Archive for the ‘Green Jobs’ Category

America’s largest solar panel manufacturer is laying off 2,000 workers and closing factories in response to “waning demand” and increased competition from China, the Associated Press reports.

First Solar Inc. says the layoffs amount to 30 percent of its global workforce. Some cuts come from shutting down production lines in Malaysia and closing a factory in Germany. The company will also cut additional jobs in both Europe and the U.S.

First Solar says its manufacturing costs should drop by $30-$60 million this year and another $100-$120 million a year afterward. It will book a restructuring charge of $245 to $370 million.

The Tempe, Ariz., company says the cuts are necessary to cope with deteriorating demand in Europe, which has been the biggest market for solar panels.

However, what’s odd about the Associated Press report is the fact that there’s no mention of the $3.1 billion
 
In federal loan guarantees First Solar was awarded back in 2011. We assume the billions were given with the understanding that First Solar, “America’s largest solar panel manufacturer,” would boost the economy and create jobs.
Not so much.

And there’s no mention of that time First Solar (via the infamous Export-Import Bank) was awarded $455.7 million in additional funds to sell solar panels to itself
 
And there’s no mention of that time former CEO Rob Gillete’s unexpected resignation sent the company’s stock into a downward spiral
 
What we’re trying to say is that maybe — just maybe — First Solar was a poorly run company from the start and the mass layoffs have nothing to do with Chinese competition and “waning demand” but everything to do with lousy management and structuring

Mitt Romney has a chance at beating President Barack Obama in the November election. Much depends on whether America will swallow Obama’s Green platform.
Obama’s renewable energy plans are as much a flight of fancy as GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s idea to build moon bases. The difference is that Gingrich got caught up in a daydream. Obama’s plans are for nothing less than control over America’s future.
Last month, Obama went on a two-day, four-State energy tour, proclaiming the benefits of clean energy and the evils of petroleum. He said that the Republican candidates in the GOP primary are either misguided or simply ignorant ­Luddites.
Obama joked: “Lately we’ve heard a lot of politicians, a lot of folks who are running for a certain office — they shall go unnamed — they dismiss wind power.  They dismiss solar power.”
While the President argues that investments in green energy will ease the pain at the pump and even rebuild America, there just isn’t any evidence to support his view.
Consider this from Robert Bryce’s 2010 book Power Hungry: The Myths Of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels Of the Future:
Oil is not a perfect fuel. There is no such thing. But oil is — in nearly every case — greener than any of the alternative energy forms that might replace it. No matter whether the replacement is ethanol from corn, biomass — such as wood, straw, or dung — or biofuels made from palm oil or other feedstocks, the conclusion is apparent: Oil (and if you can get it, natural gas) simply has no peers. Oil provides consumers with both high energy density and high power density. It burns cleanly. It’s easily handled at atmospheric temperature and pressure, and the number of uses for it are [sic] essentially limitless.
The crude truth from experts doesn’t deter Obama. On March 22, at the end of his energy tour, Obama said:
The point is, there will always be cynics and naysayers who just want to keep on doing the same things the same way that we’ve always done them. We’ve got a choice. … We can keep developing new energy and new technology that uses less oil, or we can listen to these folks who actually believe that the only thing we can do is drill our way out of this problem.
Obama’s latest directive seems more about getting power for himself than it does about generating power for the Nation.
Recently, syndicated columnist and noted economist Lawrence Kudlow pointed out the flaws in Obama’s mantra on energy:
As Ronald Reagan famously said, “There you go again.”
Of course, Reagan was blaming Jimmy Carter for launching false attacks during a debate. And that line was so effective, it not only helped Reagan win the debate, but a presidential election that would change American history.
But “there you go again” can apply equally to President Obama. Once again this week, the president was out on the campaign trail bashing and oil and gas companies. And he continued to spread major falsehoods about this industry, which I guess is the polite way to put it.
Obama is obsessed with oil and gas. He is a prisoner of the left-wing environmental groups. And really, he’s extending his leftist class-warfare attack from rich people to successful oil and gas producers.
What seems to have Obama especially steamed is the fact that the conventional-energy companies are profitable… So he wants to tax them. He then wants to redistribute their income to his favorite green-energy firms.
Obama’s Con Game
I trust that most Americans know the difference between a pipeline and a pipe dream. We tend to recognize con artists, regardless of the magic in the elixir they are selling. Well, most — but not all — of us do.
That’s good news for Obama, who seems more like Bernie Madoff than like Reagan.
Remember Madoff? He ran a giant Ponzi scheme that cost his investors $18 billion. His fraud was perpetrated on thousands of people, including his closest friends. They all believed the money mogul could deliver double-digit returns regardless of recessions and bear markets.
Why did such intelligent people trust Madoff? Because they desperately wanted to believe it to be true.
Madoff’s Ponzi scheme tanked only after he couldn’t get enough new investors to throw their money in to finance his hustle.
Madoff was a greedy crook who used his friends and associates. That’s prima facie. What was shocking is that so many ignored the adage: “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Four years after Madoff’s sentencing, a much bigger con is being perpetrated. It garners more support each passing month, and it comes from the man most Americans are taught to trust: their President.
Unlike Madoff, Obama is not interested in scamming a few thousand Americans out of a few billion dollars. He has far bigger ambitions. He wants another four years in office to change America into what he has always envisioned: a liberal society that will march lockstep to the orders dictated by Washington.
Obama has a few problems to overcome before he can begin his second term, most notably high unemployment and high energy prices.
Yet Obama has come up with a way for one stone to kill three birds. He promises that investing in clean, renewable energy will create millions of jobs and make America energy independent. The icing on the cake is that it will even save the planet.
Even for men like Obama, miracles don’t come cheaply; so expect the price tag on clean, yet un-proven, energy to reach hundreds of billions of dollars.
There’s just one problem: Affordable green energy is at least a couple of decades into our future. Perhaps our President thinks this is a small price to keep him in the Oval Office.
What loyal Democrats don’t understand is that the Greens are making fake promises that could impose a dark future on a Nation that is rich in fossil fuels.
America has real problems, but energy isn’t near the top of the list. Or at least it wouldn’t be if America’s leaders would agree to set wildcatters free off our coastal shores and in Alaska and let them tap into the bonanza of petroleum that can be discovered, pumped and transported throughout the United States.
Yet for some reason — personal, religious or political — Obama is doing everything he can to arrest a renaissance in petroleum. If anything, his plans will make America more dependent on Islamic oil.
Already, European nations are scaling back spending on renewable energy projects. But not Obama.
In a March 26 post on news.gather.com, Renee Nal wrote:
The Obama administration has already spent billions on “green energy” companies, with most of them resulting in bankruptcy and massive layoffs. His Green Agenda is not working and he wants even more. For Obama’s 2013 budget proposal, “Programs for advanced research along with energy efficiency and renewable energy account for the biggest percentage increase in spending.”
Don’t Shoot The Messenger
I write at the request of Bob Livingston. Sometimes, commenters claim I am a mouthpiece for Big Oil. My education and background is in petroleum and journalism. Yet I have never received so much as a dime from any oil company, big or small. At the moment, I don’t even own petroleum stocks. I started off as a cub reporter more than three decades ago, and I have had the good fortune to have publishers like Livingston who let me write the truth as I see it.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
Editor, Myers’ Energy & Gold Report

