On renewable energy technology, I'll wager on Bill Gates over E

Michael Lynch / Forbes

In 1999, attending a conference on renewable energy technology, I warned that for any given technologies or fuels to succeed in the long run, they needed to be roughly competitive — that is, consumers should want buy them in quantity based on cost and quality. Government support, in the form of subsidies or mandates, were unreliable, I argued, pointing to the losses at Chrysler in the mid-1980s when they assumed that CAFÉ standards would make large cars unmarketable.