Feds pour $32 million more into beleaguered solar industry

May 13, 2015: Some of the more than 37,000 solar panels gather sunlight at the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Center, in Merritt Island, Fla. Industry experts rank Florida third in the nation in rooftop solar energy potential but 13th in the amount of solar energy generated. (AP)

The Department of Energy has doled out another $32 million to support the solar industry, a sector fraught with technology challenges and scandal – and nevertheless propped up with billions of taxpayer dollars during the Obama Administration.

This latest funding is dedicated to training a workforce of solar technicians, developing new technology and implementing a database to share performance data, the DOE announced in a press release last week.  The training goal is 75,000 workers by 2020 and an undisclosed amount of “other professionals” in other fields such as real estate, finance, insurance and fire and safety.

What the release didn’t say was that the Obama Administration has spent $150 billion on green initiatives between 2009 and 2014, yet the industry cannot survive without government giveaways, a Brookings Institution study found.“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to spend even more money on job-training programs that are proven failures,” said Heritage Foundation energy expert David W. Kreutzer. “Industry will provide job-training where there are real jobs to be filled. The energy revolution in places like North Dakota and Texas has created hundreds of thousands of jobs—many of which required considerable technical skill—without a federally funded job-training program.”

Green giveaways were ramped up in 2009 with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRRA), which dedicated $51 billion to renewable energy. A portion of ARRA was used for solar company loan guarantees, like the bankrupt Solyndra ($535 million) and Abound Solar ($400 million).

Then there was Ivanpah, a solar electricity plant that received more than $2 billion. When that project was completed, it produced less than 40 percent of projected output at a cost three times higher than traditional electricity, according to a report by the Taxpayer Protection Alliance.

Via: Fox News

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In the Energy Debate between Palin and Obama...Obama Lost

You  know we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we're going to take control of our energy future, and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year when the economy starts getting better, world demand starts increasing, turmoil in the Middle East or some other parts of the world, if we're going to stop being at the mercy of these world events, then we need a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy - oil, gas, wind, solar, and nuclear, and biofuels, and more.

President Obama made these remarks in February of 2012 at the University of Miami.  The President was criticizing the longstanding argument of political rival Sarah Palin, who urges the nation to "drill, baby, drill."

Palin expounded on these sentiments in 2010:

Although the Left chooses to mock the mantra of "drill, baby, drill," and they ignorantly argue against the facts pertaining to the need for America to responsibly develop her domestic supply of natural resources, surely they can't argue the national security implications of relying on foreign countries to extract supplies that America desperately needs for industry, jobs, and security. Some of the countries we're now reliant upon and will soon be beholden to can easily use energy and mineral supplies as a weapon against us.

In 2011, in an interview with the CBS affiliate WTKR in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the president contradicted his own remarks suggesting that oil prices cannot be lowered by arguing:

Via: American Thinker

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Every Green Energy Failure Is News

USA Today (10/17/12) ran a story about a battery manufacturer filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But the story might as well have been a press release from the Mitt Romney campaign.

"Another Blow for Green Energy" read the headline. Wendy Koch's piece led off with this:

An electric vehicle battery maker that was awarded $249 million in federal stimulus funds filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on Tuesday, giving GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney potential ammunition to attack President Obama's green-energy subsidies.

It's a short article, but it's hard to avoid the central theme: This is good news for the Romney campaign. Koch writes:

Its Chapter 11 filing will likely spur further GOP criticism, which escalated once solar panel manufacturer Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2011 after receiving more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees.

In the first presidential debate October 3, Romney called four aid recipients "losers," including Solyndra, Fisker, EV car maker Tesla Motors and auto battery manufacturer Ener1.

"You don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers," Romney told Obama in a sharp exchange.

On Tuesday, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul called A123's bankruptcy "yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work."

If it's important to note the campaign ramifications of this story, then perhaps readers should know that Romney claimed that about half of the companies receiving green energy loan guarantees have gone out of business. That is, as you might expect, completely false.

Via: Fair

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List of Failed Obama Green Energy & Solar Companies in the Billions

Below is a list of failed energy companies backed by President Barack Obama and funded with tax dollars. President Obama has gone to great lengths to support policies to advance so-called green energy technologies but so far has met with utter failure.  The President plans to double down on these unproven, expensive failed technologies if he gets a second term.