By Joel GehrkeInterior Secretary Ken Salazar and Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., at the Blythe solar project groundbreaking / White House

Solar company bankrupt despite ‘win-win’ DOE loan byJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., at the Blythe solar project groundbreaking / White House
In keeping with the recent trend of so-called green companies going into the red, another solar energy company supported by President Obama’s top administration officials declared bankruptcy today.

Solar Trust for America received $2.1 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Department of Energy — “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project,” according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu — for a project near Blythe, Calif., but declared bankruptcy within a year. It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded.

Senior officials in Obama’s administration had very high hopes for the Blythe project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar attended the groundbreaking ceremony, which he described as “a historic moment in America’s new energy frontier” and “another important step in making America’s clean energy future a reality.” Chu trumpeted at the time that Solar Trust would prove that “when we rev up the great American innovation machine, we can out-compete any other nation.”

The embarrassment should be bipartisan. “This is a huge milestone for our community,” Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., said when the company received its loan guarantee. “I look forward to continuing my work supporting projects . . . that will harness our local energy resources and help reduce our nation’s dangerous dependence on unstable foreign oil.”

Uwe Schmidt, chairman and CEO of the company, also argued that Solar Trust was good for the nation. He wrote last year that “the DOE loan guarantee is a ‘win-win’ for government and the companies involved and will not only advance the cause of energy independence but will create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.”

The bankruptcy makes Schmidt’s attempt to rebuke DOE critics in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy particuarly ironic.

“Despite the posturing and finger pointing, the American solar energy industry is alive and well,” Schmidt wrote in an op-ed for the Huffington Post, before discussing his company’s business plans. Referring to Solyndra, he lamented that “one company’s bankruptcy has cast doubt on the credibility of a government program that is otherwise being administered with incredible efficiency.”

The list of bankrupt solar companies has grown since Schmidt scolded Solyndra investigators. How many more might go bankrupt? Secretary Chu won’t say.

Posted by Jim HoftPosted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, February 4, 2012, 8:33 AM

They might as well have flushed the money down a toilet.
The government spent half a billion dollars on green jobs training – Only 10% of those trained found jobs.
Herald.net reported:

Government-funded training for so-called green jobs has come to a near standstill in Snohomish County, having produced lackluster results.

Over the past few years, about 500 residents in the county attended short-term training programs with the hope of landing one of 25,000 or more green jobs expected to be needed in the state by 2020.

So far, 95 of those 500 students have found jobs.

WorkForce Development Council of Snohomish County, which oversees training under the federal Workforce Investment Act of 1998, recently put a hold on sending more people through the training program, which had a job placement rate of about 20 percent.

That’s still a higher placement rate for green-job training programs than the national rate, which is about 10 percent, according to a recent U.S. Department of Labor audit.

Nationwide, about $500 million in Recovery Act funds were allocated to train nearly 125,000 people for green careers. Nearly a year and a half later, the audit found, only 52,762 people had been trained and 8,035 had found jobs.

Ener1 — a lithium-ion battery-maker whose EnerDel subsidiary received a $118.5 million grant from DOE as part of the 2009 stimulus — has filed for Chapter 11 protection, the company announced Thursday.

Ener1 owns 80.5 percent of EnerDel, while 19.5 percent is owned by the auto parts manufacturer Delphi, according a company press release last week.

The news comes just as President Barack Obama tours the country touting his energy plan. It’s also exactly a year since Vice President Joe Biden visited the company to highlight Obama’s 2011 State of the Union promise to put 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, a plan that has largely fallen by the wayside.

