comments are a necessary read......
THE SUN IS SETTING ON SOLAR POWER, THE MONEY’S GONE AND NOBODY’S ASKING ANY QUESTIONS.
If you keep an eye on the financial world, which I do, and especially the green sectors, which I also do, it’s been an interesting time of late. Within the last few weeks, Solar Trust of America (STA), owner of the world’s largest solar plant, filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11, and nobody expects much of it, if anything, to emerge from it. STA joins a long list of companies in the solar energy sector, who’ve gone bankrupt, ducked into protection from their creditors, suspended production indefinitely or are simply circling the plughole.
Across the world, a few of the more prominent and expensive casualties are Solyndra, Solar Millennium AG, Energy Conversion Devices Inc, Q-Cells, Solon, Solar Millenium, Solarhybrid, Ener1, Range Fuels, Beacon Power Corp and there’s a whole lot of others. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s probably not a good idea to invest your hard-earned pennies in any company with “solar” in its name. It’s almost as bad a mistake as thinking you had some sort of long-term future employment with one of them.
Nearly all of these companies were the beneficiaries of huge government startup grants or loan guarantees. The products they made were effectively sold to consumers with a subsidy, to make them more attractive. The customers also had the benefit of some generous feed-in tariff schemes. All that money that was sunk into them has now gone and the specific green industry sector it was expected to create, is pretty much moribund.
In Germany, which gets the same amount of sunshine as the US state of Alaska and where inexplicably nearly half the solar power output of the world was installed, investment experts expect not a single solar cell company to be in business in five years time, since not one of them is currently showing an operating profit, nor is expected to do so in the foreseeable future. In Germany alone, the government have to date handed out about €100 billion in subsidies to renewable energy and even there, the most fervently green country in Europe, they’ve begun to have some serious doubts. It’s a money pit. The promised green jobs haven’t appeared and unemployment in the developed nations continues to rise. On a world-wide basis, the money wasted runs into the billions of dollars.
Its a long read if you can get through, comments are a necessary read.
Billions and billions and we’ve ended up with pretty much nothing. Actually, that’s not quite correct. What we will have, within a decade or two, is a clear up job that’ll make Chernobyl look like a training day. As the vast arrays of panels age, they’ll crack and contaminate the topsoil with poisonous chemical particles. Take a careful look at the picture below, because that’s what we’ll have to pay to detoxify, and make no mistake, we’ll be the ones paying, despite a few of the companies installing these panels having given undertakings to dispose of the panels at the end of their service life. The hard-nosed investor in me reckons they’ll be safely bankrupt by the time any such expensive undertakings have to be honoured.
I wonder where we will store all that contaminated topsoil? Perhaps wherever we’d planned to store nuclear waste, before we decided not to build any more nuclear plants.
Why are they going bust? The usual reasons given are that there’s too many companies in the solar energy industry and that subsidies are being cut by the governments. Let’s take a hard financial look at these excuses.
Too many companies chasing the same buck. All of them were in receipt of government grants and loan guarantees. Solyndra alone cost the US government 500 million USD in loan guarantees and it looks like the blood-letting over STA could reach 2 billion USD. Even in the loony world of state funding of renewables, I would expect an application, with an attached business case, was submitted to the relevant department handing out the taxpayer’s money. At the time, it should have been blindingly obvious that there simply wasn’t enough business for them all. That’s the first basic question you ask when considering any development loan request from a company.
It was the classic stampede of new startup companies rushing in to fill a new business sector, followed by the inevitable shakeout, the only difference being that it’s not the minnows going bust. Who exactly approved the applications? Why on earth did they? Has anyone gone back and reviewed the veracity of the statements made in the original applications? Is there anyone, anywhere, seriously looking into where the money went?
As far as I’m aware, in any substantial sense, the answer to all those questions is no.
Subsides being cut; that’s true but then, they were never supposed to last forever. They were part of larger stimulus packages, which were only supposed to get those businesses up and running. If the business proposals and revenue projections were correct, all those companies should have been running profitably by now. They patently weren’t, so pretty much the same questions arise and with the same answer – nobody is asking any questions.
The business case for the whole industry was supported by numerous studies by scientists, academia, so-called industry experts and advocates of renewable energy, all of whom said it was the clean and profitable future of energy production. Obviously, all those studies were seriously wrong and ended up costing governments billions. Has anyone got back to these “experts” and asked why the studies and their financial models were all so bad? Given how shoddy their expert advice has proven to be, is anyone asking for the money back, which we paid for this supposed expertise? In the light of how bad expert advice in this area has been, is anyone reviewing advice for similar green sectors, such as wind power? Anyone? Anywhere?
Never in the history of the world, has such an amount of money been wasted, without any trace of financial oversight or accountability. Not only has the money been squandered, but at a time of high unemployment, the fashionable rush to create illusory green jobs, has actually destroyed jobs in the real economy. A study in Spain concluded that for every green job created by their massive renewables investment, the real economy lost 2.2 real jobs and only one in ten of those green jobs created, will be permanent. The much touted transfer of jobs from the real economy to the green economy simply never occurred either. Similar studies in Britain, Canada and Scotland have come back with equally appalling numbers. Spain was one of the early ones to dive head first into the green clean energy dream and now has an unemployment rate of 21%.