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Most Americans are asking, “Can the United States of America REALLY afford FOUR MORE YEARS of President Obama?

List Of Failed Green Energy Jobs & Companies – By Obama

Update: 7/19/12: The Amonix Solar: FAIL! – manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, subsidized by more than $20 million in federal tax credits and grants given by Obama Administration, has closed its 214,000 square foot facility a year after it opened.

• Solar Trust of America: FAIL! - Filed Bankruptcy in Oakland, CA, April 3, 2012 – On April 2, 2012
• Bright Source: FAIL! - Bright Source warned Obama’s Energy Department officials in March 2011 that delays in approving a $1.6 billion U.S. loan guarantee would embarrass the White House and force the solar-energy company to close. Lost Billions of dollars but Getting More Money To Keep Trying. Can you say, “This isnt working?”
• Solyndra: FAIL! - Obama gave Solyndra $500,000,000 in taxpayer money and Solyndra shut its doors and laid off 1100 workers in August 2011 After Billions in Losses due to failure to make a solar product that works!
• LSP Energy: FAIL! - LSPEnergy LP filed bankruptcy protection and a sale of its assets in Feb 2012
• Energy Conversion Devices: FAIL! – On February 14, 2012 Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. and its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy
• Abound Solar: FAIL! - Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee from Barack Obama announced in June, 2012 that it would file for bankruptcy
• SunPower: FAIL! - SunPower stopped producing solar cells last year at near bankruptcy restructured only with help of, get this, oil giant TOTAL who owns 60% stake. Irony! Still struggling…
• Beacon Power: FAIL! – Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy Oct 2011 just a year after Obama approved $43 million loan Government loan guarantee
  
• Ecotality: FAIL! - ECOtality, a San Francisco green-tech company that never earned any money on the verge of bankruptcy after receiving roughly $115 million in two loan guarantees from Obama 
• A123 Solar: FAIL! -A123 received $279 million from taxpayers thanks to PresidentObama’sDepartment of Energy loan guarantees and after Solyndra bankruptcy is getting another $500M from Obama and it has lost $400M
• UniSolar: FAIL! - Uni-Solar filed for Ch 11 bankruptcy in June 20 this year laid off hundreds got more Obama money still failing but still in business
• Azure Dynamics: FAIL! - Azure Dynamics files for bankruptcy in June wasting millions in Obama “Stimulus” and tax credits.  Azure Dynamics LLC filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US.  Azure laid off 120 of its 160 employees in Oak Park; Boston; Vancouver, British Columbia; and the UK.
• Evergreen Solar: FAIL! - Evergreen Solar received $527 Million in Taxpayer money from Obama filed bankruptcy
• Ener1: FAIL! received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration filed for bankruptcy January 2012

Via: Divided States

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DNC TO PROMOTE 'SUCCESS' OF AUTO BAILOUT

The DNC has plenty of good elected official seats still available. 

The (Convention planning) documents also give a glimpse of what parts of Obama’s record will get the most attention in the campaign, with one piece — the auto bailout — rating several mentions in the plan....

President Barack Obama claims the $82 billion auto bailout “created or saved” one million jobs.  But this is the Administration that claimed the $1 trillion so-called “Stimulus” bill “created or saved” jobs - in non-existent Congressional districts.

Chevy Volt

The administation spent $80 billion on “green jobs” - but couldn’t define what a “green job” was.  And when they finally started defining it - counted things like oil industry lobbyist, bus driver and garbage man. Suffice to say, President Obama and his Democrat cohorts have a long history of being...disingenuous.  And having a great deal of difficulty with math. 

We think the auto bailout rates several mentions - though we’re sure ours won’t come up at the Charlotte, North Carolina Democrat Lie-A-Thon.  Behold:

Taxpayers are poised to lose over $42 billion on the $82 billion auto bailout.  President Obama in late 2009 said we would make money on it.

$26.5 billion of the loss was a straight payoff to the Democrat-apparatchik United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

During the bankruptcy process, President Obama illegally paid off the UAW first and in full - before secured bondholders who should have been made whole before anyone else got a dime.  Which was incredibly disruptive and destructive of the entire bond market. 

President Obama illegally carried forward through the bankruptcy the ridiculously exorbitant UAW contracts, a huge contributing factor to GM going under in the first place - and are again, predictably, helping to wreck the bottom line.

Via Breitbart

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