Without knowing the specifics, I can't really say what I think. But in general I like these kinds of incentives for innovations. It's not a straight ongoing subsidy for a favored industry, which I think usually tend to outlive their usefullness and then become a waste of money. It's a fixed-cost budget item to spur innovation and to provide the capital to develop the technology for market.

In the past these kinds of constests have worked out really well. In the early days of aviation, there were contests paid for mostly by waatlhy individuals to spur innovation in aviation. There were prizes for thisngs like altitude records, or speed records or the first to cross the Atlantic. The money was an incentive and so ws the prestige. Recently the Ansari X prize for the first private company to send a reusable, manned vehicle into space twice spured the developmenn of Spaceship One by Burt Rutan. Without the prize it probably would not have happend by now.

I think these kinds of contests can work realy well and be a very cost effective way to promote needed inovations. How about $300 million to the company that can develop a way to make ethanol out of corn stalks, wood chips and other cellulose waste for the same cost as using corn? Or $300 million to the company that can develop a way to make solar electricity as cheap as electricity from coal? Or $300 million to the company that can develop a way to make food waste and orgainic waste that now goes to the landfill into fuel oil for less than $50 a barrel? These kinds of innovations would easily be worth the cost of the contest.
dragonrider Reviewed by dragonrider on . Sen. McCain offers $300 million prize for new auto battery John McCain hopes to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash. The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday at Fresno State University in California. McCain Rating: 5