I worked on a phase 0 grant submission team in a college class a couple years ago on the operations and finance end with other teams in other schools - CS/engineering, etc - for an underwater energy storage system.

Essentially everything was faked. The math didn't check out and the engineering students called this out over and over. It just didn't work and even if it did they would almost never recoup their costs. But grant approved, CEO who worked with us all who was very bright always brushing us off if we touch if real cost outside of being almost fully subsidized. His firm has been doing this with gas and solar since the 90s, seemed pretty cool till you see how the sausage is made. To be honest a lot of what his firm made was real functional stuff, but this cash grab while Biden was throwing around wind money was crazy.

It was absolutely wild to realize all this was just a game