Why? Why are taxpayers subsidizing this? And why do they have more skin in the game than the subsidies’ recipient?
Why?
Reports Blue Sky News (BSN), the propaganda arm of the Allegheny County Airport Authority:
“Mainspring Energy’s decision to build a state-of-the art manufacturing facility on Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) property spotlights the region’s reputation as an innovation epicenter.
“The plant will produce up to 1,000 low-emissions linear power generators annually, which could meet the electricity needs of up to a quarter of a million homes.”
BSN says Mainspring was founded in 2010 in Menlo Park, Calif., by three Stanford engineers. The company’s linear generators create power from a range of fuel sources “including natural gas and fuel sources of the future like biomass, landfill gas and even hydrogen. The generators will support the energy needs of businesses that want clean, reliable and relatively inexpensive electricity,” BSN says.
Construction on Mainspring’s 292,000-square-foot facility in Findlay Township, with ground to be broken this year, is projected to create nearly 300 jobs, with “at least 80 percent” being union jobs.
The Airport Authority notes that the facility is expected to come on line in 2027, employ 600-plus people and that Mainspring “is committed to recruiting at least 20 percent of its new employees from underrepresented communities.”
All the usual suspects rah-rah-sis-boom-bahed this project, from the Airport Authority CEO, to the authority’s chief corporate and government affairs officer, to the CEO of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.
Mainspring was heralded as “a new economy company” that “presented an opportunity that would be a big win and offered economic generation and jobs for our region,” one local official said.
But back to the “economics” of this deal.
If Mainspring is going to be such a perpetual growth and profit machine that, with such supposed versatility, will help patch up the fragile power grid, why are taxpayers picking up the majority of the cost for its new complex?
Mainspring’s PIT operation will cost $175 million. Of that total, $87 million is coming from the U.S. Department of Energy, reported BSN. And the state is covering another $8.6 million, for a total taxpayer subsidy of $95.6 million.
That puts Mainspring’s skin in this project at $79.4 million. Taxpayers are being pocket-dived for nearly 55 percent (54.628 percent) of the total cost.
Could it be that Mainspring sought to “taxpayerize” its financial risk because its linear generators have issues? That’s what an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated analysis claims:
“Some potential issues with Mainspring Energy include: scaling challenges in their linear generator design; concerns about the cost-effectiveness of their technology compared to traditional backup power sources; potential limitations in fuel flexibility and the need to further develop their grid integration capabilities to fully utilize their technology for larger scale applications.”
Things that most certainly should make you go “Hmmmm.”
Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Airport Authority, told her Blue Sky News that Mainspring Energy and its PIT project “is another competitive asset to grow Pittsburgh’s economy.”
Time will tell, of course. But none of this exercise in finding out should be on the taxpayer dime.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
