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Solar scam on taxpayers, and the rich get richer

by on Oct. 22, 2011, under Politics

The Wall Street protestors seem to have overlooked an obvious scam on themselves, the latest solar ploy planned and implemented by some of Washington’s heavy hitter insiders.

As a reminder, Solyndra (a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve and part of the Pacific Solar Group/PCG), recently went belly up, as in bankruptcy (they received $535 million in loans from the feds), even after receiving a huge government subsidy for their solar operations. The good news is that the top echelon of the defunct business didn’t lose a cent in the deal and actually came out way ahead on the failure, but 1,100 employees didn’t fare so well after opening their surprise pink slips. Who’d have imagined….

But never fear, the feds are here, and the latest solar charge is being led by none other than “The rich are evil…” Harry Reid along, his curiously quiet cohort Nancy Pelosi, and the perpetual campaigner and fund raiser, President Obama. This time its Tonopah Solar, a company conveniently located in Harry Reid’s state of Nevada, is getting a $737 million loan from the Department of Energy. If you simply listen to the hype you’d think it was one of the most creative, cost effective, worthwhile solar project to date, but let’s turn the page and take a look at some additional facts. And before anyone immediately begins refuting this data please keep in mind that it was released by the Department of Energy last week.

This taxpayer funded project will produce a whopping 110 megawatt power system and employ a mindboggling number of jobs–45! A little quick and simple math indicates a mere $16 million per job. I wonder if the average wage of each of these workers will put them in the dreaded tax bracket reserved for the “rich?”

Not to worry, it gets better. This $737 million will fund the construction of Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, but the best part of the deal may be the one for Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law, Ron Pelosi, who is the company’s number two man on the organizational/pay chart.

So let’s see what we have for our money; a company with a dismal track record of solar success that has sucked off the government teat with no remorse gets another handout, the insiders taking care of their own, and another huge bill added to the mounting national debt (I know, this is chump change in the grand scheme of things) that the taxpayers inherit without any say in the matter. So all in all it’s still business as usual in Washington with the only change in sight is the coming of winter….

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • JONATHAN RICE

    he tucson citizen must be comended for its policy ofbemploying journalists who aproduce in comprehensible material they pass off as journalism. cpngratulations for empoloying the unemployable.

    • James Sandefer

      Thanks, and congratulations to you on managing to fail basic spelling….

    • http://theenergygame.blogspot.com/ David Bergeron

      A 110MW array will produce about 176,000MWHr of electrical energy per year.  This is worth about $7m/year on the wholesale electric market. 

      So we are making a +$700M investment for $7M annual return?  It will never pay off. 

      Seems like we’d do better investing in basic economics classes for our political leaders.

      It is clearly a net money losser, and very likely a net energy and CO2 loser given the large about of natural resources required to construct such a plant.   
       
      theenergygame.blogspot.com

      • James Sandefer

        Interesting how easily the math can be calculated on the boondoggle initiative, and regardless of the way the numbers are manipulated the taxpayers never seem to come close to breaking even on the deal.
        I like your idea of sending all politicians through a series of classes on economics. Wanna bet that Biden would fall asleep….

  • Jim

    “So let’s see what we have for our money” you ask? We get 110mW of electricity for no less than 25 years you big boob!

    • Jim

      BTW: 110mW is enough to furnish 30,000 homes with electricity for 25 years. This will offset massive amounts of pollution (CO2 among them, but also mercury and lead, among others) that would otherwise be filling our air and water and our and our children  lungs.
      Renewable energy like Solar is all Arizona has to work with.
      Solar is BOOMING in Arizona, and even more so in California.
      Enjoy the ride…as well as the pollution-free, 100% clean (after the plant is built, which you can’t even come CLOSE to saying for coal or natural gas) electricity!

      • James Sandefer

        So the outrageous cost is worth the return? Hmm, we’ll have to wait and see since the track record for these operations has been somewhat dismal….

