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Friday, May 10, 2013

THE GREEN JOBS OBAMA PROMISED ARE GROWING FUNGUS - HE'S FAILED YOU!

Way back in 2008, candidate Obama promised to invest $150 B to create 5,000,000 new energy jobs within 10 years.
Almost five years later, here is the progress report......after spending (wasting?) the first $26B:

[ http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2012/10/25/u-s-taxpayers-keep-losing-money-on-solyndra/ ]

Without much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website. Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches. But the data are nonetheless revealing: for the over $26 billion spent since 2009, DOE Section 1703 and 1705 loan guarantees have created only 2,298 permanent jobs for a cost of over $11.45 million per job.

DOE loan lossesAs the astronomical cost of the DOE’s loan guarantee program indicates, subsidizing renewable energy is not a good deal for taxpayers. But loan guarantees are just one of the ways the federal government bankrolls risky green energy projects. Energy-related tax preferences cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion in FY 2012, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But solar and wind power, for which the majority of the tax preferences for renewable energy were directed, produced only 3.6 percent of the nation’s generation in 2012. In addition, the Treasury Department’s 1603 grant program, which offers cash payments to renewable energy companies, cost taxpayers $5.8 billion in 2012. Many states also subsidize green energy through tax preferences as well as requiring renewable electricity mandates that require a specified amount of electricity to be generated from qualified renewable sources like wind and solar.
Clearly, in terms of “bang for the buck,” government programs that coddle renewable energy are losers. In terms of jobs, the losers are the American workers who would otherwise be gainfully employed but for the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars on the administration’s obsession with “green energy.” As the economy continues to suffer and dollars for federal programs get harder to come by, it is getting increasingly difficult to defend a program that costs so much and produces so little.

The Obama Administration Record
History has shown that governments are not good at picking winners and losers in the market place. Rather than listening to history, the Obama Administration provided loan guarantees and other federal dollars to companies that it hand-selected. The Heritage Foundation put together a list of 34 companies that received federal support from taxpayers that have faltered or are now faltering. That is, these companies have either gone bankrupt, laid off workers, or are heading for bankruptcy. The list below provides the 34 companies along with the amount of money they were offered by the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal government agencies. The amount of money listed does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies.[iv] The at-risk total is approximately $7.5 billion, of which $1.6 billion is in receivership. And the total will likely get larger as more is known such as the Solyndra loss described above.
  1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
  2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
  3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
  4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
  5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
  6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
  7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
  8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
  9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
  10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
  11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
  12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
  13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
  14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
  15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
  16. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
  17. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
  18. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
  19. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
  20. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
  21. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
  22. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
  23. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
  24. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
  25. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
  26. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
  27. GreenVolts ($500,000)
  28. Vestas ($50 million)
  29. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
  30. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
  31. Navistar ($39 million)
  32. Satcon ($3 million)*
  33. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
  34. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)
*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

All that tax money wasted to solve a non-existent problem !
Sadly, this depressing news will not reach most Americans who still get their
news from the OMG  (Obama Media Group); they are kept 'in the dark'
about such colossal policy failures. Thomas Jefferson's conviction that the health
of the nation's democracy would depend on the existence of an informed citizenry
has been a cornerstone of our political culture since the inception of the American republic.
We should have listened.

Do your share;  pass this on to others to educate them, too.

~ John

P.S. Where is Obama's promised approval of the  Keystone pipeline?

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