Solyndra

The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

by Mariana Mazzucato  · 1 Jan 2011  · 382pp  · 92,138 words

uncertainty of investing in new innovations have been significantly reduced. She even reveals that the much-vaunted failure of the Obama administration’s support for Solyndra was equally, if not more, a result of venture capitalists withdrawing funding at a critical moment in the company’s development. In the course of

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this access to credit is the reason behind bankruptcies of solar companies based in the United States and Europe (in the case of US-based Solyndra, reviewed below, this was exacerbated by the exit of the original venture capital). The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) approved over $4.23 billion in clean

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it is hard to imagine how such a company could fail, provided that public investment continued. The impatience of VCs: How Solyndra got burned by its investors10 The example of Solyndra illustrates how the sudden exit of VC can also ruin the prospects of companies developing innovative technologies that had also been

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supported by taxpayers. Solyndra was a one-time darling among clean-tech companies and first to obtain a loan guarantee as part of the US ARRA’s $37 billion

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director of the Loan Programs Office Jonathan Silver, who had joined the DoE in 2009 and was himself a former VC and hedge fund manager. Solyndra, a manufacturer of high-tech copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) solar panels, received $527 million from the programme and invested in a new, more

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automated factory that would boost output and economies of scale. Solyndra had hoped that its CIGS solar PV technology would provide a significant cost advantage following an explosion in the price of raw silicon around 2008

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, the primary ingredient in market-dominating crystalline silicon (C-Si) solar panels. Shifts in global solar markets prevented Solyndra from capitalizing on its investments. Before Solyndra could exploit the economies of scale provided by its increased manufacturing capacity, the cost of raw silicon collapsed. The cost of competing

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as a result of Chinese development and investment in the technology. Despite the government’s support and $1.1 billion obtained from its business investors, Solyndra declared bankruptcy in the fall of 2011. All of the stakeholders involved were betting on the company’s success, not failure, and yet, for the

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become a contemporary symbol of the government’s inability to invest competently in risky technology and to ‘pick winners’. Solyndra’s key business backers were venture capitalists (VC), and, like all VCs, they eagerly awaited an initial public offering (IPO), merger or acquisition to provide

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opposed to a return on investment created by cash flow from operations. But a successful ‘exit’ is not always possible in uncertain markets, as Solyndra proved. When Solyndra’s key investors abandoned their $1.1 billion investment, 1,000 jobs were lost, and a $535 million government-guaranteed loan was wasted. Rather

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than staying the course, in other words, Solyndra’s investors jumped ship.11 The irony is that government support often makes companies like Solyndra more attractive to investors, who seek the State’s ‘patient capital’ and respond to its signals. The conclusion

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loan guarantee programme, indicating that they believe the government should do nothing to promote commercialization of clean technologies.12 Now bankrupt, Bathon (2012) clarifies that Solyndra will only be able to repay all its stakeholders if it wins a $1.5 billion lawsuit launched against the Chinese solar companies that it

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blames for its failure. Solyndra alleges that the Chinese deliberately priced solar panels at levels that did damage to itself and its competitors, and also that Chinese companies benefit unfairly

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-off workers will receive $3.5 million and the government will receive about $27 million on its defaulted loan. Meanwhile, Solyndra’s parent company, 360 Degree Solar Holdings (set up by Solyndra’s VC backers and the DoE during a February 2011 debt restructuring) is positioned to cash in on as much

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’, Huffingtonpost.com (2011). Available online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-lazonick/there-went-the-sun-renewa_b_978572.html (accessed 12 April 2013). 11 Solyndra is not the only company to go belly up when the business community ran out of patience or tolerance for risk. Intel spun off Spectrawatt

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technology firms in the US economy are not insurmountable, but the cynical response of conservative policymakers has been H.R. 6213, or the ‘No More Solyndras Act’, sponsored by Representative Fred Upton (Michigan) and 21 other House Republicans. The act passed Congress in September 2012, by a vote of 245–161

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. This act also ignores the business community’s failure to commit resources to clean technology over the last several decades. The Republican-led ‘investigation’ of Solyndra has been used as justification for an attack on clean technology investments more generally, even as the loan programme provides support for nuclear power plants

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establish leading solar PV firms and markets around the world. Many examples of innovative emerging firms can be found in the US, where First Solar, Solyndra, Sunpower and Evergreen each developed state-of-the-art C-Si or thin-film solar technologies. First Solar emerged out of the search for commercialized

