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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Green Energy: Another stimulus-backed solar panel maker, one the president
touted in a weekly radio address, lays off most of its workers. The
definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different
result.
President Obama is the Little Orphan Annie of presidents. He is always
singing that the sun will come out tomorrow and shine on the American
economy and his dreams of green energy. Yet companies such as Solyndra have
proved the rule rather than the exception, producing more pink slips than
green jobs as solar power and alternative energy continue to be eclipsed by
advances in fossil fuel production.
The latest casualty is Abound Solar Manufacturing. The Longmont, Colo.-based
recipient of a $400 million federal loan guarantee to expand solar panel
production said Tuesday it is laying off 280 workers and delaying a new
factory in Indiana. That amounts to a 70% reduction in its workforce.
The company says it's merely restructuring. "We are facing tough market
conditions and falling prices," said Steve Abely, Abound's chief financial
officer, in remarks eerily reminiscent of Solyndra's last will and financial
testament.
Lost in the tap-dancing verbiage is the simple fact that solar power is not
financially competitive without subsidies like Abound and Solyndra have
received.
This is a far cry from the bright future painted by the president in his
weekly radio address of July 3, 2010. Touting his push for a clean energy
economy, Obama said Abound would "manufacture advanced solar panels at two
new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent
jobs" at plants in Indiana and Colorado.
Apparently Abound was not helped by last July's $9.2 million Export-Import
Bank loan to support exports of thin-film solar photovoltaic modules from
Abound Solar to Punj Lloyd Solar Power Ltd., a company in India building a
five-megawatt solar project on a 62.5-acre site near the village of Bap.
In a January report, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News counted at least 12 clean
energy companies that were having trouble after collectively being approved
for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for
bankruptcy: the junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES'
subsidiary Eastern Energy and the infamous Solyndra.
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"Hindsight is always 20-20," Obama said in an interview with George
Stephanopoulos of ABC News. "It went through the regular review process. And
people felt like this (Solyndra) was a good bet." As this latest in a
string of green energy flops shows, the president has quite a green energy
gambling addiction.
Fact is, the administration had warnings about Solyndra from private ratings
agencies such as Price Waterhouse Coopers and from the Office of Management
and Budget that the deal was "not ready for prime time."
The administration also had warnings about other such companies, yet
proceeded either out of ideological blindness or to reward campaign donors,
such as George Kaiser, who were heavily invested in such firms.
First Solar was the biggest S&P 500 loser in 2011, and its CEO was cut loose
— even as taxpayers were forced to back a whopping $3 billion in company
loans.
SunPower landed a deal linked to a $1.2 billion loan guarantee last fall
after a French oil company took it over. On its last financial statement,
SunPower owed more than it was worth.
Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy
Research, said in a recent interview with Cybercast News Service that "
without government subsidies or mandates, none of these energy sources exist
; they just simply won't. ... These energy sources are not as efficient as
the sources of energy that the marketplace has picked and the consumers have
picked to run the country."
Rendering a verdict of the president's failed industrial policy, consumers
and voters will get to pick their own winners and losers in November. |
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