Ener1’s filing, in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, is part of a “pre-packaged” plan that will restructure the company and bring in as much as $81 million in new capital.
The plan is designed to keep the Ener1’s operations going and not lose any jobs, according to the company.

But House Republicans are already up in arms over the failures of Solyndra and Beacon Power, which received loan guarantees under a different DOE program, and say the latest news fits a pattern.

“Instead of producing thousands of ‘clean energy’ jobs, the administration’s loan guarantee and grant programs are yielding another bankruptcy and the squandering of taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel. “This is another reason why the White House should not be picking winners and losers among American manufacturers.”

Stearns also questioned the timing of the announcement, which came just days after Obama touted renewable energy during his State of the Union address.
“It is interesting that Ener1 made the filing after the president touted subsidies for batteries given that the administration asked Solyndra to hold off the announcement of job losses until after the 2010 elections,” Stearns said.

In November, House Republicans released emails in which an adviser to Argonaut Private Equity, a major backer of Solyndra, wrote that DOE officials “did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3,” the day after the midterm elections. The adviser added that “oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”

DOE stressed that Ener1 is not going under and said its technology is sound.
“This grant is part of the department’s efforts to commercialize promising vehicle technologies that will help America to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and ensure U.S. companies can compete in the global auto industry,” DOE spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said in an email. “While it’s unfortunate that Ener1, the parent company, has entered a restructuring process, the new infusion of $80 million in private capital demonstrates that the technology has merit.”

DOE has paid out almost $55 million of the grant. It stopped payments last year after Ener1 began faltering and was pulled from trading on NASDAQ.
Stutsman said DOE will pay out the remainder of the grant dollar for dollar to match the company’s investments.

EnerDel also received some federal contracts during the George W. Bush administration, including a $6.5 million contract in 2007 with DOE and a consortium of auto manufacturers that shared half the cost, and a $4 million battery R&D deal in 2008 from the Defense Department.

“Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles,” Ener1 CEO Alex Sorokin said in a statement. “We believe that the restructuring plan will enable us to address our business and financial challenges comprehensively, quickly and efficiently, and position us to compete much more effectively in the energy storage market.”
The company said all of its creditors are on board with the plan, which a district bankruptcy court must approve.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72032_Page2.html#ixzz1kfko4wyF

CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson takes a look at 11 more Solyndras that were part of Obama’s Energy program. Attkisson was one of the original reporters that uncovered the Solyndra scandal.

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are 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 Solyndra.

According to CBS News, Beacon Power, a “green energy storage company,” recieved $43 million from the government. Standard and Poor’s had given the project a rating of “CCC-plus.”

By Charles Pope, The Oregonian

WASHINGTON — At least $7 million in federal stimulus money intended to provide jobs to unemployed Oregonians instead paid wages to 254 foreign workers, federal investigators have concluded.

The money was for forest clean-up jobs in central Oregon where thousands of experienced workers were idle. When the contracts were announced in 2009, Oregon had the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation at 11.1 percent, with rates in the state’s rural forest counties nearly 15 percent and higher.

Even so, the contractors told federal regulators they could not find enough local workers for the jobs.

That came as a surprise to local officials, who said they often got hundreds of responses to every job opening.

“This is a timber area and we hadn’t been cutting trees for years,” said state Sen. Chris Telfer, R-Bend. “It really ticked off a lot of people here.”

In a report on the investigation this week, the Department of Labor’s Inspector General found that contractors who brought in foreign workers violated no laws or regulations, but used legal loopholes to hire foreign workers.

While legal, the hiring practices appear to violate the spirit and purpose of the $840 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus, which was designed to create jobs that would jumpstart the country out of recession.

“The goal of the stimulus bill was to put Americans back to work, not foreign nationals,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who asked for the investigation in September 2010.

“It is obscene that U.S. companies were rewarded for abusing our American workers and immigration laws to undercut competition and squeeze more profits out of contracts,” DeFazio said. “Oregonians have been logging for over a century, our workforce is one of the best in the world, and these contracts should have been awarded to companies that hire Oregon loggers.”

The federal investigation looked at 14 contracts to clear federal forests in central Oregon. The contracts were controlled by four Oregon companies: Medford Cutting Edge Forestry, Summitt Forestry, Ponderosa Reforestations, and G.E. Forestry. All hired foreign workers, according to the report, though they didn’t all handle hiring in the same way.

The contractors applied for H-2B visas allowing them to hire workers for seasonal jobs, according to the report. In order to get clearance, contractors must prove the jobs can’t be filled with local residents and that pay won’t dilute local prevailing wages.

But there is a loophole. Under federal rules, notice of the job openings must be made where the job “originates.” And while the bulk of the work took place in Oregon, smaller jobs originated in other states.

According to reports by The Bend Bulletin, which revealed the foreign hires in a series of stories last year that triggered DeFazio’s call for an investigation, contractors advertised the jobs in tiny newspapers in California and Washington state for several days.

“Employers were not required to recruit U.S. workers in Oregon, and we were provided no evidence that they did,” federal investigators said. “Workers in Oregon were likely unaware that these job opportunities were available.”

In fact, although 146 U.S. workers were contacted for possible employment, investigators found that none was hired.

Contractors used another regulation to dampen response from Oregon residents, the report said. The visa regulations allowed the contractors to do all their hiring four months before work started. That made unemployed workers who needed jobs immediately reluctant to commit to temporary jobs four months later.

Despite the barriers, 29 U.S. workers learned of the jobs and asked about employment. The report did not say if they were from Oregon.

