LIST: Obama’s Failed Green-Energy Companies

Heritage has compiled a great list of Obama’s Taxpayer-Funded Green Energy Failures: “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. […] [So far, 34] companies that were offered federal support from taxpayers are faltering — either having gone bankrupt or laying off workers or heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy and other agencies. 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. List of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies We sorted the list in order of dollars offered by the Obama administration:

OFFERED	COMPANY	Heritage #
$1.6 billion	Brightsource	17
$1.46 billion	First Solar	7
$1.2 billion	SunPower	6
$535 million	Solyndra *	3
$529 million	Fisker Automotive	11
$400 million	Abound Solar *	12
$299 million	Johnson Controls	15
$279 million	A123 Systems *	13
$178 million	Babcock and Brown	8
$151 million	LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power	29
$126.2 million	ECOtality	18
$118.5 million	EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 *	9
$100 million	Mascoma Corp.	34
$98.5 million	Nevada Geothermal	5
$86 million	Schneider Electric	16
$80 million	Range Fuels *	23
$50 million	Vestas	28
$43 million	Beacon Power *	4
$39 million	Navistar	31
$33 million	Raser Technologies*	19
$25 million	Evergreen Solar *	1
$20 million	Konarka Technologies Inc. *	33
$16 million	Nordic Windpower *	30
$13.3 million	Energy Conversion Devices *	20
$10 million	Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s  Mills Acquisition Company *	22
$7 million	Stirling Energy Systems *	25
$6.5 million	Thompson River Power *	24
$5.9 million	Amonix	10
$5.4 million	Azure Dynamics *	26
$3 million	Satcon *	32
$2 million	Mountain Plaza, Inc. *	21
$700,981	Willard and Kelsey Solar Group *	14
$500,000	GreenVolts	27
$500,000	SpectraWatt *	2

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

Heritage also links to news reports for each company.

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LIST: 10 Obama Regulations Killing our Energy Economy

OBAMA’S BIG GOVERNMENT & EXCESSIVE REGULATIONS ARE KILLING OUR ECONOMY

The Foundry has compiled 10 of the “most troubling energy and environmental regulations implemented or proposed by the Obama Administration.” Here is a summary: (Detailed list here) 1. Slowing energy production on federal lands as a result of a molasses-like permitting and moratoriums. 2. Failing to open America’s federal lands and waters to exploration and development. 3. Delaying a decision on Keystone XL pipeline which would bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the U.S. 4. Tripling down on energy subsidies which merely concentrate power in Washington, shift labor and capital away from economically viable projects, and perpetuate mediocrity. 5. Stifling all energy projects in red tape and endless lawsuits from environmental activists. 6. Shutting down coal which could provide electricity for 500 years. 7. Giving extreme and unprecedented power to the EPA. 8. Threatening hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) with unnecessary regulations even though fracking has been successfully used in over 1 million wells in the U.S. for more than 60 years. 9. Shutting down Yucca Mountain despite data indicating that Yucca would be a safe place to store America’s used nuclear fuel. Absent any nuclear waste disposal options, the U.S. simply will not significantly expand nuclear energy. 10. Attacking consumer choice with mandates for new automobile efficiency standards.

Scientists to Candidates: Ignore the Global Warming Alarmists…Plants Do Much Better with More CO2

GREEN ENVIRO-ALARMISTS LOVE THEIR GREEN DOLLARS
Via The Wall Street Journal:
	Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed. […] Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now…The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse… Why is there so much passion about global warming[?]…Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet… Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically. […]
Scientists signing the article: – Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; – Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; – Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; – Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; – Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; – William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; – Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; – William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; – Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; – James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; – Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; – Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; – Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; – Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; – Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; – Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. Read entire article here.

Obama Killing Real Jobs for Green Utopia

As Heritage indicates, Obama has been very busy “blocking energy-related jobs from reliable and affordable energy sources while handing taxpayer money to producers of unreliable and costly alternative energy whose “green jobs” are a fallacy.” Here are just some examples of Obama’s destructive decisions:
● Obama rejected the permit application for the Keystone XL pipeline:
The project would create thousands of jobs, secure energy supply, and lower energy prices: Building the pipeline would bring over 700,000 barrels of oil per day and directly create 20,000 truly shovel-ready jobs. The Canadian Energy Research Institute estimates that current pipeline operations and the addition of the Keystone XL pipeline would create 179,000 American jobs by 2035.
● Obama is delaying drilling in the Gulf by approving only 35% of the plans instead of the historical average 73.4%: the Obama administration is approving just 35 percent of the oil drilling plans for the Gulf of Mexico so far this year. It is also taking an average of 115 days — nearly four months — to secure approval from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. Those numbers are a sharp drop from previous years, well below the historical average 73.4 percent approval rate and 61 days it takes to approve plans. ● Obama is delaying a mineral lease sale in Ohio for oil and gas drilling: In mid-November, the Obama Administration delayed a mineral lease sale in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest for oil and gas drilling. Apart for providing Americans access to affordable energy, the project could have had a tremendous impact in the state, including the creation of an estimated 200,000 jobs, an overall wage and personal-income boost of $12 billion by 2015, and a billion-dollar boon to Ohio landowners, schools, businesses, and communities. ● Obama gave a $535 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee to Solyndra, the solar power company that went bankrupt last summer, leaving about 1,100 people out of work. ● Obama’s other Solyndras: 12 clean energy companies are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. ● Obama pushed for oil drilling in Brazil. ● Obama spent $1.6 Billion on Chinese wind turbines & $2 Billion on Brazilian oil. ● Under Obama, oil and gas production on federal lands is down 40%.

OBAMA SCANDAL: 11 More Solyndras in Obama Energy Program

POLITICAL PAYBACK

Real Clear Politics reports:
	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 [sic] $43 million from the government.
The Right Scoop explains the gist of the scandal:
	Obama is simply pouring our tax dollars down the ‘clean energy’ crap hole with no regard for whether it is a good investment or not…They only thing missing in this story is how these clean energy CEOs are politically connected to the Obama administration. Just like Solyndra, this smells a lot like political payback and why this isn’t running 24/7…
MORE Here.

Obama Admin. Approves Another $1 Billion Green Energy Loans…at $20 Million per Job and Despite Solyndra Scandal

OBAMA ERA: Ideology Truncates Reason
Investor’s Business Daily reported:
	The Energy Department on Wednesday approved federal loan guarantees for two green energy projects totaling more than $1 billion. It approved $337 million for a Mesquite Solar project in Arizona and $737 million for a Solar Reserve project in Nevada. The projects would create a total of 52-55 permanent jobs, according to earlier DOE figures and company statements. That’s about $20 million per permanent job.
Obama doesn’t care about the Solyndra scandal: Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that Obama touted as a gleaming example of green technology, filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago despite receiving $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009. Solyndra is currently under numerous criminal and congressional investigations. Obama marches on with green agenda – even if that destroys America.