Experts would disperse grants and are less vulnerable to lobbying

//DH

Making this limited case for choosing within cleantech is eased somewhat by the practical reality of implementing government grants and prizes. In the case of research grants, the government must pick winners with each project, thereby necessarily choosing one specific technology over another. Of course, the overall portfolio of grants may seek to be technology-neutral, but in practice the decision-making process typically requires choosing particular technologies. For example, according to the recently-passed 21st Century Cures Act, which includes prizes for innovation in healthcare, experts will pick particular projects.163 One might try to imagine the most technology-neutral prize possible—e.g., a prize to the first person who produces energy with no more than x units of carbon at y cost per unit of energy. In practice though, prizes are likely to be technology specific: e.g., competitions for battery, wind, or solar design. Indeed, setting broad targets for climate prizes may perversely increase the subjectivity in judging the winner, something that many supporters of prizes seek to avoid.164 And even scholars who have been critical of the government’s role in picking winners have proposed climate prizes that target certain technologies and certain sectors.165 Notably, in all of these

cases, it is experts and not Congress that make the decisions, which could ease concerns about the influence of lobbying. In short, by arguing for the government to pick cleantech over dirtytech and, in some cases, certain cleantech types over others, we are not proposing something that is procedurally different from what is already done. The government already has wide experience in picking winners project-by-project. Of course, the strongest critics of grants and prizes may ultimately decide that the downsides of those tools outweigh the benefits of addressing innovation snowballing. For them, an R&D tax credit targeted at cleantech— discussed in the next subsection—may be a desirable alternative for addressing innovation snowballing.