        • cochisecitizen

          “Outrageous cost”?? To whom? We’re not spending $737 million on it, we’re just guaranteeing the loan to help get it going. It is an important investment in new technology. Unlike other solar projects which use solar panels to directly generate electricity and can’t generate electricity when there’s no sun, Toponah Solar will use 17,500 mirrors to concentrate heat from the sun to melt salt through a 640′ tower and store the molten sale in thermal storage tanks for generating electricity 24/7. I’m very happy some of my taxes are being used to help get this going.
           
          An as far as the alleged “dismal track record” for these operations,  to date the Energy Department’s loan-guarantee program has backed nearly $38 billion in loans for 40 projects around the country. Solyndra solar represents just 1.3 percent of that portfolio — and, as yet, it’s the only loan that has soured. Other solar beneficiaries, such as SunPower and First Solar, are still going strong.
          I’m pretty used to seeing posters commenting on something they know nothing about, it’s pretty sad to see a blogger blogging on a subject on which he is so obviously so uninformed.  

          • James Sandefer

            You might want to do a bit more research to discover the myriad of smaller solar companies across the country that haven’t made it.
            But the bottom line remains that solar won’t be able to handle the energy production load for decades even if the Toponah project manages to survive.
            And the wind farm debacle is an entirely different type of huge failure, especially the one in West Texas….

            • cochisecitizen

              So? They had no backing from the government and didn’t cost tax payers a dime – which is what you implied when you use the terms “outrageous cost” and “dismal track record” in connection with Tonopah Solar. And there’s a myriad of many smaller businesses across the country that haven’t made it, restaurants, lawn services, etc.
              Yes, on it’s own solar won’t be able to meet our energy needs for decades, if ever. A combination of renewable energy sources might, and well worth the effort. And could you be a bit more specific about the wind farm “debacle”? It seems to have slipped under my radar.

              • James Sandefer

                Remember the Texas oil tycoon, T. Boone Pickens?
                He put millions into a wind farm initiative shortly after it came into prominence a couple of years ago.
                But the West Texas wind farm was built to provide power to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex which happened
                to be several hundred miles to the east. That meant he needed to build an energy transportation system from
                his wind farm to that metro area and required getting calling in some “political chips” in order to gain easement,
                or as it turned out, Right of Imminent Domain, which essentially devastated the quiet rural lifestyle of a number
                of farmers and ranchers due to the ear-beating the 250′ wind turbine blades created when turning and generating
                energy. Some of these wind devices were basically in the back yards where these folks had lived for years and the
                properties had been in their families for generations.
                And then, without warning, Pickens pulled out, announced on national TV that he was abandoning the wind farm
                and going back into oil, the thing he knew the best. In the meantime the West Texas people were left to fend for
                themselves and deal with the gigantic monstrosities that sat idle and staring at them 24/7. The entire ordeal was
                a nightmare for people who’d lived their lives in tranquility for generations, but did the politicians come to them after
                the fact and offer to assist them in getting things back to the way they were–of course not, there was no political prize
                to be gained.
                Like it or not, we’re hooked on oil for as far into the future as you can force yourself to peer, and solar, wind, etc. isn’t
                likely to have much of an impact any time soon. Having said that, I don’t have a problem with the solar, but I don’t want
                to subsidize it either. That’s what the private sector thrives on, and the feds shouldn’t put the taxpayers on the hook for
                any additional potential bailouts….

          • http://theenergygame.blogspot.com/ David Bergeron

            Cochise, we are paying for it in the form of higher electric bills and higher taxes.  Solar is very expensive electricity.  

            The owners of the plant plan to not only recoup their investment, but make a profit.  But don’t be fooled, we are paying for it.

            • James Sandefer

              Anyone assuming that “free stuff” from the government truly comes without a price tag is either naive or intentionally in denial….