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was perfected. Even now, First Solar remains one of the larger solar PV manufacturers on the planet. Described in greater detail in the previous chapter, Solyndra had been founded by Chris Gronet, a Silicon Valley scientist with experience in the semiconductor industry. Building on national research conducted on copper indium gallium

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(CIGS) solar PV, Gronet and his employees developed innovative technology with state and federal support behind them. Able to deposit CIGS onto tubular glass gave Solyndra’s solar PV panels a unique look – while also enabling them to capture direct and reflected light without add-on tracking systems. Additionally, Gronet’s

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company’s estimated $2.2 billion in debt. The outcome of China’s Suntech bankruptcy stands in stark contrast with that of US-based Solyndra. Facing bankruptcy, Solyndra underwent emergency reorganization and received a last-minute $75 million capital injection from its private investors prior to its bankruptcy (the government had insisted

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valuable in bankruptcy if it had a completed plant’ (Grunwald 2012, 415). Even without additional funding from the US government, then, the attempt to rescue Solyndra is badly botched politics (and economics) at its finest even if it could be described as a heroic and gutsy fourth-quarter play. It is

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interesting to push the comparison between Suntech and Solyndra further. Solyndra was overwhelmingly funded by private interests, while Suntech was funded by public interests. Both companies have failed, yet the outcome expected of each was

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is, a global industry which finds its policy support, like its firms, functioning in different places all around the world, presumably to maximum performance. Yet Solyndra’s production and Suntech’s production were each, in a manner of speaking, competing for that next German customer. Both firms from the US and

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amazing infrastructure already in place, would anyone else think it was absurd if GM, Ford and Chrysler went bankrupt for a lack of roads? Yet Solyndra has disappeared from the world, while Suntech as yet survives. Suntech’s fate is not to be decided by its investors, however – who naturally prefer

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to have funds returned over all other considerations. Solyndra’s failure highlights the ‘parasitic’ innovation system that the US has created for itself – where financial interests are always and everywhere the judge, jury and

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executioner of all innovative investment dilemmas. Perhaps, done differently, and with an eye to the value of economic development beyond short-term financial performance, Solyndra would have grown to hundreds of thousands of employees, with billions in revenue like GE. Suntech’s fate, on the other hand, will be decided

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should the firm be liquidated, shuttered and forgotten (imagine firms like Google with its 54,000 employees, or Facebook with its 4,600, suddenly shuttering). Solyndra was too ‘small to survive’ (versus too big to fail) to warrant a ‘bail-out’, yet the government had, as it always has, the ability

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to ‘rewrite the rules’ and could have weighed the cost of letting Solyndra fail against letting it succeed. It might have even, as with Suntech, considered firing the executives responsible for its financial decline. One way to calculate

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uncertainty in markets or a sudden reversal of fortune. This encouraged Evergreen to ‘follow the finance’ out of the US and into China. Spectrawatt and Solyndra were undone by a lack of available capital as well. Despite common global market conditions, China’s companies benefit from a system of public finance

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-manager-says.html (accessed 6 March 2013). Barca, S. 2011. ‘Energy, Property, and the Industrial Revolution Narrative’. Ecological Economics 70: 1309–15. Bathon, M. 2012. ‘Solyndra Wins Court Approval of Bankruptcy Exit Plan’. Bloomberg, 23 October. Available online at http://www.bloomberg.com/ news/2012-10-22

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/solyndra-wins-court-approval-of-bankruptcy-exit-plan.html (accessed 28 January 2013). Battelle, J. 2005. The Search. New York: Penguin. Berners-Lee, T. 1989. ‘Information

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and a Theory’. Research Policy 13, no. 6: 343–73. Pentland, W. 2011. ‘China’s Coming Solyndra Crisis’. Forbes, 27 September. Available online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/27/chinas-coming-solyndra-crisis/ (accessed 23 July 2012). Perez, C. 2002. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of

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/emp/reports/63583.pdf (accessed 25 January 2013). Woo-Cumings, M., ed. 1999. The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wood, R. 2012. ‘Fallen Solyndra Won Bankruptcy Battle but Faces Tax War’. Forbes, 11 June. Available online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2012/11/06/fallen

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-solyndra-won-bankruptcy-battle-but-faces-tax-war/ (accessed 29 January 2013). Wright, R. 1997. ‘The Man Who Invented the Web: Tim Berners-Lee Started a

