$28 million a job

October 23, 2011 by Don Surber


Marc Lifsher is a business reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Apparently he needs remedial math or maybe he needs to quit cheerleading alternative energy. In the wake of the collapse of Solyndra, Mark Lifsher tried to put a smiley face on the subsidized energy industry.


From Mark Lifsher: “As Republican lawmakers pound the Obama administration for pouring a half-billion dollars into now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, a much bigger federal government bet on green energy looks to be quietly paying off for California.”

You see, there is no scandal here, it is just those mean Republicans trashing Our Glorious Leader for trying to save our state.

From Mark Lifsher: “Six large solar power plants to help the state meet its ambitious clean electricity goals are proceeding on schedule, according to their developers. Like Solyndra, these projects carry federal loan guarantees — $7 billion worth in total — which are considered key to attracting private investment in alternative energy.”

You see, Solyndra was just a bad apple. As that wise philosopher Donny Osmond once explained, one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch .

From Mark Lifsher: “The plants are expected to create nearly 4,000 construction jobs over the next five years and an additional 250 permanent jobs after they’re up and running. All the power generated will be sold to California utilities at fixed prices under long-term contracts already approved by state regulators.”

You see? 250 permanent jobs and all we had to risk was $7 billion — or $28 million per job.

Never mind that Solyndra’s guarantee was $535 million for 1,100 jobs. We must risk nearly 14 times as much for 1/4 of the jobs.

None of this makes any sense if you do the math. Which Mark Lifsher didn’t. Instead he quoted this goofball, Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy, trying to explain the Solyndra meltdown: “It’s like building a hotel and having 100% occupancy pre-booked for 20 years before the ground is broken.”

No, it is more like handing over $35 billion in business decisions to people who have never run a lemonade stand.

By the way, if you need a hotel to be at 100% capacity for 20 years to break even, you should should get the heck out of the hotel business.

Don’t get me wrong. Post-Fukushima, nuke is dead. After 400 years of trying, wind power is a dead-end technology. Coal has too many problems on too many levels to last much past 2050. Hydro requires too much land. But solar has vast potential. I liken it to computers in 1960. But first, let’s stop the looting by Barack Obama’s donors. Instead of going big and over-funded with mandates to force utilities to buy it, how about we put college dropouts in garages all over America and not let them out until they save the world?