Federal Spending on Green Energy Fails to Live Up to it Hype

This should not be a surprise, Mcclatchydc.com reports:

An independent study this year concluded that 70,000 jobs were added to clean technology industries from 2007 to 2010 (the goal was 500,000). That study was done by the Brookings Institution, the Breakthrough Institute and the World Resources Institute.  “Judged by the standards of short-term job creation, the energy investments may not have performed brilliantly,” said Mark Muro of Brookings, one of the authors of the report.

Abound Solar borrowed about $70 million for solar manufacturing plants in Colorado and Indiana, and taxpayers will be out about $40 million to $60 million after the company is liquidated, the Department of Energy estimated.

The McClatchy story is not a hatch job on green energy, they point to a useful parts of the government spending on clean energy. But they fail to detail any tangible benefit that matches this spending commitment.

Stop Subsidizing Wind Energy

This post by, Wayne Brough on realclearenergy.org, hit it right on when it come to government wast and Green Energy fraud:

"America needs an energy policy that embraces all of the nation’s abundant natural resources. Yet the government continues to push wind energy, which has done little to create more affordable or reliable energy. After 20 years of government subsidies for the wind industry spearheaded by the Production Tax Credit (PTC), wind energy remains unreliable, economically disastrous, and harmful to the environment.

There is no denying that wind is an inherently unreliable power source. The strength and direction of wind fluctuates in different areas and at different times of the day. Because of this problem, wind-powered energy grids require additional fossil fuel-based energy to balance and stabilize them. The combination of wind-based and fossil fuel-based energy grids drives up the cost of using wind energy, which is then passed onto struggling businesses and worried consumers. At the same time, because of its reliance on stable fossil fuel-based energy, wind energy isn’t decreasing as many emissions as we had hoped.

Wind energy has also proved itself to be economically disastrous. The PTC has cost billions of dollars over the past two decades. After 20 years of burdensome subsidies, the industry generates less than 2 percent of all energy consumed in the United States while costing taxpayers more than $1 billion annually. As a stark indicator of the wind industry health, it shed 10,000 jobs since 2009.

Though unreliable and financially unviable, wind energy is assumed to be at least environmentally friendly. But this is false. Wind energy isn’t as environmentally friendly as special interests and politicians would have us believe. The unspeakable environmental impact on migrating bat and bird populations is just one harmful aspect of the wind industry. An estimated 33,000 to 111,000 bats are predicted to be killed by wind turbines in the mid-Atlantic Highlands alone by 2020. The American Bird Conservancy estimates that U.S. wind turbines kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year, including hundreds of bald eagles. Bat and bird populations are desperately needed to sustain healthy local ecosystems but the wind industry has a proven record of distributing this fragile balance.

Robert Bryce said it best in the Wall Street Journal in 2009: “This is a double standard that more people—and not just bird lovers—should be paying attention to. In protecting America's wildlife, federal law-enforcement officials are turning a blind eye to the harm done by "green" energy.” The strongest argument in favor of using wind energy seems to have been over exaggerated. Wind energy is not environmentally safe.

Why haven’t the politicians in Washington come to terms with the realities of wind energy? Recently, the Senate Finance Committee voted to extend the PTC for another year, costing an additional $3.3 billion. Two Republicans on the committee—Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and John Thune of South Dakota—threw their votes behind an extension of the credit. The wind industry happens to be rather expansive in both of these states and relies on government subsidies for survival.

An American energy policy that caters to misguided environmental interest groups, wind industry lobbyists, and special interest politicians is flat out wrong. Americans deserve an energy policy that embraces reliable, economically viable, and environmental friendly resources. Wind energy is sadly none of these things. An extension of the PTC will simply continue the use of unreliable, costly, and environmental dangerous resources while benefiting special interest groups rather than the nation as a whole. PTC wind subsidies must end.

Dr. Wayne T. Brough is Chief Economists and Vice President of Research for FreedomWorks.

 "

 

Government Wast Alert

The Independent Women' Forum has a nice run down on how the government spent a part of the $829 billion stimulus fund.

Around $500,000 went to Maddow and Olbermann shows on MSNBC to run more then 100 commercials touting "green training". Just another example of how Green Jobs have improve our economy.

Robert Bradley Jr.: Positive News from AWEA: “Layoffs mount in U.S. wind power manufacturing plants this week”

This article is more evidence that "Green Jobs" idea is a scam.
From JunkScience.com

“Unfortunately the [wind] industry has begun letting workers go up and down our American manufacturing supply chain…. Congress must [extend subsidies] now to give wind energy a stable business environment… to … save 37,000 American jobs by the first quarter of next year.” – Denise Bode (AWEA), Press Release, August 9, 2012


“He who lives by a legalized sword, will perish by a legalized sword.” – Ayn Rand, “The Moratorium on Brains II,” Ayn Rand Letter, 1971


The wind industry is imploding, and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is providing the details. Suffice it to say that there will be no Jay Leno at the next AWEA confab.

