Their card doesn’t talk about the states. Their card says private companies and the private sector alone can’t fund renewables projects but doesn’t say that the states cant. — LS reads yellow.

As stated by the principle of instrumental primacy, institutional change depends first and foremost on the technical capability to change. In the present context, this means identifying which proposals for completely “greening the grid” rely on technology that has yet to be developed. The most obvious technical limitations are the storage requirements for clean renewable energy. As discussed above, one key issue with solar, wind, and wave energy is the uncertainty behind its generation due to their reliance on natural ecological systems. Powering the grid, however, requires energy to be generated and distributed on demand and in a more certain manner than is presently available, given the load required. As a result, attempting to switch out the thermal grid for a renewable grid all at once would likely lead to shortages and blackouts. Dealing with this problem requires both a short-term and a long-term solution. Short-term, it may be necessary to maintain a targeted fleet of flexible ramping thermal generators so that disruptions to the power grid are avoided during periods of intermittent generation. While this may not satisfy the environmental criteria discussed here, it does fit within the principle of minimal dislocation – the ability to provide enough energy to satisfy consumer needs is presently a non-problematic aspect of the present institutional structure and must be maintained. Long term, however, the federal government must invest directly in the creation of storage capacity and technology to increase the speed of generation from renewable energy. This investment, further, should be direct on the part of the federal government, rather than in the form of research subsidies or subcontracting to private energy producers. The reason for this is two-fold: first, the federal government does not face the same financial criteria new private investments must meet to warrant creation and implementation. The government is not in the business of making a profit and, as such, it is able to bear the high fixed costs without a guarantee of return that private enterprises are unable to incur. Precedence for this activity, as shown by Mazzucato, may be found throughout history, such as in the development of DARPA and numerous base-line pharmaceutical research projects that would not have existed without direct action from the federal government (2011). Once the new technologies are advanced to a point where they are financially feasible for the private sector to utilize, they may be turned over to private enterprises for further development and management. The key here is that the fixed costs of developing this emerging technology are too high to be feasible for private enterprise. However, for a sovereign currency-issuing government like the United States, these financial costs are immaterial.