            • cochisecitizen

              Did I say that we weren’t paying for it? Actually I said the opposite, as I said I was happy some of my taxes were going to help support development of solar and other renewable energy. We didn’t put a man on the moon for free.

              • http://theenergygame.blogspot.com David Bergeron

                I was responding to your comment:

                “Outrageous cost”?? To whom? We’re not spending $737 million on it, we’re just guaranteeing the loan to help get it going.”

                We will be paying off this loan though higher electric bills and taxes.   And the owners of this plant will take a piece of the payment we are funding.  

                This will cost us a lot of money.  Subsidies are not magically free money. 

      • http://theenergygame.blogspot.com/ David Bergeron

        There is good evidence that when you properly account for the direct and indirect energy inputs to making solar plants, as well as the energy opportunity cost of wasting otherwise useful resources on solar, the overall endeavour increases global CO2.

        The very poor economic return is the first clue that the net energy is a loss. 
        http://theenergygame.blogspot.com/2010/02/energy-opportunity-cost-of-non-energy.html

        I seriously doubt we are reducing CO2 with this on-grid solar push.

        BTW, Solar is “booming” only because the government is mandating its use and providing massive subsidies.  It is a very artificial “boom.”  But when this artificial solar bubble bursts, that boom will be real and painful.  
         

        • James Sandefer

          And let’s all make a guess at who’ll get the final bill for this rhetorically correct initiative when it goes belly up when the huge subsidies run dry….

    • James Sandefer

      That’s assuming this company doesn’t go belly up as well, and the trend for these types of operations hasn’t been impressive….

  • http://theenergygame.blogspot.com/ David Bergeron

    Given our difficult employment situation, perhaps the most egregious myth from the the solar lobby is the claim solar subsidies are helping our economy and creating jobs. This is naive at best.

    Money for the solar subsidies comes from taxpayers and ratepayers. As this money is taken from them, spending for other goods and services will fall. This causes economic losses in other segments of the economy, such as in restaurants, department stores, and service and manufacturing companies. 

    By taking money from the general public and giving it to a particular industry, government is merely shifting jobs from one part of the economy to another, but the free market would do this if the value of the solar jobs were attractive.

    This creates no value, on the contrary, it destroys useful economic output.  By moving people from productive to less productive activities (like making and installing on-grid PV systems), we create what economist call dead weight losses.  This will result in a reduction in total and average wages as well as a reduction in total economic output. 

    In fact, based on the very low economic return of on-grid solar PV, these solar jobs are only marginally more valuable than employing people to pointlessly dig holes in the ground.  Yes, subsidies can ‘create’ hole digging jobs, but are we benefiting the economy?  Of course not.  The economy is not improved by creating the low value green energy jobs which result from subsidizing on-grid solar. 

    Sure the government can quickly and easily create useless jobs all day long.  Why not ban farm machinery or earth moving equipment?  That will create many jobs, but hopefully it is easy to see that we’re not improving the situation by such misdirection of labor.  Banning labor saving machinery would create jobs the same way subsidies creates solar jobs, yes, more jobs, but lower wages in the aggregate.

    Subsidies for on-grid Solar are a scam. 

    • James Sandefer

      I believe the definition of a subsidy as it pertains to the government means taking $$ from the taxpayers to produce something and then selling the end product back to them (taking more of their $$).

  • http://www.google.com Momlee

    Obama, Pelosi and Reid couldn’t spend the stimulus money fast enough.  the were worned Solundra was a poor investment but gave them half a billion dollars.  We the people had no say and ranted daily against the stimulus.  Just a few days ago Obama admitted to over a billion dollars to a car builder that will make the cars in Finland.  He’s shouting for jobs but instead of jobs here they will be in Finland.  Are you disgusted yet.  Let’s show Obama how we feel at the ballad box.

    • James Sandefer

      There does need to be some clarification about where the jobs are supposed to be produced.
      Creating more offshore jobs isn’t exactly what those who are currently unemployed have in mind….

