Hey, what if we had invested all those useless green energy dollars in pipelines?

Tuesday, 03 April 2012
Wyblog.us

Hey, what if we had invested all those useless green energy dollars in pipelines?

I don't think there's any chance of Keystone XL going bankrupt.

World's Largest Solar Plant, With Second Largest Ever Department of Energy Loan Guarantee, Files For Bankruptcy

Solyndra was just the appetizer. Earlier today, in what will come as a surprise only to members of the administration, the company which proudly held the rights to the world's largest solar power project, the hilariously named Solar Trust of America ("STA"), filed for bankruptcy. And while one could say that the company's epic collapse is more a function of alternative energy politics in Germany, where its 70% parent Solar Millennium AG filed for bankruptcy last December, what is relevant is that last April STA was the proud recipient of a $2.1 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy, incidentally the second largest loan ever handed out by the DOE's Stephen Chu. That amount was supposed to fund the expansion of the company's 1000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project in Riverside, California.

How many carbon credits can you redeem for failing to build a ginormous solar array boondoggle?

As Bloomberg notes: "The company joins Energy Conversion Devices Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that suspended production last year; LSP Energy LP, the owner of a natural-gas-fired power plant in Mississippi; Ener1 Inc., maker of lithium-ion batteries for plug-in electric cars; solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC; and energy storage company Beacon Power Corp. (BCONQ) in bankruptcy."

There's always room for one more failure under the electric bus to green energy nirvana.

Meanwhile proven technologies, you know those awful coal-fired power plants, keep getting scuttled. We derive 45% of our electricity from coal. Non-existent solar arrays are hardly capable of taking up the slack. Maybe the algae fairies are working overtime. Otherwise, we're screwed.

Forgotten in all this is a nice big pipe, one that would move oil from Canada to U.S. refineries. It's tied up in regulatory and demagoguery knots. Obama's econuts fast-track pie-in-the-sky experimental stuff, which invariably flames out spectacularly. But bread-and-butter energy projects are stymied at every turn.

If I had to summarize Obama's energy policy it'd go something like this — America needs to freeze in the dark so his cronies can keep laughing all the way to the bank.

Posted at 19:35 by Chris Wysocki