President Obama pledged a 150 billion USD investment over the next decade, to create a promised 5 million green jobs but nearly half way through that period, the number of green jobs created is so pitiful, the numbers are already being “massaged.” Apparently, if you drive a hybrid powered bus, you’re officially classified as having a green job. Bart should tell that to Otto the next time he climbs on the school bus – I think Otto will be kinda pleased about that.
Energy produced from renewables, such as solar power, is at least ten times more expensive than conventional sources, so the only way it can be afforded, is if you heap on various direct and indirect stealth taxes on those conventional sources to subsidise it.
The macroeconomic impact of the resultant rise in energy prices is on enterprise. Once the cost of energy and regulation rises to a certain price point, it’s simply a no brainer to relocate the company to a more business friendly environment, either out-of-state or out-of-country. A classic case is California, where commercial electrical rates are already 50% higher than in any other state in the Union. Because of recently enacted state legislation and the upcoming “California Global Warming Solutions Act”, it’s estimated that an additional hike in energy prices of between 19% to 74%, dependent on your location in California, will occur in the next decade.
Companies have been relocating, in whole or in part, out of California. It’s a bit like the California gold rush of 1849, but in reverse; everyone is getting the hell out of the place. In the first quarter of last year alone, one business relocater counted 70 of these “disinvestment events”, as they’re euphemistically called, and that in a state with a 10.9% unemployment rate and some very severe budgetary problems.
Another effect of this rise in energy prices, is to push more and more ordinary people into what’s now called fuel poverty and as usual, it’s the poor and low wage earners, who are taking the pain. What hard statistics I can find on the number of people now priced into this situation, are quite simply appalling.
The only country, for which I can find official national statistics on fuel poverty, is the UK but whatever country you live in, I imagine the figures might be similar, dependant on your climate and how far your government has gone down the renewable’s rabbit hole.
The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) latest report in July 2011, which only gives figures up to 2009, estimated that 18% of UK households were then officially classified as being in fuel poverty. The UK Citizen’s Advice Bureau, again a guesstimate circa 2009, is concerned that 5.5 million people in UK face living in freezing conditions through Winter, because of self-rationing or disconnection. Given the steep jump in domestic power prices over the last three years, the figure must now be well over 25%. When it comes to any of DECC’s numbers, it’s interesting to note that they attribute the increase to several factors, but never once do they mention green taxes, which is why I view even the dire figures supplied by them with some suspicion, as being too conservative.
Mr. Cameron, here we are in the twenty-first century and in a quarter of households in the UK, the people you’re supposed to be responsible for, are having to make stark choices between food and heating as a result of your continuing policies and the policies of your predecessors. And that, in the teeth of the worst recession in living memory. I know with your background of Eton, Oxford, millionaire status and coming from a rich and privileged background, it’s perhaps difficult for you to appreciate the hardships that choices like that inflict on ordinary people.
You’ve never spent a Winter just being cold, so let me help you out and give you an idea of what it’s like. It’s pensioners, who spend most of Winter in bed for warmth, because they can no longer afford to heat their home, it’s families wearing overcoats indoors, it’s kids trying to do homework when their hands are freezing, it’s Dad’s overcoat thrown over the sleeping kids in an unheated bedroom as an extra blanket, it’s the sickly ones of all ages really suffering through Winter, it’s months of coughs and colds and chilblains, it’s the cold-related deaths that never should have happened and it’s just basically plain miserable. As usual, the biggest proportion of people in poverty, fuel or otherwise, are always the children. Are you starting to get some sort of idea of what it’s like outside the slick and well-heated political circles of London?
You could at least take your foot off the green taxation pedal and help them out but you won’t though, will you? Saving the planet is simply too important to ever contemplate doing anything like that. Quite frankly, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, you’re a bloody disgrace.
Governments wasting vast amounts of taxpayer’s money on financially absurd projects is always bad but if the net effect of doing so, is to impoverish and harm their own most vulnerable citizens, then it’s unforgivable.
Comments
SOLAR LIES
Another great posting Pointman, the politician’s involvement, lacking any sense of responsibility for their actions, made me think of this article I read this morning.
bacchanalia of high-time preference behavior ensued, inescapably leading to the economic crash. States, by their very nature, cannot and do not coordinate production and consumption. This leads them to inefficient utilization and wasteful, often unsustainable projects.”
…..meant to add “I knew it was a load of ‘guano’ “
The only green jobs Obama’s plans will produce will be the 5 million people on street corners selling apples.
Agree 100% – and all the politicians should be ashamed of themselves.
When the politician is found out and their sinister plots are uncovered, what happens at the next election? Why they are reelected, over and over again. To mention just a small sample this tiny list are only the most painful in my memory.
The subsidies for not growing a specific plant; tobacco, soil bank, various agricultural elements, the bailout of any publicly traded corporation, basically unlimited unemployment compensation, the destruction of the basic employment compensation, Obama Care, and finally the Federal Government.
