Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [120]
Employees of Merrill Lynch, using the not-quite-kosher arrangement that became popular during the dot-com boom ’n’ bust, acted as both investment bankers on the deal and analysts evaluating the company’s merits. Unsurprisingly, they found their client’s stock was a tremendous bargain. They forecast Kenetech’s sales would grow 10,000 percent by 1995 and predicted that the stock’s value would rise 50 percent in just a year.8
Other financial analysts were convinced, too, and the company’s share price did skyrocket. At one point, Kenetech was valued as a billion-dollar business. With capital in hand and projects lined up, all they had to do was install the new wind turbines and start counting the money flowing to them from grateful utilities. “We’re beyond Kitty Hawk and into the jet age,” Edgar DeMeo, head of the Electric Power Research Institute’s solar division, told the New York Times.9
THE LAST GREAT AMERICAN TAX SHELTER OR THE INFANT GREEN-TECH INDUSTRY
On the day of Kenetech’s IPO, a new issue of Time came out detailing the bizarre three-way presidential race that had developed between George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot. Along with the political handicapping, the magazine ran a feature about the impact of environmental issues on the campaign as seen through the vice presidential contenders, Al Gore and Dan Quayle. In a down economy, so Quayle’s story went, environmental issues had to take a backseat to job creation. Conversely, Gore argued that “sound environmental policies can be an engine of growth that will help the American economy compete with Germany and Japan in the 1990s.”10
Although today our perceived competitors are China and the rest of the developing world, both political teams continue to hold the same basic positions. Breaking this stalemate gives technologies like the 33M-VS extra rhetorical value. If a clean technology is also a cheaper technology—or can be said to be a cheaper technology—it bypasses the political question. No one has to lose. “The Democrats argue that environmental decisions should be an integral part of economic planning,” Time continued. “The Republicans seem to be saying the country should address environmental problems only when it can afford to.”11
If, however, wind technology was as cheap as fossil fuels, both parties would be satisfied. But how do we get from expensive wind machines to cheap ones?
The world’s leader in wind technology, Denmark, put in place a rigorous program to support turbine research, development, and deployment over the long term. They built research facilities that worked closely with the wind industry to both certify the quality of turbines and improve them. They created policies that enabled and prodded companies to share their learning so that the entire industry could improve, and they provided steady, long-term incentives for producing electricity from the wind.12
The United States took a more haphazard approach toward developing renewable energy. The most important piece of legislation was the Carter-era Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act, known almost exclusively by the acronym PURPA. The 1978 bill required utilities to purchase electricity from independent power producers that used renewables or generated both heat and electricity in the same plant.13 But states were tasked with actually implementing the policy. Results varied. Most did little to nothing. However, California under Governor Jerry Brown was not most states.14
Having taken office in 1975 at just thirty-six years old, Brown’s governance style was freewheeling and deeply influenced by the philosophical movements that infused the ’70s. He openly supported E. F. Schumacher’s call in Small Is Beautiful for an alternative economics and technological regime. Under Brown, California even got an Office of Appropriate Technology.15
Inside these broad strokes, Brown gave a lot of freedom