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A couple of weeks back, I went to a Renewable Energy Tax Credit conference in San Francisco. One could argue, I suppose, that since I don’t know much about renewable energy or their tax credits, this might be, well, a bit junkety.
It usually takes time for stuff to sink in with me, so the jury’s still out on whether this was a waste of money or the next big thing here on the North Side. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, some things were pretty obvious. Wisconsin is probably a decade behind in building a green economy. I said once, you’ll know we have gone around the corner when we stop calling the green economy green, and just call it the plain economy.
That has happened in California for the most part. For us, it’s just a fad or something extra to reach for in building buildings and inventing technologies or products we make here in Badger land. I just don’t feel that we’ve reached the point where green development is no longer green and just taken for granted as something we do without thinking.A fact to be in awe: The US is still the number one country in the world in developing renewable energy sources. You’d think so. In 2004, China, as measured on the Ernst and Young All Renewables Index, was ranked 19th out of 20 nations. Today? Number two. Realize: China is not so quietly any more, becoming the world’s leader in developing renewable energy while we are complicit in destroying the Gulf Coast with oil spewing out of pipe 5000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
On the West Coast and in California in particular, a renewable energy economy has been built. Really large companies have built a marketplace for new energy solutions to old problems. What I liked about the conference, notwithstanding the language barrier I faced, was that it is rather exhilarating to be around smart people, doing what smart people do. They identify a problem, create a demand for answers to complex issues, then build companies that offer solutions to those problems. And sure enough, they make money!
A really smart guy who is an early stage investor in high tech companies told me that the problem with start ups in Wisconsin is that entrepreneurs are satisfied with building a company that can feed their family, maybe a few others. On the East and West Coasts, entrepreneurs start companies with the idea of capturing market share. Whatever we build in Wisconsin, we don’t do it to scale, have enough money to compete with the world class companies, much less nations, and don’t play to win.
Hard to compete in this market with that attitude.
Howard Snyder