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(DoE) (US): ARPA-E agency of 4; attracting top talent 18; clean energy research 132–3; First Solar’s link to research of 151; funding Solyndra 154; funding support of lithium-ion battery 108; loan guarantees administered by 129; SunPower’s patents link to 152; wind research funded by 147–8

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support to 114–15, 119, 129, 141–2; hurdles to 138, 156, 160; leaders in 11–12, 126; national approaches to 119–22; ‘No More Solyndras Act’ 130–31n12; patient capital 138–40; policies impacting 113–15, 119; pushing green development 136–7; renewable energy credits (RECs) 115n1; smart grid technology

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Model (OEBM) ‘new growth’ theory 34–6, 44, 59–60 new investment in renewable energy 120, 121 Nielsen, Kristian H. 145 Nokia 190 ‘No More Solyndra’s Act’ 130–31n12 Norway 120n4, 121 Novartis 81 Noyce, Robert 98 OECD, GERD (gross domestic expenditure on R&D) as a percentage of GDP

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vs. private returns on investment 3–4 solar power: see wind and solar power Solow, Robert M. 33–4 Solyndra 129–32, 151, 154–5, 162; see also clean technology; ‘No More Solyndras Act’ Something Ventured, Something Gained (documentary) 78 Sony 108 Soppe, Birgit 146 South Korea 40, 61, 120–21 Soviet

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, 127; timing of investment by 23; Venrock 94; see also private sector venture capital sector investment: clean technology 161; green revolution 127–8, 128n9; in Solyndra 130; subsectors of within clean energy 128 venture capital stages of investment 47, 48; early stage and seed funding awards by 80; risk of loss

The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World

by David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt  · 30 Sep 2017  · 345pp  · 84,847 words

encouraging thousands of solutions. Innovation requires a number of dead ends, and sometimes those dead ends are costly. One example is the solar panel company Solyndra. In 2011, they went bankrupt and defaulted on $536 million in federal guarantees. More than 1,000 employees lost their jobs. Amid accusations of fraud

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an innovator and job-creator. To the administration’s opponents, it was an example of government incompetence and wasted taxpayer dollars. Viewed in isolation, the Solyndra fiasco was an embarrassment for the administration; but while holding the government accountable is important, assailing it for one failure is counter-productive. Why? Because

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’s support fueled a surge in private investment, leading to sharp drops in the price of solar technology. Solyndra, moreover, generated several creative concepts. Unlike the flat panels we’ve become used to, Solyndra’s panels were cylindrical, assuring that some part was always facing the sun. The panels were also windproof

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, potentially opening up new markets in blustery climes. Solyndra failed not because it was a poor idea, but because the price

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of solar fell faster than had been predicted, and Solyndra couldn’t lower their own manufacturing costs quickly enough – market forces that were hard to foresee. Failure is hard to stomach but when it comes

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to investing in innovation, it’s impossible to back only the winning horse. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told NPR after the Solyndra debacle, “We have to be careful that we don’t walk away from risk, because otherwise we’re not going to advance the marketplace.”10

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. Accessed August 21, 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/world/asia/13artist.html?_r=2&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto> Brady, Jeff. “After Solyndra Loss, U.S. Energy Loan Program Turning a Profit.” NPR. Accessed August 20, 2015. <http://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363572151/after

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-solyndra-loss-u-s-energy-loan-program-turning-a-profit> Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. New York: Penguin, 1994. Brandt,

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-in-classrooms-of-today/> Solomon, Maynard. Beethoven. New York: Schirmer Books, 2001. Solomon, Maynard. Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. “Solyndra Scandal: Full Coverage of Failed Solar Startup.” Washington Post. Accessed July 18, 2015. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/specialreports

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/solyndra-scandal/> Spartos, Carla. “Ordering at Eleven Madison Park Has Become the Controversial Talk of the Town.” New York Post. October 17, 2010. Accessed January 5,

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and impoverished, Harrison pleaded his case before Parliament. He was at last awarded the prize money – but never the prize itself. 10 Jeff Brady, “After Solyndra Loss, U.S. Energy Loan Program Turning A Profit,” National Public Radio, November 13, 2014, accessed August 20, 2015, <http://www.npr.org/2014/11

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/13/363572151/after-solyndra-loss-u-s-energy-loan-program-turning-a-profit> 11 Because of our comfort with error, the metaphor of the brain as a standard digital

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exploration/exploitation trade-off point ref1, ref2, ref3 Facebook ref1, ref2 failure ref1, ref2 cultural tastes ref1 fearlessness ref1 public reception ref1 schools, failing ref1 Solyndra ref1 Falconer, William ref1 familiarity ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) ref1 fashion ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Federal Aviation Administration ref1