    • cochisecitizen

      Listen, I really hate to play grammar police but I really have to ask: do you regularly communicate in English? There’s no such word as “worned”, worn is a verb as in “that dress was made to be worn”, and the past tense is not “worned” still just worn, as in “it was worn”. And we’re going to show Obama how we feel at at a song box? A ballad is a type of song, when we vote we put our ballot in a ballot box. It’s just that with such bad grammatical errors it just makes it easy to dismiss your entire post as uninformed. Speaking of which, are you trying to say that Obama gave a billion dollars to a car company in Finland? Um, well, first of all he doesn’t have a billion dollars to give to anyone. The Obama Administration did approve a $529 billion loan guarantee to Fisker Automotive, which has used the loan guarantee to purchase a former GM plant in Delaware, where it plans to produce electric cars.

  • http://BankruptcyBakersfield Joseph Pearl

    Nice article.  Great information to have as a bankruptcy attorney.
     
    Joseph Pearl
    Bankruptcy Attorney Bakersfield
    http://BankruptcyBakersfield.com

    • cochisecitizen

      Well, if I’m ever in Bakersfield, and I’ve avoided it for 60 years so far, but should I make it there and feel the urge for feel the urge to file for bankruptcy, I now know one attorney to NOT use.  If you can’t make it as a bankruptcy attorney in this economy and have to resort to spam, you really can’t make it as an attorney.

      • James Sandefer

        Keep that thought in mind if you’re given the opportunity to “distribute your wealth.”

        • cochisecitizen

          I’ll certainly keep that in mind, but the purpose of my post was to point out an obviously spammer who should be banned and his post deleted.

          • James Sandefer

            I’ll contact Mark about his post and let him make the call about deleting it.

            • cochisecitizen

              Thanks. I was a volunteer moderator on a forum for Blu-ray/high definition home entertainment for a year, and those spammers really tick me off, I had to ban & delete several daily and it got old really fast.

              • James Sandefer

                I understand and agree completely.
                I’ve sent an email to Mark and am waiting to hear from him.

  • FortheloveofCountry

    Another scam, another spend by this administration.  Sigh. It will not end.

    • James Sandefer

      2012 is shaping up to be either the most historically memorable or most catastrophic political process of our lives, and each of us will have to make our own determination about it. But one thing is for certain, we’re going to have politics in our face nearly every waking moment….

      • cochisecitizen

        Probably. 2010 was pretty memorable and catastrophic, but I’m feeling good that most of indy voters who fell for the teapublican line in 2010 realize they were taken for fools by fools or stooges for the Koch/1% ruling class. And Obama would would  facing a tough reelection because of the economy, but the circus of the Republican prez candidates is a gift from the gods.

        • FortheloveofCountry

          The “gift” is only because the only Dem is the president and he’s the biggest joke of all. 

          • James Sandefer

            The Republicans appear to be in a quandary about which candidate will best represent their interests, so this is giving Obama time and opportunity for ramping up his blame game.
            But it’s pretty lame when he has to resort to “It was Bush’s fault…” at this late stage in his presidency….

        • James Sandefer

          The latest nationwide gathering of fools is surely the “occupy” movement.
          I’ve listened to as many newscast interviews as possible from across the country and have yet to hear one of them make a coherent statement.
          So far I, along with millions of my close American friends, don’t have a clue about their intentions/objectives/etc.
          From what I’ve seen they tend to move into an area and disrupt traffic flow and pedestrians while creating a mountainous mess behind when they leave.
          I had to laugh when I heard a woman tell a reporter that her occupation was “professional activist.” Now there’s a job with a future, at least for the near term,
          but she didn’t give any insight into the pay and benefits. Maybe she stumbled onto another obscure government occupational specialty and is actually a GS
          rated worker. with a nice salary and good benefits. She said she was in her late 60s and had been doing this sort of thing all of her life. I had no idea activists
          had a union….

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