Breakthrough

On Thursday, March 13 2008, the Department of Energy announced 11 grants totaling $14 million dollars to various research projects aimed at driving down the high-cost of solar energy equipment.

In their words:

The[se] solar projects have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of electricity produced by PV products from current levels of $0.18-$0.23 per Kilowatt hour (kWh) to $0.05 - $0.10 per kWh by 2015 - a price that is competitive in markets nationwide. [We think it'll take more like $50 billion, by the way]

Each university will work closely with an industry partner to ensure the projects retain a commercialization focus and that results are quickly transitioned into market ready-products and manufacturing processes...

Now, I don't want to sound unjustly cynical. I'm sure the research institutions benefiting from each of these, on average, $785,000 grants are incredibly thankful that they can each continue their theses projects under the careful guidance of industry professionals. What I really do find questionable about this whole thing is the amount in question.

Here we are bounding down the first stretch of the 21st century and all we can think to throw at a technology that has the potential to rejuvenate our planet and our own languishing economies once and for all is $14 million dollars?

Here, for your amusement, is a collection of things we as a people regularly subsidize to the tune of that amount.

• 1 hour of the Iraq War
• One leading performance from Angelina Jolie (almost)
• One year of Ryan Seacrest's salary
• Not quite the fee Ford paid to have their new Mondeo featured in the latest James Bond flick, Casino Royale (it was 14 million pounds)
• 20% of an unfinished mansion in San Francisco's Gold Coast (then you and Danielle Steele could be neighbors)
• 1 vanity license plate in the United Arab Emirates

For those of us with human-sized bank accounts, $14 million dollars is a lot of money; but we can see that for those who play in the major leagues, $14 million is more like something you might use to dry yourself off after a long, relaxing shower.

In a way, the Department of Energy has put its money exactly where its mouth is--at the end of a coal-spewing tailpipe. While funding solar with a paltry $14 mil, they're pitched to throw a whopping $1.1 billion into the construction of new coal power plants, just to accommodate our ever-increasing demand for juice.

Coal as a fuel is cheap because it's abundant. But don't we want to throw a bit bigger bone towards the future of the human race and a power source that's going to run for at least another 5 - 6 billion years?

If this is a game of numbers, then why are we so addicted to playing the short game and nothing else?