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, ref2 smartphones ref1, ref2, ref3 Blackberry ref1 iPhone ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Smets, Gerda ref1, ref2 Snowboard Bicycle ref1 Sobel, Dava ref1 social enhancement ref1 Solyndra ref1 Sony Playstation ref1 Sony Walkman ref1 “A Sound of Thunder” (short story) (Bradbury) ref1 SpaceShipOne (Mojave Aerospace) ref1 speculation ref1 Sphinx ref1 spiders ref1

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and impoverished, Harrison pleaded his case before Parliament. He was at last awarded the prize money – but never the prize itself. 10 Jeff Brady, “After Solyndra Loss, U.S. Energy Loan Program Turning A Profit,” National Public Radio, November 13, 2014, accessed August 20, 2015, <http://www.npr.org/2014/11

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/13/363572151/after-solyndra-loss-u-s-energy-loan-program-turning-a-profit> 11 Because of our comfort with error, the metaphor of the brain as a standard digital

The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future

by Michael Levi  · 28 Apr 2013

renewable energy to thrive. But bright prospects for renewable energy were not the first thing on people’s minds on August 31, 2011. That day Solyndra, a previously obscure solar company headquartered in Fremont, California, announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and laying off eleven hundred employees.17 This would

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not normally have been an unusual event in a year that saw 131 companies file for bankruptcy every day, but Solyndra was not a normal company.18 The firm, founded in 2005 and backed by a roster of previously successful venture capitalists, had bet that its

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market for solar power. By 2009, the Obama administration had made clean energy a centerpiece of its strategy for rescuing the U.S. economy, and Solyndra was one of its star cases. In March of that year, the U.S. Department of Energy agreed to backstop a $535 million loan to

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a symbol of all its flaws. Alternative energy, critics declared, was not ready for prime time; had there been a real market for its products, Solyndra would not have failed. Worse was what the episode apparently revealed about the relationship between renewable energy and government

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. Solyndra, they said, existed only because government bureaucrats had handed it hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. At best, its executives squandered that money, in the

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intervention that corruption and incompetence were inevitable results. It certainly wasn’t a recipe for economic revival; one merely needed to ask the laid-off Solyndra employees about that. Nor did an economically unviable suite of technologies hold much promise for dealing with climate change. Meanwhile, as the public began to

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savior either. Something else needs to tip the balance for renewables to truly thrive. m m m This takes us back to the debate around Solyndra. There’s no way to avoid it: if you want to be assured of really big growth in renewable 154 • THE POWER SURGE energy, you

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to transform energy systems much sooner. But this means governments need to pick particular firms to support—which takes us right back to companies like Solyndra. MiaSolé fits the bill too. The firm, headquartered in a drab Santa Clara, California, office park next to a string of data storage and computer

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SURGE In early 2010, MiaSolé received provisional support from the U.S. government to build out its manufacturing facility. The details were different from the Solyndra case—among other things, MiaSolé received the option to draw on a pair of Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits worth $101.8 million rather than

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financiers do. Worse, this all can quickly be compounded by politics. That doesn’t require anything nefarious, like the debunked claims of crony capitalism surrounding Solyndra; it simply requires governments and their agencies to seek their own survival, as they are wont to do. Regular failures of government-backed companies make

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?storyId=92638501. 15. John M. Broder, “Gore Urges Change to Dodge an Energy Crisis,” New York Times, July 18, 2008. 16. Ibid. 17. David Louie, “Solyndra Files for Bankruptcy, Lays Off 1,100 Workers,” ABC 7 San Francisco, August 31, 2011, http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/ story?section=news/business&id

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, http://www.abiworld.org/AM/ AMTemplate.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay. cfm&CONTENTID=65139. 19. Chris Gentilviso, “President Obama Visits Green Energy Start-Up Solyndra,” Time.com, May 26, 2010, http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/05/26/ president-obama-visits-green-energy-start-up

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-solyndra/. 20. Seema Mehta, “Romney Accuses Obama of ‘Crony Capitalism’ in Solyndra Trip,” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2012. 21. Clean Energy Ministerial, “Energy Ministers Announce Achievements and Actions for a Clean Energy Future