“We verified with the employers that none of these workers actually began employment with them,” the report says.

The reason?

“We spoke with two workers who reported that the employer used discouraging language, such as references to age and inquiries about speaking another language, which are not valid conditions of employment,” the report says.

The report does not address the nationality of the workers who were hired.

As required, the employers also notified state workforce agencies of the openings. But just as with obscure newspaper ads, the state postings were far-afield, with the notices sent to Arizona, California, Idaho, Washington and Wyoming.

The Labor Department did not respond to a request for comment, but agency officials have announced plans to revise regulations dealing with H-2B visas.

Congress is likely to act, too. Aides to DeFazio said he is closely monitoring the Labor Department’s proposals for fixing the problems and is not ruling out other action. And in the Senate, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden said he is watching as well.

“Right now there are 14 million job seekers in the U.S. and three million job openings.” Wyden said. “Given those numbers, there is absolutely no reason why hard-working Oregonians should be passed over en masse for Oregon jobs in favor of foreign workers.”

– Charles Pope

THE SOLAR THING
• The Tonopah Solar company in Harry Reid’s Nevada is getting a $737 million loan from Obama’s DOE.

• The project will produce a 110 megawatt power system and employ 45 permanent workers.

• That’s costing us just $16 million per job.

• One of the investment partners in this endeavor is Pacific Corporate Group (PCG).

• The Pacific Corporate Group’s Executive Director is Ron Pelosi, brother of Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

•”Just move along, folks…..nuthin’ goin on here. C’mon . . . keep it movin’! “

President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan.

According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds.

At the time, the Associated Press reported that the stimulus grants included $68 million to build a demonstration model of an energy-efficient office building; $19.2 million for solar, geothermal and fuel cell equipment; $10 million for testing and evaluation of wind technology; and $45 million to research and test drive-train systems for wind turbines.

The lab’s mission is to handle U.S. Department of Energy research and development programs.

NREL spokesman Bob Noun blames Congress for the organization’s failures. The Denver Post reports that he believes the gridlocked U.S. Congress forced the NREL to find $8 million in new budgetary savings.

“We don’t see any budget scenario where the lab doesn’t face budget cuts,” Noun said. “We just want to be proactive in managing the budget so we continue our core mission.”

Amy Oliver of Colorado’s conservative Independence Institute said one way to look at these potential “green jobs” shortcomings is that the NREL is exaggerating its claims. Oliver told The Daily Caller that the government-funded lab has seen a surge in government funding in recent years.

“Their funding for 2008 was $328 million,” Oliver said in a phone interview. “In 2010 it was $536.5 million. They’ve had a 64 percent increase in their funding during the Obama administration.”

Oliver acknowledges that the $8 million NREL projects in savings is a significant amount, and told TheDC she was impressed to learn that its leadership would even consider cutting their budget. But, she says, while the saved $8 million doesn’t represent a real budget cut, it’s a better outcome than more spending.

Oliver also suggested that the NREL layoffs may indicate another failure of the Obama administration’s “green jobs” agenda. Candidate Obama pledged in 2008 that he would add 5 million green jobs to the economy, but Republican lawmakers in Washington, D.C. now say the White House has stretched what it defines as a “green job” in order to pad its numbers.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/04/green-jobs-farm-in-colorado-sheds-jobs-after-receiving-200m-in-stimulus-funds/#ixzz1Zqw2peqB

Via Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard, it has been revealed that the Department of Energy went ahead and approved $1 billion in new loans to green energy companies — including a $737 million loan guarantee to a company known as SolarReserve.

“SolarReserve LLC, a closely held renewable energy developer, received a $737 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee to build a solar-thermal project in Nevada,” reports Bloomberg.”The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nevada, will use the sun’s heat to create steam that drives a turbine, the agency said today in a e-mailed statement. SolarReserve is based in Santa Monica, California.”

On SolarReserve’s website is a list of “investment partners,“ including the ”PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC.”

As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, and Hemingway points out, PCG’s number two is none other than “Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives.”

One of SolarReserve’s other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity.

“Steve Mitchell and Argonaut Private Equity might have a chance to recoup some of their losses in the Solyndra debacle now that the Department of Energy has given a $737 million dollar loan guarantee to a company backed by Argonaut that also lists Mitchell among its board of directors,” reports Joel Gehrke of The Washington Examiner

How would Mitchell be able to “recoup some of the losses” suffered in the Solyndra debacle?

Turns out, Mitchell had served on the Solyndra Board of Directors (and what a great job he did there). Not surprisingly, he serves as Managing Director for Argonaut Private Equity, a company that invested in Solyndra through the LLCs parent company.

Townhall.com Staff  | Email Townhall.com Staff | All Posts By Blogger

Well, well, well. It seems Solyndra isn’t the only company to have crashed and burned, despite a massive injection of stimulus money. FoxNews reports that at least four other companies received government funding, and subsequently filed for bankruptcy. Adding insult to injury, two of these companies were supposed to create (or was it save?) “green jobs.”

Evergreen Solar Inc., indirectly received $5.3 million through a state grant to open a $450 million facility in 2007 that employed roughly 800 people. The company, once a rock star in the solar industry, filed for bankruptcy protection last month, saying it couldn’t compete with Chinese rivals without reorganizing. The company intends to focus on building up its manufacturing facility in China.

SpectraWatt, based in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., is also a solar cell company that was spun out of Intel in 2008. In June 2009, SpectraWatt received a $500,000 grant from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as part of the stimulus package. SpectraWatt was one of 13 compaines to receive the money to help develop ways to improve solar cells without changing current manufacturing processes. 

