Energy Funding Quotes
Lott, like many other reasonably intelligent people who understood little about technology, did not realize that all the early efforts with a technology are relatively primitive and even the best ideas have to be engineered to scale and cost efficiency. A decade later, solar energy had become a significant industry in the work and the United States, which had invented many of the early technologies had lost the international lead in Solar Energy to Germany and China. The ultimate value of any technology cannot be judged by the initial technological efforts.
Some regard this as an example of unintended consequences. Others, more cynical, believe that this is exactly what was intended and was the price that had to be paid to the finance industry in order to persade them to not have their formidable army of lobbyists block the legislation that created the subsidy.