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plants and, 152, 160, 168 renewable energy standard (RES) and, 155–156 renewable portfolio standards and, 154 research and development (R&D) of, 156–157 Solyndra and, 146–147 “Spanish study” on, 163–165 technological advances in (expand), 159–161, 177 venture capital and, 158–159 Rifle (Colorado), 61–62 INDEX

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–153 India and, 167–168 land use and, 175–177 manufacturing requirements for, 157–158, 162 technological advances in, 145, 148, 150–151, 157, 162 Solyndra, 146–147, 159 South Africa, 32–33 South China Sea confl ict, 132–134 Soviet Union Cold War and, 10, 16, 169, 185 natural gas

The New Geography of Jobs

by Enrico Moretti  · 21 May 2012  · 403pp  · 87,035 words

’s new growth engine. But in 2011 the city experienced a serious setback when one of its largest employers, a solar panel company called Solyndra, filed for bankruptcy. Solyndra was supposed to be a poster child for enlightened industrial policy, but it has instead turned into a painful cautionary tale. In 2009

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the U.S. Department of Energy provided the firm with a loan guarantee of about $535 million, which enabled Solyndra to open a major production facility in Fremont and hire more than one thousand workers to make solar panels. High-profile ribbon-cutting ceremonies followed

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, together with a visit by President Obama, who confidently presented Solyndra as “the face of a brighter and more prosperous future.” Countless news articles touted the promising future of America’s “advanced manufacturing.” But

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Solyndra’s business model was based on a seriously flawed premise. It depended entirely on the competitiveness of a new type of solar array, which was

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supposed to generate power more cheaply than silicon-based solar cells. When silicon was expensive, Solyndra’s technology seemed inspired. But even then a smart analyst would have realized that the price of silicon was unlikely to remain high forever, because

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government to flood the market with heavily subsidized silicon-based solar panels.) In the end, the drop in price caused Solyndra to go bankrupt. The media frenzy in the wake of Solyndra’s collapse focused mainly on whether political contributions were behind the loan guarantee and overlooked the two most important lessons

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were clear which industries would drive future growth, it would still be difficult to pick winning companies within those industries. In the Solyndra case, the Department of Energy deemed Solyndra’s business prospects worthy of public investment even when its business prospects were rapidly worsening. The second and most important lesson is

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all this leave Fremont? The city is still courting clean-tech employers and has exempted clean-tech companies from payroll taxes. Although the closing of Solyndra was a major setback, local growth is still driven by R&D-intensive clean-tech companies, along with new biotech and high-tech firms that

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’s $200 million “Emerging Technology Fund” for Texas companies is similar to initiatives in California, New York, and Massachusetts. The federal loan guarantee program that Solyndra took advantage of was started in 2005 under George W. Bush and was expanded in 2009 by Barack Obama. While politicians and the companies they

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, Florida, and cost of living, [>] Fort Smith, Arkansas/Oklahoma, [>] France, [>], [>] French Internet sector, [>] Frederick & Nelson department store, [>] Freescale Semiconductor, [>] Fremont, California, [>], [>], [>] solar-panel industry in, [>]–[>] Solyndra, [>]–[>] Friedman, Milton, [>] Friedman, Thomas, [>] FriendFeed, [>] FRV, [>] Fuji, [>] Future growth of United States and American culture, [>]–[>] and innovation hubs, [>] Gadsden, Alabama, and cost of living, [>] Gainesville

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(non-tradable) sector, [>]–[>], [>], [>] (see also Local services) Nordstrom, [>], [>] Norfolk–Virginia Beach–Newport News area, [>] Norilsk, Siberia, [>]–[>] NVIDIA, [>] Obama, Barack and federal loan guarantee program, [>] and Solyndra, [>] Oberhelman, Doug, [>] Ocala, Florida, [>] Oil prices, rise in (1979), [>] Oklahoma City, immigrants in, [>] Old Navy, [>] Oleson, Kiel, [>], [>] Omaha, Nebraska, [>], [>] O’Neill, Tip, [>] Oracle, [>], [>] Orange County

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), [>] Social return on education, [>] on research, [>]–[>] (see also Knowledge spillovers) Software industry, jobs in, [>], [>] Solar-panel industry, [>]–[>] in Fremont, California, [>]–[>], [>] See also Clean-tech companies Solyndra, [>]–[>], [>], [>] South (American), as convergence example, [>] Soviet Union, and Norilsk, Siberia, [>]–[>] Spain mobility in, [>] PISA scores of, [>] and solar panels, [>], [>] Spartanburg, South Carolina, Chinese factory in

