Green Fail: SunEdison goes belly up....

Unlike some other green failures. This one only cost taxpayers millions, not billions. 

Via Reuters:

SunEdison Inc, once the fastest-growing U.S. renewable energy company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday after a short-lived but aggressive binge of debt-fueled acquisitions proved unsustainable.
In its bankruptcy filing, the company said it had assets of $20.7 billion and liabilities of $16.1 billion as of Sept. 30.
SunEdison’s two publicly traded subsidiaries, TerraForm Power Inc and TerraForm Global Inc, are not part of the bankruptcy. In a statement, the companies, known as yieldcos, said they had sufficient liquidity to operate and that their assets are not available to satisfy the claims of SunEdison creditors.
Keep on reading…

Green Fail: Arkansas VA installs $8 million in solar panels; tears them down without ever using them...

Good grief...

Via WFB

Two years after being completed, $8-million-worth of solar panels at a Little Rock, Ark., Veterans Affairs hospital have never been turned on, and now the hospital is tearing down some of the panels.
A chunk of the roughly 7,000 inactive solar panels outside the Little Rock Veterans Affairs Hospital was recently dismantled to make way for a new parking garage, Little Rock news outlet KATV reports....

Green Fail: World's largest solar plant wants a taxpayer bailout...

The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant already received $1.6 billion in low interest loans from the taxpayers. Now, they want $539 in free money to help pay off the loans. It is owned in part by Google. They don't need any stinking bailout by taxpayers.

Via FOX News:

After already receiving a controversial $1.6 billion construction loan from U.S. taxpayers, the wealthy investors of a California solar power plant now want a $539 million federal grant to pay off their federal loan.
"This is an attempt by very large cash generating companies that have billions on their balance sheet to get a federal bailout, i.e. a bailout from us - the taxpayer for their pet project," said Reason Foundation VP of Research Julian Morris. "It's actually rather obscene."
The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant is owned by Google and renewable energy giant NRG, which are responsible for paying off their federal loan. If approved by the U.S. Treasury, the two corporations will not use their own money, but taxpayer cash to pay off 30 percent of the cost of their plant, but taxpayers will receive none of the millions in revenues the plant will generate over the next 30 years.
"They're already paying less than the market rate," said Morris, author of a lengthy report detailing alleged cronyism and corruption in the Obama administration's green energy programs. "Now demanding or asking for a subsidy in the form of a grant directly paying off the loan is an egregious abuse."

Green Fail: Indiana Duke Energy clean coal plant uses more energy than it produces

Well, this plant isn't very environmentally friendly...

The National Legal and Policy Center reported:

NLPC has detailed extensively the wastefulness and folly of spending billions of taxpayer and consumer dollars to subsidize wind energy, solar energy and electric vehicles, all in the name of fighting climate change.
But the complicated, uneconomical boondoggle that Duke Energy built inEdwardsport, Ind. so as to burn coal gasrather than coal – and thus produce less carbon dioxide than a traditional coal plant – may be the dumbest idea to fight imaginary global warming to date. If you swallow the alarmists’ premise and “solutions,” the plant so far is a joke, as recent evidence shows it is using more energy than it produces.
Edwardsport was supposed to cost $1.9 billion but that estimate was about $1.6 billion short. The project has hacked and wheezed since 2006 under evidence of cronyism, corruption, conflicts of interest, cost overruns, delays, waste, and mismanagement, but at least it became operational in June – for six days. Then it broke down, and intermittently juiced the grid for the remainder of 2013. Duke was only able to extract 37 percent of Edwardsport’s maximum capacity during the period,according to the Indianapolis Star. Hoosier State customers are paying up to 16 percent more for the privilege – a rate hike pretty much cemented into their bills last week by a state Court of Appeals decision.
Technology is supposed to improve over time, apparently except in the case of electric vehicle batteries and Southwest Indiana power plants. As the Indianapolis Business Journal reported, in an extremely cold January, the art-of-the-state coal gasifier eked out only four percent of its capacity.
“Edwardsport generated 19,644 megawatt hours of electricity,” theJournal reported, “enough to power about 20,000 homes, in one of the most frigid months on record, according to a Feb. 28 filing with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. The new plant, at its maximum capacity, could have generated almost 460,000 megawatt hours in January.”

