Obama approves 2 solar loans worth $1B for bankrupt Solyndra

by Associated Press

Facing a Friday deadline, the Energy Department has approved two loan guarantees worth more than $1billion for solar energy projects in Nevada and Arizona.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the department has completed a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy for a 110 megawatt solar tower in Nevada, and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 to develop a 150 megawatt solar plant in Arizona.

The loans were approved under the same program that paid for a $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., a now-bankrupt solar panel maker that has become a rallying cry for Republican critics of the Obama administration's green energy program.

The latest loan program, approved under the 2009 economic stimulus law, expires Friday. At least seven projects worth about $5 billion are pending.

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$19.3 Billion only created 3,500 jobs

by Carol D. Leonnig
and Steven Mufson

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.

The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies.

President Obama has made “green jobs” a showcase of his recovery plan, vowing to foster new jobs, new technologies and more competitive American industries. But the loan guarantee program came under scrutiny Wednesday from Republicans and Democrats at a House oversight committee hearing about the collapse of Solyndra, a solar-panel maker whose closure could leave taxpayers on the hook for as much as $527 million.

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EPA Admits Jobs Don't Matter

The Unseen Consequences of "Green Jobs"

by Ronald Bailey

A new report, "Defining, Measuring, and Predicting Green Jobs," by University of Texas economist Gurcan Gulen, issued by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, takes apart many studies predicting that policies mandating alternative energy production, energy efficiency, and conservation will create a boom in employment.

First, Gulen notes that many such studies fail to define clearly what they mean by green jobs. He points out that many pro-green jobs studies do not distinguish temporary construction jobs from more permanent operation jobs. Many studies also assume that green jobs will pay more than jobs in conventional energy production. But why would a construction job at a wind farm pay more than one at a conventional power plant?

Even more disturbingly, many green job studies have no analyses of job losses. Clean energy costs more than conventional energy, which means consumers and businesses will have less income with which to buy and invest. This reduces their consumption of other goods and services, resulting in job losses in those sectors—one of Bastiat's "unseen" effects. In addition, many studies simultaneously count on protectionist policies to exclude clean energy imports while assuming that domestic companies will be freely exporting to other countries.

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Green Jobs Are Not Evergreen Jobs

by Debra J. Saunders

After receiving at least $43 million in aid from the state of Massachusetts, Evergreen Solar announced last month that it would be closing its manufacturing plant in Devens, Mass., laying off its 800 workers and moving its manufacturing operations to China.

Warning: These are the "green jobs" that President Obama has touted as part of his "winning the future" agenda.

The problem isn't that Obama wants to direct federal dollars toward research for alternative energy. It is in the national interest to have affordable options when oil sources are depleted.

The problem is that Obama thinks that green jobs are the answer to the anemic economy recovery. And he clings to that belief in the face of contrary evidence.

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Green technology fails when needed most

Eco Fail: Solar-powered volcano monitoring

devices fail when covered with volcanic ash

by Oyos Saroso H.N.

Indonesia: “Observation from the naked eye shows volcanic ash and smoke, spewing from Mount Anak Krakatau at around 600 meters high, still moving toward the east, or Banten,” said Hargopancuran observation station head Andi Suhardi.

He said volcanic ash emitted by Anak Krakatau was dangerous and carried materials such as hot rocks and pebbles, reaching temperatures up to 600 degrees Celsius.

“We cannot monitor seismic activities because the seismometers are not working after their solar panels were covered with volcanic ash. We urge fishermen not to carry out activities around the volcano and advise vacationers not to approach the mountain up to 2 kilometers in radius,” he said.

Suhardi said his office had learned about the faulty monitoring devices installed on the slopes of Mt. Anak Krakatau on Dec. 27, thus failing to monitor volcanic activities from 6:30 p.m. until noon on Dec. 28, despite the fact that the volcano, located in the middle of the sea, was actively emitting volcanic materials.

“The devices could not be fixed despite the current alert status. We recommend the devices be installed in new places,” he said.

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Congress Should Rein in the EPA

by William F. Shughart II

Despite the Obama administration’s recent decision to delay new rules regarding smog and emissions from industrial boilers, EPA is preparing to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and industrial users that consume oil, natural gas and coal beginning in January. The potential cost: cutting back on carbon emissions will force many smaller, coal-fired power-generating plants to shut down, almost certainly raise electricity rates around the country, undermine the international competitiveness of U.S. businesses and send more American jobs overseas.

It is proposing a reduction in the national ambient-air-quality standard for ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog, which would require industries and many small businesses to adopt new, costly emission controls. (Public opposition has prompted the EPA to delay the rule’s issue until July.) The potential fallout: according the Manufacturers Alliance, an organization that for 75 years has conducted economic research, estimates 7.3 million jobs lost beginning in 2020.

It just raised the amount of corn-based ethanol that must be blended with gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent for 2007 and newer vehicles. Projected cost: around $5 billion a year in federal subsidies.

