The Really Inconvenient Blog » Is Government Investment in Energy R&D Really Essential?

...All in all, these examples actually show that government functions best by facilitation - creating the right legal and political environment for innovation and deployment of new technologies. Sometimes it tries to make us safer through defense expenditure and ends up making us richer. Sometimes it interferes and delays or perverts the most efficient development of the technological asset. None of these cases suggest that massive government funding of energy R&D is essential. They do, however, show that government can very much help by getting out of the way. And that’s an argument I am currently developing at much greater length.