The company filed for bankruptcy last month, saying it could not compete with its Chinese competitors, which receive “considerable government and financial support.”

Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman also took to the papers to bemoan our failure to keep up with China’s cheap, high-quality solar panels. His argument? We didn’t sink enough money into these failed ventures. After all, the Chinese government subsidizes the heck out of their solar panel industry!

Oh yeah, and there hasn’t been substantial demand for solar panels, so no one is buying the commodity we’re producing expensively anyway. Minor detail.

More damning evidence that the “stimulus” didn’t stimulate anything, except perhaps Debbie Wasserman Schultz‘s imagination.

The White House noted to ABC News that the Bush administration was the first to consider Solyndra’s application and that some executives at the company have a history of donating to Republicans.

The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department’s credit committee had voted against offering a loan commitment to Solyndra.

Even after Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, analysts in the Energy Department and in the Office of Management and Budget were repeatedly questioning the wisdom of the loan. In one exchange, an Energy official wrote of “a major outstanding issue” — namely, that Solyndra’s numbers showed it would run out of cash in September 2011.

There was also concern about the high-risk nature of the project. Internally, the Office of Management and Budget wrote that “the risk rating for the project sponsor [Solyndra] … seems high.” Outside analysts had warned for months that the company might not be a sound investment.

Peter Lynch, a New York-based solar energy analyst, told ABC News it took only a cursory glance through Solyndra’s prospectus to see there was a problem with their numbers.

“It’s very difficult to perceive a company with a model that says, well, I can build something for six dollars and sell it for three dollars,” Lynch said. “Those numbers don’t generally work. You don’t want to lose three dollars for every unit you make.”

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/emails-obama-white-house-monitored-huge-loan-connected/story?id=14508865#ixzz1Y3WK0Een

The green movement of today verses the recycling generation of yesteryear???
In the line at the store, I overheard the cashier telling an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

She was right – my parent’s generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. When they grew up, and in my childhood years, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. We didn’t need a county recycling program. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. They really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the corner grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower SUV every time we had to go two blocks. But we didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling 220 volts dryer – wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. Today communities ban clothes line drying and jeans with holes cost $200. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a smaller screen – not a screen the size of an elephant. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam p-nuts or plastic bubble wrap. Nor did we fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. Every family had a garden. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor (or sharpened a straight razor) instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We played sports on the nearest lot, and came home when it was dark. Today you pay to play and kid’s games run to 10 PM, lighted by megawatt field lights. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen mobile appliances. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Going green doesn’t require the UN, international treaties, or federal laws or government assistance. It just requires simple common sense and personal choice.

In 2008, Reuters published one of those stories predicting that green power would be cost-competitive with fossil fu¬els in five years. Headline: “As Energy Costs Soar, U.S. Looks to Solar.” Among the prophets was Richard Feldt, then the CEO of Evergreen Solar, who said that “it’s not far away” and called for more subsidies. On Monday, Evergreen filed for Chapter 11 bank¬ruptcy.
In the grave-dancing department, let’s note that failure is part of the risk-taking and cre¬ative destruction that drive growth, and that Evergreen got its start in 1994 with an innova¬tion that reduced the costs of silicon panels. The bankruptcy is notable mainly because the Massachusetts-based manufacturer received so much taxpayer support.
Governor Deval Patrick took a $58 million stake in Evergreen in 2007 with direct subsi¬dies and tax breaks in return for the company building a plant in the state. The goal was “to help Evergreen Solar grow and thrive right here in Massachusetts, and give us a head start toward building a clean energy econ¬omy,” Mr. Patrick said at the time.
But in January, Evergreen, shedding cash, shut down the Devens plant and fired 800 workers, claiming it was at a competitive dis-
advantage because U.S. solar subsidies are lower than China’s. In a letter to the Journal, the U.S. solar lobby in Washington said the so-lution was to follow “Chi¬nese policy makers” and make “strategic investments to attract this rapidly grow¬ing industry.”
Mr. Patrick’s economic development secretary, Greg Bialecki, told the Boston Globe that Evergreen’s collapse was “a cautionary lesson,” but not about the dis¬tortions and waste that come with the politi¬cal allocation of capital. “We knew that it would be challenging to do that kind of manu¬facturing in the United States. It also probably suggests that Massachusetts can’t do it alone—in other words, we probably also need federal policy,” he said.
So the Commonwealth subsidies weren’t enough for Evergreen to succeed because the federal subsidies weren’t enough, even though with the stimulus the Obama Energy Department has become one of the largest venture capital firms in the world. And the federal subsidies will only be enough if Wash¬ington emulates the Chinese model of a state-planned economy.

As Evergreen’s bankruptcy shows, the real story is that the government-as-investor model isn’t going to lead the U.S. back to prosperity.

Is this an Omen – Every Green Jobs Company that he visits goes under. So much for the Success of the Community Organizer .

Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration and from the Obama Administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt.

Evergreen, which closed its taxpayer-supported Devens factory in March and cut 800 jobs, has been trying to rework its debt for months. The cash-strapped company announced today has sought a reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and reached a deal with certain note holders to restructure its debt and auction off assets.

The Massachusetts Republican Party called the Patrick administration’s $58 million financial aid package, which supported Evergreen’s $450 million factory, a “waste” of money.