With accumulating layoffs, extending the Production Tax Credit (PTC) is increasingly becoming too late. AWEA has been warming about 10,000 job losses by September 1, and now the number is 37,000 in the next seven or so months.

Wind companies are wising up to the fact that consumers don’t like their product. And who wants to bet their future on politicians with federal deficit reduction being the elephant in the room? If AWEA is to be believed, there will not be much of an industry to save in a matter of months.

Caution: Government Waste Ahead

Green Jobs Fraud 

From Investors Business Daily 

Section 1503 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ("the stimulus") granted billions of dollars to the Department of Energy for the purpose of funding projects in renewable energy. This funding, President Obama then claimed, would result in hundreds of thousands of "green-collar" jobs that would serve as the foundation for economic recovery, says Investor's Business Daily.
Three years later, it seems that this money has been altogether wasted, and that the renewable energy revolution has failed to materialize. This is evidenced first by the shoddy performance of these billion-dollar grants in creating jobs.

• Through the broad stimulus package, the Obama administration awarded $9 billion to the Department of Energy for the creation of these green jobs.
• According to a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy, that funding created only 910 direct jobs between 2009 and 2011.
• Using this figure, American taxpayers paid approximately $9.8 million per job.
• If we allow for the broad classification of "indirect jobs," the figure increases to 5,510 jobs created at a cost of $1.63 million per job.

Near the end of this administration's first year in office, Vice President Joe Biden promised 722,000 green jobs would be generated by the stimulus. The results, it seems, have fallen far short of this promise.
Meanwhile, the current administration has done all it can to strangle job growth in the oil sector of the economy. By killing the Keystone XL pipeline to deliver oil to American refineries from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, President Obama demonstrated a severe bias against proven job growth, favoring instead the ineffective vehicles employed by his stimulus package.

• Mark Ayers, past head of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, told the Huffington Post last November that "the Keystone Pipeline represents the prospect for 20,000 immediate jobs."
• Further, these positions would be complemented by approximately 500,000 indirect jobs, made available by the economic multiplier effect of the project.
• Importantly, the Keystone pipeline required no government support (that is, no tax dollars lost).

While campaigning four years ago, then-Senator Obama promised that $150 billion in government spending on renewable energy projects would create 5 million green-collar jobs over 10 years. This seems altogether untrue.
Source: "Obama's Green-Jobs Fraud Exposed," Investor's Business Daily, June 21, 2012.

The Green Jobs Scam

Forbes published this article on Green Job. A note to anyone looking for work or looking to retrain for Green Jobs should read this.

“Green” job creation, almost always supported by massive government subsidies, does not further economic activity — it is actually harmful. Assigning massive amounts of capital, private or government, to a business or industry with a negative payback is a misallocation of resources, much like a car company spending hundreds of millions on a vehicle that either fails to sell, or sells at less than it costs to produce.

Erskine Bowles Loves Ryan!

Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles says:

"I’m telling you this guy is amazing. ... He is honest, he is straightforward, he is sincere. And the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion."

Al Gore Pissed Off at Both Obama and Romney!

“In a summer dominated by heat waves and a devastating nationwide drought, it would seem that climate change would be a major issue in the US presidential campaign. However, quite the opposite is happening. Neither President Barack Obama nor the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, has focused any attention on this critical issue,”  

Interesting our environmental savior Al Gore is not happy that both Obama and Romney both understand that trying to control carbon emissions is a job/economy killer. The best part of this article from thehill.com is the reader comments. Looks like a lot of people have figured out what Al is up to.

The First Romney / Ryan Campaign Video

These last four years have seen higher unemployment, declining incomes, and crushing debt. This cannot be the new normal. America needs a comeback. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: America's Comeback Team.

Can they succeed? This video is trying to build an uplifting theme to the campaign, in a dark time maybe they can show that the way to a successful America is through smaller government.

Job Creation in Green Energy

Great Deal in Green Energy Jobs only $9.8 million Per Job

    

                                                                                                   

Obviously more investment is needed.

Don't get me wrong. Wind, Solar and other forms of energy are great but the investment needs to be profitable or at least sustainable. Instead of investing government dollars into companies that may make money, only if they have a steady stream of subsidies. Invest in basic research Now! Invest in how to produce wind and solar generation equipment, this will payoff in the long run far more then trying make this pig fly.