in Energy Policy
The serial failures of the green energy agenda are piling up so fast and thick right now that it is hard to keep up. It has got beyond the scandal and farce stage by this point.
Item: Turns out the Treasury Department was given just one day to review the $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra before the Energy Department was going to go public with the splashy announcement. Contrasts rather sharply with the months/years of review necessary for the Keystone pipeline, which doesn’t require taxpayer dollars in any case.
Item: A123 Systems, a battery maker to whom the Obamanauts shoveled $279 million taxpayer dollars, has filed for bankruptcy, after losing $257 million last year, and after having delivered defective batteries to the Fisker Auto company, concerning which, Fisker isn’t looking too hot these days either.
Item: One of Germany’s largest solar manufacturers, Q-Cells, has filed for bankruptcy—the fourth major bankruptcy in the German solar sector. As my pal Ken Green comments: “It seems that the whole ‘subsidize green tech and capture the markets of tomorrow’ thing isn’t working out so well with the early adopters.”
Item: The German insolvency is spilling over to the US: “Solar Trust of America LLC, which holds the development rights for the world’s largest solar power project, on Monday filed for bankruptcy protection after its majority owner began insolvency proceedings in Germany.”
Item: Italy has announced that it will cut renewable energy subsidies: “Industry Minister Corrado Passera says . . . that taxpayer subsidies doled out to the wind and solar power industries had generated “excessive” investments in the sector.. . ‘Italy has important goals to meet and even surpass,’ he said, but added, ‘we need to do so without over-reliance on taxpayer resources.’”
Walter Russell Mead comments: “I was still in college when the first wave of solar power enthusiasts started selling the world on the vision of cheap, unlimited power from the benign and eco-friendly sun. . . And solar power is still a beautiful dream with just one tiny little catch. The prettiest unicorns have a way of dancing so tantalizingly, just out of reach.”
Not to worry. The One has promised us that algae fuel is just around the corner. Probably in time for election day if we just give it enough taxpayer money.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/epic-greenfail-omnibus-edition.php
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