The incoming GOP-led House of Representatives has an ideal target to show it’s concerned about the economy: cutting back the Obama administration’s massive and unprofitable taxpayer subsidies of “green energy.”
The Solyndra debacle is an excellent case in point. This company makes solar panels, and last year received $535 million in taxpayer loans.for a factory expansion that was much-praised by Obama and Gov. Schwarzenegger.
The expansion would have created thousands of the much-touted “green jobs jobs” in project construction and in building solar panels. But Solyndra couldn’t compete against lower-cost competition from China. So the expansion was canceled last week.
The company’s fortunes sparkled in September 2009, when the Obama administration announced $535 million in taxpayer loans to finance construction of a new solar-equipment factory.
In December 2009, the company filed for an initial public offering of its stock expected to raise $300 million. In May, Obama toured the Solyndra facilities in Fremont.
The company’s fortunes dimmed soon after. In June, Solyndra canceled its IPO, and the following month its chief executive officer, Chris Gronet, quit. Brian Harrison, a former Intel executive, took over as CEO.
I wonder: What happens to the $535 million? Do taxpayers get it back, or does the Obama administration and its allies just write it off? Where did the money go? Did Solyndra executives and backers give any campaign contributions, and if so, where did they go?
Solyndra’s problems have been known for months. The New York Times ran a good piece from Greenwire on the question of how Solyndra could have received such a huge federal loan when its economic model was so off-kilter.
The answer, according to an analyst quoted in the NYT: “Solyndra has the powerful lobbyists in the business. So they get a lot of love from the government.”
The New York Times’ own reporters don’t seem willing to draw the logical conclusion that taxpayer subsidies of unprofitable businesses invites political corruption. Instead, the narrative is how inexpensive green energy is, just a pittance more.
In a sob-story piece last week about a wind power project (one of the most inefficient sources of green energy), two NYT reporters lamented the troubles of green power.
Michael Polsky’s wind farm company was doing so well in 2008 that banks were happy to lend millions for his effort to light up America with clean electricity.
But two years later, Mr. Polsky has a product he is hard-pressed to sell.
His company, Invenergy, had a contract to sell power to a utility in Virginia, but state regulators rejected the deal, citing the recession and the lower prices of natural gas and other fossil fuels.
“The ratepayers of Virginia must be protected from costs for renewable energy that are unreasonably high,” the regulators said. Wind power would have increased the monthly bill of a typical residential customer by 0.2 percent.
Even as many politicians, environmentalists and consumers want renewable energy and reduced dependence on fossil fuels, a growing number of projects are being canceled or delayed because governments are unwilling to add even small amounts to consumers’ electricity bills.
The statistics are presented in a fashion intended to bias unsuspecting readers to support green energy because the extra cost is small.
Instead of presenting the added cost of this wind power project as a percentage of the customers’ entire bill, it would have been more useful to see how much extra the wind-generated electricity would have cost in kilowatt-hours, compared to the sources now being used.
And how much wind power is being purchased? If it’s a very small amount compared to total electricity usage, the cost per kilowatt-hour could be much higher and only boost customers’ bill by a small fraction. And if that is true, if wind power is really used on a large scale to “light up America,” then America is in for sticker shock.
Other facts not in the article: Wind power doesn’t blow all the time, so peak production occurs only about a third of the time. To make up the gap, you need conventional power plants in reserve to kick in when the wind dies down.
Buried in the story is an actual comparison of wind power costs with conventional power costs:
In April, for example, the state public utilities commission in Rhode Island rejected a power-purchase deal for an offshore wind project that would have cost 24.4 cents a kilowatt-hour. The utility now pays about 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity from fossil fuels.
Do the math: 9.5 cents per kilowatt-hour vs. 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s the comparison the New York Times reporters would rather not stress.
Finally, let’s take a look at the campaign contributions of wind farm proprietor Michael Polsky. Here’s a few, none of which surprised me in the least:
* $25,000 to the Obama campaign in September, 2008.
* $2,300 to Obama in July, 2008.
* $2,225 to Dick Durbin, Democratic senator from Illinois.
You can look at the others at the link — all Democrats in this and the 2008 election cycle, of course.
The NYT’s story about Polsky’s high-minded efforts to light up America with clean energy looks a bit different in this light. Polsky is a businessman who doesn’t want to compete on the free market, so he lobbies Democratic politicians for favors. This legalized bribery isn’t very high-minded; it’s seamy. So the New York Times’ reporters labor mightily to keep this discouraging information from their readers.
Fighting this waste of taxpayer money and political corruption won’t occur easily. Along with Obama and the lefty Dems, the Mainstream Media will raise the predictable howls of anguish, and downplay the enormous cost and encumbrances of the more extravagant green projects. Count on much more disinformation in the New York Times and similarly-biased media outlets.
I don’t oppose all green energy by any means. For example, rooftop solar panels make sense in many cases. But green energy should make its own way in fair competition against nuclear and fossil fuels. Research promises to bring down the price of green energy, making it steadily more attractive over the years. But taxpayers and utility users should not be forced to pay for the wishes of environmentalists, lefty Democrats and the MSM.
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This article reflects the opinion of Bradley J. Fikes, and not necessarily that of his employer, the North County Times.