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet

by Varun Sivaram  · 2 Mar 2018  · 469pp  · 132,438 words

I worked for—took off, raising hundreds of millions of dollars to inkjet print thin-film solar on rolls of aluminum foil. Even more exotically, Solyndra planned to transform flat solar panels into cylindrical tubes that could absorb light from every direction. That vision earned it a whopping $1 billion in

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thinner-silicon technologies. Stuck with a product that cost $6.29 per watt to manufacture but only earned $3.42 per watt in the marketplace, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in 2011, leaving taxpayers on the hook to cover a half-billion dollars of debt.34 In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt

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Romney assailed President Obama’s bet on Solyndra as “a symbol of gross waste.”35 Over the next two years, both Twin Creeks Technologies and Nanosolar also ran out of money, as did

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/economy/chinese-tariffs-may-hurt-us-makers-of-solar-cells-raw-material/2013/07/23/01ac60a4-f3d9-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html. 34.  Tim Worstall, “Solyndra: Yes, It Was Possible to See This Failure Coming,” Forbes, September 17, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/09/17

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/solyndra-yes-it-was-possible-to-see-this-failure-coming. 35.  Ashley Parker, “Romney Campaigns at Failed Solyndra Factory,” The New York Times, May 21, 2012, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/romney

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-to-campaign-at-failed-solyndra-factory. 36.  Benjamin Gaddy, Varun Sivaram, and Francis O’Sullivan, “Venture Capital and Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Clean Energy Innovation,” July 2016, https://energy.

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interventions and private-sector ingenuity. Intervening in the market is difficult, both technically and politically—just ask the officials who disbursed a loan guarantee to Solyndra. Chapter 10, on U.S. policy recommendations, will delve into ways that the government can reduce lock-in barriers to innovation most effectively. These include

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has no business intervening in applied technology development. After all, the U.S. government lost a half-billion dollars on an infamous loan guarantee to Solyndra. But the overall federal loan program for energy projects actually ended up in the black, not the red (it also had notable successes, such as

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weighing whether to undertake the time and expense to bring a technology to market. Unfortunately, the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, which made the infamous Solyndra bet, is politically embattled and unlikely to be the vehicle to fund demonstrations in the future. There is no shortage of good ideas about what

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Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Energy Innovation,” Energy Policy 102 (2017): 385–395, doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2016.12.035. 11.  Jeff Brady, “After Solyndra Loss, U.S. Energy Loan Program Turning a Profit,” NPR, November 13, 2014, http://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363572151/after

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-solyndra-loss-u-s-energy-loan-program-turning-a-profit. 12.  Charlie Wilson and Arnulf Grübler, Energy Technology Innovation: Learning from Historical Successes and Failures (New

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. Copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS)    A solar photovoltaic (PV) material that is deposited as a thin film. Many Silicon Valley start-up companies, including Solyndra, tried and failed to commercialize this technology. Distributed solar    The use of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on rooftops or in a ground-mounted arrangement smaller

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loan program for, 258–259 U.S. government funding for, 251–253 Solar thermal plants, 31 Solar water heaters, 30–31 Solid-state battery, 172 Solyndra, 38, 39, 258, 264 Son, Masayoshi “Masa,” 109, 195, 198, 200, 205, 206, 219 South Asia, 85, 117, 120 Southern Power, 108 South Korea, 145

China's Superbank

by Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe  · 26 Sep 2012

companies continue to ramp up production even as losses mount, backed by CDB lines of credit that dwarf the US government loans to the bankrupt Solyndra LLC, which became a campaign issue in 2012. The CDB loans are helping cement Chinese domination in an industry of the future and helping to

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million in fiscal 2009 to a record $332 million in 2010, just as CDB was starting to lend billions of dollars.10 In March 2009, Solyndra, a Fremont, California–based solar company, got a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to construct a robotic factory that could build

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said the company could be valued at $2 billion after the stock offering. But by the summer of 2010, as CDB was going into overdrive, Solyndra withdrew its IPO registration. In November, it announced it would shut down a plant and lay off workers just seven weeks after opening Fab 2

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module prices had plummeted as low-cost Chinese manufacturers ramped up production.11 By September of the following year, Solyndra had filed for bankruptcy. Energy Secretary Chu said that federal aid to Solyndra had been necessary to compete in a “fierce global race to capture” a market that will grow by “hundreds

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dollars” in coming decades.12 Compare the support Yingli and other Chinese solar makers have received from CDB—the banker to the state—with that Solyndra received, whose $535 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration became a staple of Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. LDK’s credit