“The bankruptcy of Evergreen Solar is another sad event for the Massachusetts company and highlights the folly of the Patrick-Murray Administration and Obama which has put government subsidies into their pet projects instead of offering broad based relief to all Bay State employers,” said Jennifer Nassour, head of the state GOP.

Greg Bialecki, Patrick’s economic development czar, defended the administration’s support for the once-promising Evergreen. The state is still trying to recoup about $4 million in cash from the Marlboro-based company.

“Not every company is going to be successful … but we still believe the approach of providing business incentives to create and maintain manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts is an important strategy,” he said.

Evergreen — hurt by lower-cost competition in China and plummeting prices for solar panels — also said it will cut more jobs — 65 layoffs in the United States and Europe, mostly through the shutdown of its Midland, Mich., manufacturing facility. That would leave Evergreen with about 68 workers according to a head count listed in the bankruptcy filing.

To cut costs, Evergreen shifted some of its production to Wuhan, China, last year. That joint venture will remain operating subject to financing talks with Chinese investors.

In January, after Evergreen announced it would close the Devens factory, Patrick told the Herald he was disappointed in the job losses but did not regret making the investment.

“I think we did what we could have and should have,” he told the Herald.

In March, during a state Senate hearing that explored the value of tax incentives for Bay State businesses, Evergreen CEO Michael El-Hillow said the company had “earned” 85 percent of the taxpayer benefits it received because of the jobs it originally created.

Evergreen warned investors back in April that it was burning through cash because of slow sales, falling solar-panel prices and weak proceeds from the sale of Devens factory assets.

“Chapter 11 will provide Evergreen Solar with the ability to maximize returns for our stakeholders through the proposed sale process,” El-Hillow said in a statement. “Importantly, we expect to continue our technology development without interruption during Chapter 11 and the sale process.”

But Evergreen shareholders are expected to receive “no distributions” from the asset sales after creditors are repaid.

Shares of Evergreen, which are in danger of delisting from the Nasdaq Stock Market, plunged 57 percent today to 18 cents. The company launched in 1994 and went public in 2000.

The list of top creditors in today’s bankruptcy filing lists a $1.5 million debt to MassDevelopment, the quasi-public state economic development agency.

Maybe Obama wants to put his personal money in his GREEN JOBS.

The United States has had an extremely difficult time perfecting an energy policy that makes sense. The bill forming Department of Energy was signed into law in 1977. There are some good things that came out this in the form of standardization and unification of power distribution into the regional, national, and (with Canada) international power grid. However, one of the main goals given the DOE at its formation was to lead the US to energy self-sufficiency.

After more than a quarter century, we are more dependent on foreign oil than ever.

This wouldn’t be surprising if we had no energy resources. However, we are one of the most energy-rich countries in the world. We own more in-the-ground fossil fuel, than any country. We own vast deposits of uranium. We have great potential for more hydroelectric production. We have many resources for other alternative sources of energy. To understand our place in the energy world, consider these facts:

Total US Oil Reserves:
21 billion barrels proven reserves (CIA World Factbook)
134 billion barrels other estimated recoverable reserves (US Dept. of Interior)
0.727 billion barrels strategic petroleum reserves (CIA World Factbook)
155.727 billion barrels total US recoverable reserves

Other Fossil Fuels
2,175 billion barrels of recoverable oil in shale (Bureau of Land Management)
4116 billion equivalent barrels of oil in recoverable US Coal reserves (US DOE)

Total Worldwide Reserves
1350 billion barrels of oil reserves world-wide (CIA World Factbook)

Adding the estimated recoverable reserves to the proven reserves, the United States ranks third among all nations in the size of our oil reserves, slightly behind Saudi Arabia, and Canada.

The US contains the largest coal and shale oil deposits in the world. The US has 161% more oil in shale than in the total world oil reserves. Even more amazing, there is enough energy in known US coal reserves alone to eclipse that of all the oil on earth by 400%.

Processing petroleum from oil shell involves mining the oil-bearing shale, crushing the stone, and passing it through a high temperature retort. We currently have the technology to do this, but because it is only competitive when the petroleum price is high, the technological development has not yet advanced into research on reducing the cost of production.

One technique that may make the process competitive with deep well petroleum is that of in situ retorting in which the oil shell is reached by drilling shafts through which heat is pumped releasing the oil which is then pumped to the surface. Certainly, as world oil prices go up oil shell will not only be viable, but attractive.

The myth that oil from coal is not economically feasible has been disproven by South Africa. During the years of the world trade embargo against apartheid, coal-rich South Africa developed a process, and built several plants, each of which produce about 100,000 barrels of oil per day. The Chinese are in process of building as many as 27 of these plants in various parts of China.

Beyond the possibility of converting coal to gasoline, coal holds the spot as the number one producer of electricity in the United States. Even with the huge environmental burden, taxation, and political interference coal still remains the mainstay of the electric industry and one of the most important sources of heat for buildings. When the battery and quick charge technology is finally perfected to have total electric vehicles, it will be coal energy in the form of power grid electricity that drives those cars.

So why can’t we do what South Africa did? Why can’t our oil reserves produce the in range of Saudi Arabia or Canada? Why can’t we get research going to make our Shale oil reserves competitive?

I don’t think it is the fault of the DOE. I think it is the fault of some bad policy coming out of other parts of our federal mega-bureaucracy.
Politically and militarily we had strategic reasons to buy from other countries – if we use their oil, we are saving ours for future use, and we became such a valuable customer to oil producing countries they became our “friends” during the cold war. Both of those are probably valid strategies, and both served their purpose; but they also helped drive us to foreign energy dependency.

