FROM LEFT: KEN JAMES/BLOOMBERG; TY COLE/OTTO; JACOB KEPLER/BLOOMBERG; MICHAEL ROPER/ALAMYGreen
Flops
- CIGS Solar Cells
Solar power is now one of the cheapest
sources of electricity, but it wasn’t
always this way. Most solar cells contain
polysilicon, which was still very
expensive a decade ago. Costs peaked
at about $475 a kilogram in 2008,
prompting the search for alternative
designs. Some used a thin film of
copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS)
on glass or plastic.
The poster child was Solyndra LLC,
which received $535 million in U.S. loan
guarantees to develop glass tubes
with CIGS films. Meanwhile, burgeoning
demand for clean energy led to a boom
in polysilicon production, and prices
plunged. Solyndra couldn’t compete with
its polysilicon rivals and filed for
bankruptcy in 2011, triggering a political
firestorm. Numerous other CIGS
companies failed or were acquired in the
following years. Polysilicon now costs
about $9 a kilogram and dominates the
solar industry. - Flywheel Energy Storage
Power grid operators like to keep
electricity flowing at a smooth and
steady pace. To adjust for surges
in supply or demand, they would ramp
generation up or down. But big coal or
natural gas-fired plants could sometimes
take several minutes to respond.
Beacon Power Corp. offered an
alternative with its first commercial
flywheel facility in 2011. Two hundred
carbon-fiber cylinders, each weighing
2,500 lb. (1,134kg), floated on
magnetic fields and rotated as fast as
16,000 times a minute. All the kinetic
energy could be converted into
electricity and transferred to the grid
as needed. It could also absorb excess
energy from the grid.
Grid operators liked the
technology, which allowed them to
respond to imbalances in less than a
second instead of minutes. But Beacon
was ahead of its time: Existing
regulations didn’t make it possible for
the company to charge different rates to
provide a speedier alternative. Beacon
ran out of money in 2011 while waiting for
the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission to revise its rules. Its assets
were acquired by a private equity fund.
The renamed Beacon Power LLC
opened a second facility in 2014. In 2018
the two sites were acquired by a
clean-energy developer. Today, the
growing use of intermittent wind and
solar power, which can fluctuate rapidly,
has boosted demand for this type of
service. But battery systems have
emerged to quickly deliver power to the
grid or absorb it.- Cellulosic Biofuels
The gas in your car’s tank doesn’t need to
come from crude oil—you can grow it on
a farm. That was the promise of a wave of
companies that tried to develop cheap,
renewable alternatives to petroleum-
based fuels. Unlike the standard ethanol
made from sugar in corn or sugar cane,
this next generation would be produced
from cellulose—the tough, stringy,
indigestible fiber in plants or trees. That
would be cheaper and easier to source
It must have seemed like a
good idea at the time.
The annals of green
energy are filled with people
who devised brilliant
solutions to vexing problems,
delivering more power for
less money, making things
cleaner, easier, and better.
Many became rich and
famous in the process.
And then there are the
folks who were ... less
successful. They created
systems that generated
electricity, but not cheaply.
They struggled to move from
the lab to the factory. Some
had great ideas that were just
ahead of their time.
Here’s a sample of
technologies that attracted
considerable brainpower and
resources, only to have us find
that the world wasn’t ready
for them yet. In the end, they
were simply the wrong thing at
the wrong time. ——Will Wade
48 BLOOMBERG MARKETS