All of the above can be listed as a financial reward for doing something completely wrong and contrary to history.
Just two words to describe this one Pointman. Bloody Brilliant! Couldn’t have said it any better myself but wish I had! This one deserves to be spread round the world by whatever means possible. I wish I was more IT savvy but will do my bit by linking it on every blogsite I visit and would urge others to do the same. E-mail it to friends, tell people about it – whatever it takes by whatever means possible. .
So these perfectly serviceable panels are just going to be left to sit and decay? That is nearly as criminal as the fact that they these ‘power farms’ came into being in the first place.
great Post.
Oh, but they are accountable. They just don’t know it yet. If the SHTF, they will find out the hard way. They should be hoping for the metaphorical baseball bats at the next election, instead of the real ones.
I know what fuel poverty is from when I was a kid in Prague in the 60s. Two coal stoves, no hot water and frequent coal shortages. The ancient electrical heater we had was of no use, because the coal shortages coincided with brownouts or full-blown, days-long blackouts. My dad would borrow my sled and wait an hour or two at the coal depot in blocks-long lineups and often he’d come home only with a single bag of the treasured black briquettes or with chunks of smelly “brown” coal, an inferior bitumen. When even that wasn’t available, he’d come home hours later, loaded up with swept-up coal dust and wood scraps which gave enough heat to quickly cook and eat something by the light of the kerosene lamps and dive under the covers for the night.
Great post. Definitely a candidate for your “Greatest Hits” album.
Another solar outfit closing up shop.
Definition……
The continuing woes of the solar panel businesses in Germany …
Pointman,
People may not be aware of it but in a panic reaction to Fukishima, Germany closed down all its nuclear generation plants. Their national grid authority said recently that they barely got through the winter without catastrophic power generation shortfalls. Next year will be worse unless something is done now.
Another solar company, Sovello, goes under. 1200 jobs gone …
Just to put the German situation in perspective. When they closed all their nuclear plants, renewables suddenly had to put up or shut up on all those marvelous promises. Guess what? They shut up …
Electricity bills set to rise to pay for wind farm subsidies.
Pointman, I think that you have solved the riddle of where all of the “Green Jobs” are. Cleaning up the solar farms detritus will result in large numbers of union jobs in 20 years or so.
“EU Internal Strategy Paper Calls For An End To Subsidies For Green Energies”
“Spain Ejects Clean-Power Industry With Europe Precedent: Energy”
“Solyndra Sequel No. 83 – Odersun Bites The Dust – Another 260 ‘Green Jobs-Of-The-Future’ Vaporize”
“A Colorado-based solar panel maker that received a $400 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration said Thursday it will file for bankruptcy, the latest setback for an industry battered by the recession and stiff competition from companies in China.”
California’s Green Suicide.
And not to be outdone, Bosch takes a one billion Euro hit on their solar business.
“Everyone has heard the pitch for solar energy, install solar cells on your roof and get free electricity from the Sun. Sure they cost a lot up front, but they will last 25-30 years—which just happens to be about the payback time given current electricity rates from coal, nuclear and natural gas. So when solar panels start failing in two or three years the economics of solar power collapses like a house of cards.
“Germany’s Siemens completely winds down solar business.”
Germany’s Solar Industry “Ends In A Debacle”, Resulting In 21 Billion Euros Of Destroyed Capital
“Solar panels ‘take 100 years to pay back installation costs’ ”
“Switzerland plans radical solar subsidy cuts.”
Install solar panels on your roof, so firemen can watch it burn down ????
Anyone remember Enron. To the MSM it was like spreading peanut butter on Bush. They loved to smear him with that scandal that they really could never pin on him.
I’ve been tracking and asking since late 2009 over at The Green Corruption Fileshttp://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2013/09/top-dc-lobbyist-mcbee-strategic.html#.UjpEXsu9KK3
SunEdison which has in built Solar Farms in some of the silliest places is losing BILLIONS of dollars a year.
A rather big snip …
Another one bites the dust with 900 jobs.
Abengoa, a Spanish renewables company, dashes for creditor protection and looks to become the biggest bankruptcy in Spanish history.
Solar firm Abengoa SA circling the drain with billions in debts.
SunEdison, at one time the world’s largest renewable energy company is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, leaving 1.5 Billion USD in debts.
I’m with you on this one … as an electrician I have seen all the proposals and enacted methods of producing electrical power. Solar is cute but has and will remain expensive. I can’t believe the b.s. that our governments have spewed with ridiculous subsidies. These mega farms are just stupid. We do not have storage capacity and so they force us to shut down more efficient gas fired generating stations to accept their power. The only solar we should have supported is small household projects to offset personal costs. Industry has little to no use for it. Great for road signs and field lights. But not much else.
And DECC finally exterminated, AT LAST, albeit to the expected wails of the green blob. Theresa May just needs to repeal the Climate Change Act now. Will she be brave enough? I hope so.
[…] — Toxic Waste from Wind and Solar Waste Contaminates The Earth https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/the-sun-is-setting-on-solar-power-the-moneys-gone-and-no… What they wish for humanity (the death of industrial civilization) they haven’t the […]