Green Fail: Taxpayers take $139 million haircut on failed Fisker Automotive loan

Wonderful...

Via the Daily Caller:

The Energy Department has sold off its $192 million loan guarantee to Fisker Automotive to Chinese billionaire Richard Li for $25 million — the biggest taxpayer loss on a green loan since the failure of Solyndra.

The Energy Department will announce the “selling of the promissory note” to Hybrid Tech, which is owned by Chinese billionaire Richard Li, according to sources familiar with the sale. The DOE sold the loan to Li for $25 million after lending the financially troubled green automaker a total of $192 million since 2009.[...}

Including the $25 million loan sale, the DOE has recovered only $53 million of the original $192 million disbursed — netting taxpayers a $139 million loss.

Green Fail: Solar power plants frying birds...

Nuclear is the environmental friendly energy. 

Via Breitbart: 

Some animal rights activists are wondering just how many birds green energy may unintentionally kill as more and more birds turn up dead at solar energy facilities throughout California.
A recent article by Vice author Lex Berko notes that dead birds are being found with "singed wings" around several California solar energy facilities.
It happens that many of California's solar plants are, the article claims, in the path of "the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds" called "the Pacific Flyway."
Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky.
Others "feel the wrath of the harnessed sunlight." The ultra polished solar mirrors bounce sunrays strong enough to burn the feathers off birds that quickly crash to the ground, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Green Fail: 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying

The U.S. has abandoned 14,000 wind turbines...

There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers, the blight on people's lives of noise and the flicker factor and the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these blots on the landscape. The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it's too cold or the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

"Some say that Ka Le is haunted--and it is. But it's haunted not by Hawaii's legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are "Na leo o Kamaoa"-- the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm. . . The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles--but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California "big three" locations--Altamont Pass, Tehachapin, and San Gorgonio--considered among the world's best wind sites. . . California's wind farms-- comprising about 80% of the world's wind generation capacity--ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills. . .

Ouch! Obama supported Fisker Automotive lost 557,000 every time it sold its product

In a double-slap of American taxpayers, Fisker made their cars in Finland...

Via Daily Caller:

Luxury hybrid car maker Fisker Automotive has spent $660,000 in taxpayer dollars and venture capital funds for each car it sold — totalling $1.3 billion, according to a report. The company’s Fisker Karma sold for about $103,000 per vehicle, meaning the company took a hit of $557,000 every time it sold its product.

The company was also allowed to continue to draw down on a $529 million Department of Energy loan after violating the loan’s term multiple times, according to a report by the New York-based research firm PrivCo.

According to the report, the Department of energy knew that Fisker was not meeting goal required to keep receiving taxpayer dollars. The DOE cut off funding to the company in June 2011, allowing taxpayers to lose $193 million.

Keep on reading…

Green Fail: Lights out for another solar corp...

This time it's Flabeg Solar U.S. Corp. The cost to taxpayers was at least $10.2 million.

Via CNS News:

A Pittsburgh, Pa. solar energy company has shut its doors four years after receiving nearly $10.2 million in tax credits from the Obama Administration as part of the as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Flabeg Solar U.S. Corp., a $30 million solar plant located near the Pittsburgh International Airport, opened its doors in 2009 and was said to provide 300 jobs. Now, just four years later, the plant has shut down and laid off more than 60 workers. In addition to this, 10 of its former employees have petitioned a federal judge for severance pay after they lost their jobs last month, according to PA Independent.