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line from CDB is 16 times the loan guarantee Solyndra got. In total, five US companies were awarded $1.56 billion in guarantees through a US Energy Department program championed by Obama, a fraction of

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Jifan said that China’s solar panel makers borrow at higher rates than what the US government charged Solyndra.13 CDB charges 6 to 7 percent, Gao had said earlier that month.14 Solyndra paid an average rate of 5 percent on $70 million in 2011 before filing for bankruptcy protection. In

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, October 4, 2011. 11. Todd Woody, “Solar-Panel Maker to Close a Factory and Delay Expansion,” New York Times, November 3, 2010. 12. Jim, Snyder, “Solyndra Decisions Mine, Chu Tells Republican-Led Inquiry,” Bloomberg News, November 17, 2011. 13. Michael Forsythe, “Chinese Solar CEOs Say Government Gives Them No Special Breaks

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Guangdong’s chamber of commerce Guangxi Communications Guan Jiangzhong (Dagong’s chairman) Guochuang Fund Guo Shuqing (former head of China Construction Bank) H Harrison, Brian (Solyndra CEO) Harvard Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative Hebei Bohai Investment Co. He Yuxin (Hong Kong–based analyst) Hochberg, Fred (head of US Exim Bank) Hong

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York) Sinohydro Group Sinopec (state-owned oil) Sinosure (state-owned insurance company) SOEs. See state-owned enterprises (SOEs) SolarWorld (German solar company) SolarWorld Industries America Solyndra (California–based solar company) South Sea Bubble Soviet Union, collapse of Standard Chartered Standard & Poor’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange state capitalism State Council

Value of Everything: An Antidote to Chaos The

by Mariana Mazzucato  · 25 Apr 2018  · 457pp  · 125,329 words

of US government financing), there are many Concordes (a white elephant funded by the British and French governments). Consider the twin tales of Solyndra and Tesla Motors. In 2009, Solyndra, a solar-power-panel start-up, received a $535 million guaranteed loan from the US Department of Energy; that same year, Tesla

…

, got approval for a similar loan, of $465 million. In the years afterwards, Tesla was wildly successful, and the firm repaid its loan in 2013. Solyndra, by contrast, filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and among fiscal conservatives became a byword for the government's sorry track record when it comes to

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venture capital firms, are often saddled with the costs of the failures while earning next to nothing from the successes. Taxpayers footed the bill for Solyndra's losses - yet got hardly any of Tesla's profits. Strangely, the US government had put in a claim for 3 million shares into Tesla

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taken a stake in Tesla as a success rather than as a failure, it would have been able to more than cover its losses from Solyndra. The year Tesla received its government loan, the company went public at an opening price of $17 a share; that figure had risen to $93

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and privatization of rewards that we examined in Chapter 7: in the same way that the US government picked up the bill for the failed Solyndra, and let the profits from the similar investment made in Tesla go private, the taxpayer picks up the bill for those parts of public assets

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have seen, being the $528 million provided by the US Department of Energy to the company Solyndra in 2005 for the production of solar cells. When the price of silicon chips fell dramatically soon after, Solyndra went bankrupt, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the bill.68 Yet any venture capitalist will

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/2011/co-gp-20110913.html#Executive%20Summary 66. Crouch, The Knowledge Corrupters. 67. https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm 68. R. Wood, ‘Fallen Solyndra Won Bankruptcy Battle but Faces Tax War', Forbes, 11 June 2012. 69. G. Owen, Industrial Policy in Europe since the Second World War: What Has

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Press, 2014). Wolff, E. N., Growth, Accumulation, and Unproductive Activity: An Analysis of the Postwar U.S. Economy (Cambridge: University Press, 1987). Wood, R., ‘Fallen Solyndra won bankruptcy battle but faces tax war', Forbes, 11 June 2012. Wray, L. R., Modern Money Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Zirkelbach, R., ‘The Five

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato  · 31 Jul 2016  · 370pp  · 102,823 words

tend to take full blame when things go wrong (as in the cases of the loss-making supersonic aircraft Concorde or the failed solar manufacturer Solyndra, discussed further below), while the big successes of state support (such as the internet or various forms of biotechnology, described in the following section) are

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$465 million loan guaranteed by the taxpayer), occurring in the same period as a big loss, a $535 million guaranteed loan to the solar manufacturer Solyndra, which later went bankrupt. In reality, the most successful capitalist economies have had active states that made risky investments, some of them contributing to technological

