Positive Lessons from The Solyndra Debacle

Two commentators demonstrate why solar continues to be viable, and why the dramatic and very public failure of Solyndra has nothing to do with the viability of solar.

On Huffington Post, Graciela Tiscareño-Sato writes, in “A Teaching Moment About the Green Economy,” of several brilliant entrepreneurs who are helping us take big steps toward a green economy, emphasizing multiple benefits such as saving cost and carbon and creating jobs at the same time. Her examples (all from the Latino world, incidentally) cover the building industry (specifically, solarizing schools in California), fashion, eco-consulting, and more.

And in the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman points out that Solyndra’s failure was directly related to the success of solar. Solyndra’s model was based in high prices and scarcity, but as solar becomes more popular, the energy equivalent of the computer industry’s Moore’s Law kicks in; we get ever-more-powerful, cheaper, more effective systems as the quantity goes up. Solyndra couldn’t compete with the new low-cost solar providers. (Note: this is a different aspect of the same article I blogged about yesterday.)