It is reviewing federal legislation proposing to regulate so-called hydraulic fracturing in natural-gas production, a drilling technique that state agencies already oversee and which has been used in more than one million wells in the United States since 1950. The potential cost: in Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale zone alone, EPA regulation would destroy 280,000 potential jobs and reduce tax revenues by $6 billion over the next decade, according to a study by Natural Resource Economics.

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How The EPA Could Destroy 7.3 Million Jobs

by William F. Shughart II

Environmental Protection Agency officials Wednesday provided power companies and states with new guidance on EPA’s plans to regulate greenhouse gases.

A D.C. lobbyist for two major power companies told Bloomberg News that “the energy and manufacturing sectors will essentially be in a construction moratorium” as a consequence.

Here we are, with 15 million Americans unemployed and millions more underemployed, and the EPA is moving blindly ahead with new regulations that will increase dramatically the energy costs of U.S. industries, reducing their competitiveness and profitability, and making it less likely they will hire.

EPA’s action amounts to rewriting the Clean Air Act to suit its own bureaucratic and ideological objectives. At a time when the Obama administration should be focused on job creation and the nation’s economic recovery, promulgating stringent new environmental rules should be its last priority.

Hundreds of U.S. cities and counties already don’t meet the current standard. If the EPA tightens the rules, these counties will fall permanently into noncompliance, even with costly investments in new pollution controls.

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Disarmament In America's Energy Security Battles

Development of abundant power and fuel sources

is being restrained by regulatory headlocks

in favor of much higher-cost green alternatives

with relatively scant capacity prospects.

by Larry Bell

Current Obama administration battle strategies directed toward futile wars to control climate change and free America from fossil dependence are hindering, not advancing, progress toward lasting energy security. Development of abundant power and fuel sources--which we will continue to rely on--is being restrained by regulatory headlocks in favor of much higher-cost "renewable" and "green" alternatives with relatively scant capacity prospects.

Proponents of such policies would have us imagine an autonomous nation powered and fueled by limitless sunbeams, friendly breezes and amber waves of grain-producing-alcohol that sever reliance upon dirty coal mines, oil rigs and smokestacks (those ugly industries that presently heat our homes, fuel our cars and power our computers). How can we possibly resist such a vision? Well maybe it's a bit easier to do so after we observe European experiences.

The E.U., which like the U.S. relies heavily upon coal and oil, has found little salvation through enormous investments in renewable alternatives. This realization is now causing large measures of buyer's remorse and pain. Members are witnessing their already shaky economies further destabilized by rampant fuel hikes, menacing power shortages and costly, yet unsuccessful, CO2 emission reduction efforts.

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California's Destructive Green Jobs Lobby

by George Gilder

California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016. At the same time, California's state Treasurer entered bond markets to sell some $14 billion in "revenue anticipation notes" over the next two weeks. Worst of all, economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I'm not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races.

This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state's economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That's a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.

The irony is that a century-long trend of advance in conventional "non-renewable" energy—from wood to oil to natural gas and nuclear—has already wrought a roughly 60% drop in carbon emissions per watt. Thus the long-term California targets might well be achieved globally in the normal course of technological advance. The obvious next step is aggressive exploitation of the trillions of cubic feet of low-carbon natural gas discovered over the last two years, essentially ending the U.S. energy crisis.

The massive vote against repeal of the California law—62% to 38%—supports an economy-crushing drive to suppress CO2 emissions from natural gas and everything else. In a parody of supply-side economics, advocates of AB 32 envisage the substitution of alternative energy sources that create new revenue sources, new jobs and industries. Their economic model sees new wealth emerge from jobs dismantling the existing energy economy and replacing it with a medieval system of windmills and solar collectors.

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Volt Fraud At Government Motors

by Investor's Business Daily

Government Motors' all-electric car isn't all-electric and doesn't get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like "shovel-ready" jobs, maybe there's no such thing as "plug-ready" cars either.

The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it's already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we're all being taken for a ride.

Advertised as an all-electric car that could drive 50 miles on its lithium battery, GM addressed concerns about where you plug the thing in en route to grandma's house by adding a small gasoline engine to help maintain the charge on the battery as it starts to run down. It was still an electric car, we were told, and not a hybrid on steroids.

That's not quite true. The gasoline engine has been found to be more than a range-extender for the battery. Volt engineers are now admitting that when the vehicle's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph, the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors. That's not charging the battery — that's driving the car.

So it's not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it.

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Green Jobs Promises Dwindle As Policies Backfire

by Bonner R. Cohen

Once touted by the Obama administration as the wave of the future, green stimulus programs are rapidly falling out of favor with the administration as jobs fail to materialize. With unemployment at its highest level in 27 years, faith in taxpayer-funded green initiatives as a way to help end the recession is on the wane.

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