However, that was not the reason that US oil production dropped precipitously over the years. The main reason was environmental. In part this was caused by regulations by the EPA, and by such things as species protection. But way beyond that was the general liberal mindset against profits from big companies, distribution of wealth through taxation, excessive time and legal interference on new permitting, and outright banning of drilling in large tracts of known oil reserves. It became too costly and extremely time consuming to do exploratory drilling and to sink new wells into currently producing fields. The Global Warming fiasco with the almost unanimous blind support of the left just about did in the fossil fuel producers in America.

If we had taken half the so called “stimulus” money and put it directly into increased domestic fuel production, we would have seen the economy turn around, and energy cost, thus the cost of everything else, going down. Our number one priority should be to become energy independent as soon as possible, and number two should be to start advancing our energy technologies in all areas.

How Nuclear Electricity is Made

It is completely foolish for Washington to be putting restraints on American coal. It is a domestic fuel, which we have abundantly, and could greatly reduce our reliance on unstable Middle Eastern countries. Our country currently runs on coal and should continue to do so for many decades. At one time coal was a dirty fuel; that is no longer the case, it is clean, cheap and efficient. It is and should continue far into the future to be our primary energy source.

It is prudent to expand use of other domestic resources as well – we are rich in natural gas and should fully exploit this resource. We should do all we can to increase domestic oil production. Looking to the long range future we need to continue to take advantage of hydro, wind, solar, and other renewable generation – however in the short term, the next twenty to forty years, wind and solar are not yet competitive and will not be able to provide what we need at the capacity required for many decades. They also require a lot of land, which more traditional plants do not.

The alternative method of generating energy that is currently fully feasible, efficient, and competitive is nuclear power, and it can make an impact in our power production within three years if we were to move forward with expanding our nuclear capacity.

Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest, most reliable method of generating electricity. Its process releases nothing into the land, air, or water. The power plants are expensive to build, but per square foot generate more power. They also require less expensive maintenance and repairs and have a much longer operating life. The biggest drawback to nuclear power is public perception, fueled by environmental scare tactics.

There have been only two major reactor accidents ever – one in the US and one in the Soviet Union. This is with over 14,000 cumulative commercial reactor-years world-wide. Because of poor design, poor fire preventive measures, and inadequate containment measures, Chernobyl power station in the Soviet Union was a disaster. The Soviets were notably careless with both safety and environmental factors in their design and operation of both nuclear power generation and naval reactors. By comparison, Three Mile Island, the only U.S. reactor accident ever, was contained without harm to anyone and with no impact on the environment. The U.S. has 104 operating nuclear power stations in 31 states.

In addition to power generation the U.S. has operated the largest fleet of nuclear powered ships in the world. They currently have in active service 80 nuclear powered ships, including 11 aircraft carriers. The Navy has accumulated more than 5400 years of accident free nuclear service.

There are some very misleading statistics in some anti-nuclear propaganda in which they list the number of nuclear accidents to be about three thousand per year. What they are calling nuclear accidents are actually industrial accidents at nuclear facilities, and there is a very important distinction between the two. A nuclear accident by definition is a failure for any reason of a nuclear reactor which releases radioactive isotopes; the two examples in the first paragraph are the only two nuclear accidents ever.

The large number of accidents reported, industrial accidents, are identical to industrial accidents in conventional power plants, mines, factories, construction, etc. Industrial accidents include those caused steam explosions, falls, shocks, falling objects, vehicle accidents, misapplication of tools, failure to wear personal protective equipment, and any other type of on-the-job injury or fatality. OSHA statistics show the truth is that the industrial accident rate in nuclear power plants is lower than conventional power plants; ten times lower than manufacturing, and less than half the rate of accidents in business offices. Furthermore, contrary to claims that aging nuclear plants are become more dangerous, NRC statistics show that their safety and reliability improve with time.

Another objection to nuclear power is the nuclear waste, spent uranium pellets. The fact is that this concern has already been addressed, and this waste will eventually be reprocessed reducing the amount of waste considerably, by these measures:
• Deep geologic repositories (easily expandable if needed)
• Greatly improved fuel reduces amount of waste
• Reprocessing of waste back into usable fuel

The waste is stored in one of two deep geologic repositories on existing military nuclear reservations in Nevada and New Mexico. In these the material is stored in solid rock below a dry isolated desert environment 1000 feet underground, and 1000 feet above the water table. At today’s rate of production there is already room in these for 10,000 years of production from our 104 power plants. Because these caverns are developed by conventional mining methods that capacity can easily be increased if ever needed.

The amount of waste created is actually very small. The total nuclear waste and its packaging (it’s stored in barrels) generated during the last forty years from all U.S. power plants, processing facilities, labs, and military waste would cover about one football field.

Europe Claims to have been reprocessing its nuclear waste for decades. Some dispute their claims, but most scientists believe it will eventually be perfected. This has several benefits. It reduces the amount of required waste storage. It greatly reduces the radioactive half-life of the waste. It uses existing uranium, reducing requirement for new mined mineral. In fact recycling the fuel in this way would reduce our current waste from nearly covering a football field to covering only 2.4 yards of the field – a 96.6% reduction in stored waste.

Every valid technical, safety, and environmental concern about nuclear power has been mitigated. We have the knowledge and body of experience to expand our usage safely and efficiently. Nuclear electricity should become, along with coal, a mainstay of our power industry.

BEIJING — Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.

But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China.

