The Cuomo Administration’s partnership with Elon Musk’s Solar City makes sense. Public capital for property, plant, and equipment can, indeed, help the firm achieve an immediate production scale, allowing it produce at a low enough per unit cost that allows it to be competitive in a global marketplace. Doing so in the form of long term operating leases ensures that the State retains control of this physical capital does much to align the interests of both parties, posturing both for a long term public private partnership.

That’s excellent, and light years ahead of any other industrial development policy that we’ve ever had. And the subsidies are justified when photovoltaic panel producers in China are being heavily subsidized by their government.

http://buffalochronicle.com/2014/09/29/riverbend-2-0-towards-a-stronger-economic-development-strategy/