60 Minutes: ‘The Cleantech Crash’ ($150 billion boondoggle exposed)

Leslie Stahl (CBS): Part of this [green technology investment] was supposed to be creating new jobs. Everything I’ve read there were not many jobs created.

Steven Koonin (DOE-ex): That’s correct.

Stahl: So what went wrong there?

Koonin: I didn’t say it would create jobs. Other people did.

Stahl: So you never thought it was gonna create ….

Koonin: I didn’t think it mattered as a job creation, no.

Last night (January 5, 2014), Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes (CBS) exposed the green-technology boondoggle before a national audience.

The Cleantech Crash focused on venture-capitalist (and rent-seeker) Vinod Khosla, “the father of the Cleantech revolution.” Khosla has invested more than one billion dollars personally in approximately 50 energy startups along with much taxpayer commitment. Yet his projects are in the red.

Joe Romm over at Climate Progress is mad, hoping mad at 60 Minutes’ “hit job.” Sorry, Joe. Profit/loss and cash flow from operations is what matters with any new technology. It is not about growth or cost statistics—that is Enron imaging. (Go see all the graphics that Enron used in its last year—everything but profits and cash flow.)

Here is an exchange between CBS’s Stahl and former DOE green-energy grant allocator Steven Koonin (subtitles added).

DOE Green Bonanza

Stahl (background): These loans and grants were administered by the Energy Department. They wouldn’t give us an interview, but Steven Koonin was actually the head scientist for the department, approving many of the stimulus projects.

Koonin: I think they saw it as a technical opportunity, thinking that the people in energy are just troglodytes and they don’t understand what they’re doing.

Stahl (background): Former Energy Department under secretary, Physicist Steven Koonin, says there was a lot of arrogance. He thought the venture capitalists and Internet geniuses were underestimating the challenges of the energy sector.

Stahl: Like what?

Koonin: Managing risks that have to do with market, with supply, with operation, with regulation. And in the end, hoping that you get returns on a 20 or 30-year time scale.

Stahl: Yeah, but they must’ve known they weren’t going to get a payoff for 20 or 30 years.

Koonin: I don’t think they understood that.  The average venture capitalist likes to get in and out in about 3 to 5 years.

$150 Billion For What?

Stahl: The government spent about $150 billion into these innovations. Taxpayer dollars. Money well spent?

Koonin: I think there are significant developments that have come out of that spending that impact our energy system now. New technologies demonstrated. I think it was good value for the money.

Stahl: Well, Solyndra went through over half a billion dollars before it failed. Then I’m gonna give you a list of other failures: Abound Energy, Beacon Power, Fisker, V.P.G., Range Fuels, Ener1, A123. ECOtality. I’m exhausted.

Koonin: As I told you in the beginning, the energy business is tough.

Stahl: What happened?

Koonin: Oh, gosh, there are so many reasons. I put some of the major blame on the government, both the executive branch and Congress, for an inability to set a thoughtful and consistent energy policy.

Personal Mistakes?

Stahl: Let me interrupt you. You were the government. How many of the loans were you involved in?

Koonin: Difficult to know the exact number. But I would say in the order of 30.

Stahl: Did you make mistakes?

Koonin: I think I didn’t do as good a job as I could’ve. In retrospect, I would’ve done things a bit differently.

Green Jobs … What Jobs?

Stahl: Part of this was supposed to be creating new jobs. Everything I’ve read there were not many jobs created.

Koonin: That’s correct.

Stahl: So what went wrong there?

Koonin: I didn’t say it would create jobs. Other people did.

Stahl: So you never thought it was gonna create-

Koonin: I didn’t think it mattered as a job creation, no.

………………………………………………….

Some time ago in a MasterResource post, Electric Car Verdict: Another Government-Subsidized Bust (September 26, 2012), I concluded:

When government tries to pick losers and winners, it typically picks losers. Why? Because in a free market, consumers pick winners to leave the losers for government.”

It is high time, and a very positive development, to now see the mainstream media exposing Cleantech (ObamaGreen?) like they are exposing the tip-to-toe failure of ObamaCare. Such is a sea change from the past, including 60 Minutes’ uncritical acceptance of the Bloom Box Energy Machine several years ago.