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sector, where venture capital—where it invests at all—produces the quick in/out funding dynamics that result in bankruptcies such as that of Solyndra in 2012. Indeed, Solyndra’s key business backers were venture capitalists, and, like all venture capitalists, they eagerly awaited an IPO, merger or acquisition to provide an

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‘exit’ from their investments. But a successful ‘exit’ is not always possible in uncertain markets. When Solyndra’s key investors abandoned their $1.1 billion investment, 1,000 jobs were lost, and a $535 million government-guaranteed loan was wasted. Rather than

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staying the course, in other words, Solyndra’s investors jumped ship. The irony is that government support often makes companies like Solyndra more attractive to investors, who seek the State’s ‘patient capital’ and respond to its signals. Is this

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value short-termism and investments empirical evidence of investors’ discount rates policy implications value of future cash-flows single European market smart phones social care Solyndra Spain austerity debt problems GDP investment activity private debt unemployment stagnation economic secular state investment banks funding for green projects renewable energy investments Stirling, Andy

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World

by Steve Levine  · 5 Feb 2015  · 304pp  · 88,495 words

. Department of Energy investments were a primary target of harsh Obama critics. The furor centered on Solyndra, a California solar power company that was awarded a $535 million stimulus loan and then filed for bankruptcy. Solyndra, critics said, exemplified the folly of “picking winners”—of favoring specific companies rather than general swaths

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, they said, was particularly suspect given that a Department of Energy official handling it was simultaneously a presidential campaign fund-raiser and married to a Solyndra lawyer. In fact, ARPA-E and other programs were picking winners. But that was what they were supposed to do. The question was whether they

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picked wisely. In any case, while the wisdom of the Solyndra loan was debatable, its origins were in the Bush administration. ARPA-E was modeled after DARPA, a Pentagon research agency whose mission was to fund

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highly unusual ideas that otherwise might never be tried out. Solyndra, with its bet on a niche thin-film technology, fit that operating principle. The solar market had turned against everyone. The politics remained unforgiving. In

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Washington, Republican congressmen held hearings accusing Solyndra executives and Obama officials of corruption. American voters would go to the polls in nine months. Obama could not be sanguine about reelection given these

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Croy understood, in case he didn’t already, the reality of the Bay Area. “There are enormous risks going to Envia,” he said. “Look at Solyndra. It could be shuttered in two years. Silicon Valley eats people up.” He went on: At this point—pre-IPO—it is intoxicating. You can

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, Mike, 83–87, 88, 95, 110, 114, 116–17, 202, 263, 280 Slater, Mike, 207, 209 smart phones, 5, 167, 186, 187 Smil, Vaclav, 199 Solyndra, 203, 240 Sony, 35, 41, 118, 152, 197, 198, 214 South Africa, 27–28, 41–42, 43, 47 South Korea: battery competition in, 99, 103

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger  · 28 Jun 2020

-connected Obama donors without creating many jobs. The most famous of the green investments was when DOE gave $573 million to a solar company called Solyndra, 35 percent of which was owned by a billionaire donor and fundraising bundler for Obama, George Kaiser. Nobody wanted to invest in

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Solyndra because its panels were too expensive, which independently minded DOE staffers pointed out. They were overruled, however, and the loan was approved. The people who

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, https://www.fool.com. Travis Hoium, “Bankruptcies Continue in Solar Industry,” The Motley Fool, May 19, 2017, https://www.fool.com. 76. As an example, Solyndra’s bankruptcy led to its abandonment of a cadmium waste storage facility in Milpitas, California, due to the facts that the facility was not financed

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by Solyndra’s federal loan guarantees and that Solyndra had not made much money prior to its bankruptcy. Dustin Mulvaney, Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice (Oakland: University of California

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Representatives, GAO-11-483T, 10 (Washington, D.C.: Diane Publishing, March 17, 2011). 89. Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens, “Energy Dept. E-mails on Solyndra Provide New Details on White House Involvement,” Washington Post, August 9, 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com. Schweitzer, Throw Them All Out, 96. 90. Ibid. 91

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, 154 waste and costs, 188–92 Solar homes, 186–87 Solaria, 205 Solar Impulse, 188 Solar panels, 146, 154, 176–77, 188–89, 190–91 Solyndra, 218, 361n South Korea GDP, 104 nuclear energy, 145, 169–71 Soviet Union, 114 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 145, 147, 148–50, 168, 171 Cold War

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