The factory closing in Devens, Mass., which Evergreen announced earlier this week, has set off political recriminations and finger-pointing in Massachusetts.

And it comes just as President Hu Jintao of China is scheduled for a state visit next week to Washington, where the agenda is likely to include tensions between the United States and China over trade and energy policy.

The Obama administration has been investigating whether China has violated the free trade rules of the World Trade Organization with its extensive subsidies to the manufacturers of solar panels and other clean energy products.

While a few types of government subsidies are permitted under international trade agreements, they are not supposed to give special advantages to exports — something that China’s critics accuse it of doing. The Chinese government has strongly denied that any of its clean energy policies have violated W.T.O. rules.

Although solar energy still accounts for only a tiny fraction of American power production, declining prices and concerns about global warming give solar power a prominent place in United States plans for a clean energy future — even if critics say the federal government is still not doing enough to foster its adoption.

Beyond the issues of trade and jobs, solar power experts see broader implications. They say that after many years of relying on unstable governments in the Middle East for oil, the United States now looks likely to rely on China to tap energy from the sun.

Evergreen, in announcing its move to China, was unusually candid about its motives. Michael El-Hillow, the chief executive, said in a statement that his company had decided to close the Massachusetts factory in response to plunging prices for solar panels. World prices have fallen as much as two-thirds in the last three years — including a drop of 10 percent during last year’s fourth quarter alone.

Chinese manufacturers, Mr. El-Hillow said in the statement, have been able to push prices down sharply because they receive considerable help from the Chinese government and state-owned banks, and because manufacturing costs are generally lower in China.

“While the United States and other Western industrial economies are beneficiaries of rapidly declining installation costs of solar energy, we expect the United States will continue to be at a disadvantage from a manufacturing standpoint,” he said.

Even though Evergreen opened its Devens plant, with all new equipment, only in 2008, it began talks with Chinese companies in early 2009. In September 2010, the company opened its factory in Wuhan, China, and will now rely on that operation.

An Evergreen spokesman said Mr. El-Hillow was not available to comment for this article.

Other solar panel manufacturers are also struggling in the United States. Solyndra, a Silicon Valley business, received a visit from President Obama in May and a $535 million federal loan guarantee, only to say in November that it was shutting one of its two American plants and would delay expansion of the other.

First Solar, an American company, is one of the world’s largest solar power vendors. But most of its products are made overseas.

Chinese solar panel manufacturers accounted for slightly over half the world’s production last year. Their share of the American market has grown nearly six fold in the last two years, to 23 percent in 2010 and is still rising fast, according to GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm in Cambridge, Mass.

In addition to solar energy, China just passed the United States as the world’s largest builder and installer of wind turbines.

The closing of the Evergreen factory has prompted finger-pointing in Massachusetts.

Ian A. Bowles, the former energy and environment chief for Gov. Deval L. Patrick, a Democrat who pushed for the solar panel factory to be located in Massachusetts, said the federal government had not helped the American industry enough or done enough to challenge Chinese government subsidies for its industry. Evergreen has received no federal money.

“The federal government has brought a knife to a gun fight,” Mr. Bowles said. “Its support is completely out of proportion to the support displayed by China — and even to that in Europe.”

Stephanie Mueller, the Energy Department press secretary, said the department was committed to supporting renewable energy. “Through our Loan Program Office we have offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees to 16 clean energy projects totaling nearly $16.5 billion,” she said. “We have finalized and closed half of those loan guarantees, and the program has ramped up significantly over the last year to move projects through the process quickly and efficiently while protecting taxpayer interests.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME – HOW CAN THE OBAMA GOVERNMENT BE SO STUPID. THIS IS OUR MONEY THEY ARE SQUANDERING. THIS GREEN JOBS THING IS NOT WORKING – SOMEONE TELL OBAMA.

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY Gets Grant For Bomb-Detecting Vegetation
January 26, 2011 9:01 PM

Colorado State University has received and $8 million grant from the Department of Defense. They’ll use the money in hopes of growing plants to detect explosives in shopping malls or airports.
Researchers at CSU say they’re finding that plants are at least as good, maybe better, than dogs at sniffing out things like explosives and dangerous chemical weapons. Landscaping plants, for example, can look really nice, but also be programmed to change color when there’s danger in the air.
“If this plant would sense an explosive or an environmental pollutant, it would turn white,” CSU biology professor Dr. June Medford said. “It’s a little slow (right now).”
Medford says right now the plants take a couple hours to begin turning white, but she says with more research any kind of plant could be altered to change color in minutes or possibly seconds.
“You can do it for a lot of other plant species, but it’s not quite as simple as this,” CSU researcher Pete Bowerman said.
Researchers dunk the plants in custom-made bacteria that changes the plant genetically to make it sensitive to anything from TNT to radon.
“They can detect multiple substances and they can turn different colors,” Medford said.
Security at places like airports could well have an entirely different look if plants are doing the screening.

“Instead of that nasty line at DIA that can wind on forever and ever and ever, you would go through a beautiful garden area. Now in my garden area we would have a variety of plants that would detect a variety of those nasty things that a terrorist might take in,” Medford said.
Medford says cameras could detect the color changes automatically to alert security.
“We can then take the 10 people that happened to go by those plants at that time and those 10 people will be patted down, not the hundreds and thousands and everybody that has to have it done right now,” Medford said.
The next step in the research is to get the plants out of the controlled environment of the lab and perfect them so they don’t give false alarms when someone pours out their cup of coffee or walks by with the wrong perfume, for example.