Green Fail: $17 million in Stimulus money and a visit from President Obama creates 2 jobs in Elkhart, Indiana

President Obama visited in 2009 and made a nice speech. Taxpayers ponied up 17 million in stimulus tax credits to a Swedish electric car company a questionable track record. The result is a mostly empty warehouse and two jobs. Way to go President Obama.

Via CBS News:

As incentive, the federal government offered Think City $17 million in stimulus tax credits. 

Dorinda Heiden-Guss heads up the local economic development effort. "We were excited," she said. "We were invigorated at a very devastating time."

But it turns out the company had a checkered track record, including three previous bankruptcies. We recently visited Think City's Indiana plant, and here's what we found: a largely empty warehouse.

Everybody hoped that by this time there would be more than 400 workers inside a bustling plant. Instead, today, there are just two workers at Think City. Rodney and Josh are slowly finishing assembly on a few dozen 2011 models shipped in from Norway.

We were able to drive a Think City car around the empty space where investors once envisioned an assembly line churning out 20,000 vehicles a year.

Now in its fourth bankruptcy, Think Global has been bought by a Russian investor who didn't return our calls.

Green Fail: Carbon Credit Trading Causes Developing Countries To Increase Production Of Dangerous Greenhouse Gas

This is a prime example of unintended consequences from excessive government regulation...

Via NY Times:

Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions. 

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity. 

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year. 

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle. Keep on reading...

Green Fail: 80% of Green Energy Dollars Went to Obama Donors

It's the Chicago way...

New Romney Ad: Not Even Half (Video)

Mitt Romney hits Obama on his bad green energy investments.



This ad should have been titled 'Green Fail.'

Obama gave First Solar $3.1 billion in federal loan guarantees. Chairman of First Solar admits most jobs went overseas

Why does Obama keep wasting our money on this green crap? 

Via WFB:

The chairman of First Solar, a company that received approximately $3.1 billion in federal loan guarantees under President Obama’s green energy initiative, said Wednesday that the majority of the jobs created by the company have been overseas.

Speaking at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, First Solar chairman Michael Ahearn admitted that most of the company’s full-time jobs are held overseas.
“In sheer numbers, most of our full-time employees are outside the U.S,” Ahearns said.

Keep on reading…

Congratulations are due your trash collectors. They now have a green job.

What if they are picking up trash at a house that doesn't recycle?

Via FOX  Nation:

 

Obama Calls Trash Collecting a ‘Green Job’ Federal Report: ‘Green Jobs’ Include Trash Collectors A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report counts 3.1 million green jobs in the U.S. economy, but the BLS defines these jobs so broadly that it includes even school bus drivers and trash collectors as “green” workers. “Cheerleaders for the president’s program of green jobs mandates and spending point to the study as confirmation of green jobs’ economic importance,” said David W. Kreutzer, Research Fellow in Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

Green Fail: Fisker Automotive may never build a car in Delaware

 Looks like Fisker Automotive may take our $529 million and run.

Via AOL:

Last we heard, Fisker Automotive was still “committed” to building the recently revealed Atlantic sedan at the former General Motors plant in Delaware. A few years ago, Fisker announced that site would be the company’s new domestic production home (the Fisker Karma extended-range plug-in hybrid is made by Valmet in Finland). Still, Fisker did say that any definitive statement on the Atlantic’s production location would not come until the end of the summer.

So we were interested to read new reports from local media that show more signs that the Atlantic might not ever be built in Delaware. On Friday, Delaware Online reports, 12 more workers – including engineers and maintenance technicians – were laid off at the plant, leaving “only a small maintenance team” left there. One of those let go was Jeff Garland, who had been working on community affairs and business development efforts in Delaware. He said the plant is currently “absolutely empty.” This is because Fisker has taken out the old GM equipment but has not yet installed the machines it would need to build the Atlantic. As Garland told Delaware Online, “I think what happened was the budget numbers are so tight right now and they’re working so hard to preserve as much cash as they can that something had to give. We’re not making a car in Wilmington right now, so given that situation it was an obvious place to make a cut.