Op-ed: Attack on green energy industry misguided

Gov. Bill Richardson is chairman of APCO Worldwide’s Global Political Strategies (GPS) group.

As elections heat up, some partisans are trying to turn clean energy into a divisive campaign issue. Misguided, inaccurate attacks on the green-energy industry — which has flourished over the past decade — are taking place around the nation every day.

Yes, the solar energy company Solyndra didn’t make it. Yes, some other companies with cutting-edge clean-energy technologies have failed. Failure is a fundamental aspect to the development of any industry, whether it is energy, transportation or mobile phones. Through competition, the best products and solutions survive and evolve.

But asserting that clean energy as a whole is a failure is absurd. While the attack rhetoric garners media headlines, a real look at the facts about green technologies demonstrates anything but failure. Just last week, the U.S. solar industry announced that it had its second-best quarter in history, having installed 742 megawatts of solar power. Costs have fallen more than 40 percent since 1998. Solyndra may have failed, but solar power clearly hasn’t.

Click here to read the full post, featured in the The Seattle Times.