The “gas-tax holiday” proposal was a bust. The coastal drilling plan is a fraud. Anything else in John McCain’s bag of tricks in the way of an energy policy? Actually, yes.
In the 18th century the British offered a £20,000 prize to anyone who figured out how to calculate longitude. More recently, Netflix offered a million dollars for improving movie recommendations on its Web site. Now Senator John McCain is suggesting a new national prize: He said here Monday that if elected president he would offer $300 million to anyone who could build a better car battery. […]
“I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people,” Mr. McCain said, “by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”
He said the winner should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs. “That’s one dollar, one dollar, for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” he said.
Yesterday, the Obama campaign responded quickly by pointing out McCain’s consistent opposition to investments in renewable energy sources, and his Senate votes against improving fuel efficiency standards.
But even if we put that aside, is there anything to this X Prize-style approach to policy making? Or is this another gimmick?
This afternoon in Nevada, Barack Obama argued on behalf of the latter.
“After all those years in Washington, John McCain still doesn’t get it,” Obama said. ” I commend him for his desire to accelerate the search for a battery that can power the cars of the future. I’ve been talking about this myself for the last few years. But I don’t think a $300 million prize is enough. When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn’t put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win — he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people. That’s the kind of effort we need to achieve energy independence in this country, and nothing less will do. But in this campaign, John McCain offering the same old gimmicks that will provide almost no short-term relief to folks who are struggling with high gas prices; gimmicks that will only increase our oil addiction for another four years.”
Moreover, the Center for American Progress’ Adam Jentleson raised a good point in a piece yesterday, noting, “A $300 million one-time payment may sound like a lot, but it’s a pittance compared to the $4 billion per-year tax break McCain has proposed giving to the 5 biggest oil companies (including $1.2 billion for Exxon Mobil alone). If McCain is serious about providing incentives for the developing clean energy technology, why is he doling out much, much bigger incentives for the big oil companies to keep doing business as usual? ”
Kevin struck a more forgiving note.
McCain didn’t offer any details about what it would take to win his prize, but that’s OK. I’m sure his campaign boffins can come up with something reasonable on that score. And even though it’s mostly a stunt, I don’t really have a problem with proposing prizes like this. If it doesn’t work no harm is done, and if it does work it’s a cheap way of spurring innovation.
But what I’m curious about is why conservatives are so ga-ga over the whole prize concept in the first place. Prizes for spaceflight, prizes for batteries, prizes for cancer cures, prizes and more prizes. They really seem to love the idea, despite the fact that there’s no special reason to think it will work. And the numbers they toss out are always ridiculously low. It’s not as if battery development is currently some kind of big government boondoggle, after all. Lots of private sector companies are working on new battery technology, and they’re doing it because the potential market is worth tens of billions of dollars. An extra $300 million isn’t really much of an incentive at all.
So why the enthusiasm? I guess it seems more free market-ish than doling out research grants, but if you’re dedicated to market solutions why would you think the market needs the extra boost in the first place? It’s all very strange. But relatively harmless, I suppose, and possibly worth experimenting with.
Ultimately, I’m inclined to agree with Kevin on this, though I’m not at all convinced it’s a political winner for McCain. Voters tend to want to hear about solutions, especially when it comes to energy policy, and McCain’s pitch is effectively, “Hopefully someone clever will come up with a solution, at which point I’ll give them a whole lot of money.”
Hope isn’t a plan, but apparently it’s an energy policy.
