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Mail
Magazine 24
President
Obama’s Taxpayer-Backed
Green Energy Failures
by Ashe Schow
It
is no secret that President
Obama’s and green-energy supporters’ (from both parties) foray into
venture
capitalism has not gone well. But the extent of its failure has been
largely
ignored by the press. Sure, single instances garner attention as they
happen,
but they ignore past failures in order to make it seem like a rare case.
The
truth is that the problem is
widespread. The government’s picking winners and losers in the energy
market
has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and the rate of failure,
cronyism, and
corruption at the companies receiving the subsidies is substantial. The
fact
that some companies are not under financial duress does not make the
policy a
success. It simply means that our taxpayer dollars subsidized companies
that
would’ve found the financial support in the private market.
So
far, 36 companies that have
received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or
are laying
off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only
those
companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s
Department of Energy. The amount of money indicated does not reflect
how much
was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount
also does
not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies,
which
push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers
even
higher.
The
complete list of faltering or
bankrupt green-energy companies:
Evergreen
Solar ($24 million)*
SpectraWatt
($500,000)*
Solyndra
($535 million)*
Beacon
Power ($69 million)*
AES’s
subsidiary Eastern Energy
($17.1 million)
Nevada
Geothermal ($98.5 million)
SunPower
($1.5 billion)
First
Solar ($1.46 billion)
Babcock
and Brown ($178 million)
EnerDel’s
subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5
million)*
Amonix
($5.9 million)
National
Renewable Energy Lab ($200
million)
Fisker
Automotive ($528 million)
Abound
Solar ($374 million)*
A123
Systems ($279 million)*
Willard
and Kelsey Solar Group ($6
million)
Johnson
Controls ($299 million)
Schneider
Electric ($86 million)
Brightsource
($1.6 billion)
ECOtality
($126.2 million)
Raser
Technologies ($33 million)*
Energy
Conversion Devices ($13.3
million)*
Mountain
Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
Olsen’s
Crop Service and Olsen’s
Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
Range
Fuels ($80 million)*
Thompson
River Power ($6.4
million)*
Stirling
Energy Systems ($7
million)*
LSP
Energy ($2.1 billion)*
UniSolar
($100 million)*
Azure
Dynamics ($120 million)*
GreenVolts
($500,000)
Vestas
($50 million)
LG
Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power
($150 million)
Nordic
Windpower ($16 million)*
Navistar
($10 million)
Satcon
($3 million)*
*Denotes
companies that have filed
for bankruptcy (Comment by Bright Knight: with a total of almost 4.4
Billion
Dollars of taxpayer-money).
The
problem begins with the issue
of government picking winners and losers in the first place. Venture
capitalist
firms exist for this very reason, and they choose what to invest in by
looking
at companies’ business models and deciding if they are worthy. When the
government plays venture capitalist, it tends to reward companies that
are
connected to the policymakers themselves or because it sounds nice to
“invest”
in green energy.
The
2009 stimulus set aside $80
billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that
time,
1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste,
fraud, and
abuse (although not all are linked to the green-energy funds), and
nearly 600
convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans,
grants,
and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have
since
either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.
Source:
blog.heritage.org
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