Washington state’s Clean Energy Fund shows that this corner of the nation is committed to developing the energy technologies needed by 21st-century industry. The state Legislature wisely voted last session to renew this critical initiative.
But the fund is not without fierce opposition. Powerful opponents in the Legislature, having twice failed in efforts to derail the fund, have resorted to cheap tricks by smearing technology startup companies and entrepreneurs who legitimately benefit from the fund.
Last month, a major regional newspaper gave these opponents a front-page stage for their false claims of “insider advantage,” strongly im plying that something shady had been going on. Former public officials who’d worked selflessly and played by the rules were described as operating a “laundering operation.” The Herald also covered the ethics complaints — charges that recently were dismissed as “obviously unfounded or frivolous” by the state ethics board (“Ethics complaints related to PUD clean-energy project dismissed,” Jan. 27).
In our digital world, the false accusations will live on forever, even though all accused were completely exonerated.
But even full exoneration has not put an end to the attacks on the companies and the entrepreneurs behind them. Political opponents are opportunistically fostering a vague, lingering sense of impropriety to wage war on clean energy. This campaign aids those who want to undermine the state’s efforts to foster innovation and create new companies and jobs in the emerging clean energy economy.
For example, state Sen. Doug Ericksen told The Herald in the Jan. 27 story, that there is still a “great perception” that “there is a problem in this process and they (those investigated) took advantage of the way the system was set up.”
In reality, the “great perception” has been manufactured by fund opponents who file unfounded or frivolous complaints against companies or public utilities benefitting from the Clean Energy Fund. The senator’s assertion that there is a problem in the process continues his campaign to smear the reputation of clean energy companies that legitimately work on R&D projects funded by the Clean Energy Fund — which is what it was set up to do.
Sen. Ericksen has been quoted as saying that “to pick and choose winners and losers in this type of technology environment with taxpayer dollars is a very difficult thing to do. … the state should stick to investing in research and development.” But the attacked grants were R&D, designed to help the state’s utilities explore new technologies that are essential to future “smart grids.” They did not pick winners and losers; the fund provided support for early-stage innovations that Washington utilities themselves determined showed great promise for the industry. This funding is the sort of government grant that even Ronald Reagan would have applauded.
The word now in Olympia is that the Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, chaired by Sen. Ericksen, plans to hold hearings on the fund in the current legislative session, underscoring that efforts are still being made to discredit the fund, and undercut our state’s clean energy agenda.
It is no secret that the Chinese government has spent prodigiously on renewable energy and is eating America’s lunch on solar and wind technologies. But in other cutting-edge fields, we are still in the game. Washington has entrepreneurs applying our state’s software and technical skills to utility-level storage, control technologies, battery chemistry and other smart-grid elements needed by electricity providers around the world. The Clean Energy Fund helps give level footing to Washington firms in this global competition.
Utilities are regulated monopolies. Electric utility rate-setting leads to systematic underinvestment in research. America’s electric utility industry spends a smaller share of its revenue on R&D than does the pet food industry.
The Clean Energy Fund is a small-but-important effort to offset this market failure. It lets our utilities invest in critical R&D; it gives Washington companies a chance to become leaders in a huge new area of innovation (the smart grid); and it accelerates progress toward a cleaner, lower carbon electric system.
Our respective organizations support the Clean Energy Fund. We also wholeheartedly support public transparency. If ethics rules are violated by clean energy firms, we want violators pursued with the same vigor we would apply to dirty energy firms. But this anti-clean energy campaign is not transparency; it’s a thinly-disguised witch hunt driven by mean-spirited politics. The media has spent considerable ink questioning the motives of entrepreneurs whose companies legitimately benefitted from the Clean Energy Fund. Moving forward, we hope the state’s media will devote equal attention to the political motives of those who make unfounded accusations and attempt to manufacture scandal where none exists.
Washington deserves no less.
Denis Hayes is president of the Bullitt Foundation. Gregg Small is executive director of Climate Solutions.
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