Silicon Valley’s latest, greatest hopes — clean tech and green tech — also seem to be failing despite big investments from the likes of John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Vinod Khosla, a former Kleiner partner.
“It is not clear anyone will make money on their green-tech investing. It looks like it was a bubble,” [Napster founder and Facebook investor Sean] Parker said.
After losing his way in the old economy, Laurance Anton tried to assure his place in the new one by signing up for green jobs training earlier this year at his local community college.
Anton has been out of work since 2008, when his job as a surveyor vanished with Florida's once-sizzling housing market. After a futile search, at age 56 he reluctantly returned to school to learn the kind of job skills the Obama administration is wagering will soon fuel an employment boom: solar installation, sustainable landscape design, recycling and green demolition.
Anton said the classes, funded with a $2.9 million federal grant to Ocala's workforce development organization, have taught him a lot. He's learned how to apply Ohm's law, how to solder tiny components on circuit boards and how to disassemble rather than demolish a building.
The only problem is that his new skills have not resulted in a single job offer. Officials who run Ocala's green jobs training program say the same is true for three-quarters of their first 100 graduates.
...With nearly 15 million Americans out of work and the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent for 18 consecutive months, policymakers desperate to stoke job creation have bet heavily on green energy. The Obama administration channeled more than $90 billion from the $814 billion economic stimulus bill into clean energy technology, confident that the investment would grow into the economy's next big thing.
The infusion of money is going to projects such as weatherizing public buildings and constructing advanced battery plants in the industrial Midwest, financing solar electric plants in the Mojave desert and training green energy workers.
But the huge federal investment has run headlong into the stubborn reality that the market for renewable energy products - and workers - remains in its infancy. The administration says that its stimulus investment has saved or created 225,000 jobs in the green energy industry, a pittance in an economy that has shed 7.5 million jobs since the recession took hold in December 2007.
The industry's growth has been undercut by the simple economic fact that fossil fuels remain cheaper than renewables. Both Obama administration officials and green energy executives say that the business needs not just government incentives, but also rules and regulations that force people and business to turn to renewable energy.
Without government mandates dictating how much renewable energy utilities must use to generate electricity, or placing a price on the polluting carbon emitted by fossil fuels, they say, green energy cannot begin to reach its job creation potential.
"We keep getting these stops and starts in the industry. There is no way it can work like this," said Bill Gallagher, president of Solar-Fit, a Florida energy company whose fortunes have fluctuated with government incentives in its 35 years in business.
Like many people who run renewable energy companies, Gallagher said he sees no need to expand his 25-employee firm because the business is simply not there.
...[President] Obama has described the surge of clean energy spending as crucial both to the nation's economic and environmental future.
"Our future as a nation depends on making sure that the jobs and industries of the 21st century take root here in America," Obama said in October. "And there is perhaps no industry with more potential to create jobs now - and growth in the coming years - than clean energy."
But other administration officials acknowledge that it is likely to be years before the spending on green energy produces large numbers of jobs. And they add that only part of the money earmarked for green energy has been spent. They also agree that the government will have to help create demand to support green energy.
..."There is significant job creation potential in clean energy. But it is not revealing itself quickly or clearly," said Jerone Gamble, executive manager of continuing education at the College of Central Florida, and a chief architect of the green jobs training program. "In the time being, we're really selling hope."
Hope, hype and empty promises -- welcome to the green energy future. This is what happens when politicians pick winners and losers instead of markets.
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