleep at the wheel. Time to change all of them out just like a babys diaper.
DavidAppell

If fossil fuel damages were paid for by the polluters, there’d be no need for governments to invest in alternative energy sources.

But those damages are paid via socialism — at least $120 billion per year, according to the National Academy of Sciences:

“Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” National Research Council, 2010
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/12794.html

Polluters keep the profits, while expecting the entire public to pay the costs of damage to private and public property. No true conservative would think that is an acceptable state of affairs — only those who want to protect special corporate interests. Shameful.

From each according to their smokestack, to each according to their lungs.
- Rupert in Springfield
  
  Amazing that you guys know the exact figure for the damages, but yet somehow cannot seem to avoid picking so many loser companies.
  
  It begins to make one think you really don’t know much of anything and are simply making things up.
  
  Get back to us when you can at least do a better job of not picking companies that go bankrupt so quickly.
  - DavidAppell
    
    The figures aren’t exact — like all results, they have uncertainties. Again, educate yourself by reading the actual studies.
    
    And, how many loser companies? Out of how many total? Compared to what — what’s the average rate of company failures in the energy sector?
valley person

The day John Charles gets on board with charging polluters for their impacts is the day I will agree with him on stopping subsidies for green energy.
- Appellsauce
  
  Yeah, I’m sure he’s just all a-flutter over the possibility your endorsement.
havetoask

If the Oregon constitution prohibits this kind of activity I would think the taxpayers should be outraged; but don’t you think we should be outraged at the Attorney General who should be pursuing criminal actions against the people who violated the Constitution? I am, why aren’t you and why aren’t you pressing charges as well as telling us we should be outraged?
DavidAppell

Would John Charles please tell us how much funding CPI receives from fossil fuel industries?

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