Doubling Down On Stupid

While the rest of the world has smartened up to some degree and decided that maybe, just maybe the various green energy alternatives are singularly incapable of replacing less than one percent of energy needs with any level of efficiency, Our newly installed Department of Energy Secretary says “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead..”

“I would argue that I believe that the scale and time frame of impact of solar technology, I believe, again, is underestimated,” he said at the U.S. Energy Information Administration-hosted event. “There are many situations today when solar is in fact competitive.”

Competitive you say? With what? Cold Fusion? Listen I’ve said it before, I have nothing against green energy sources. However, when the instruments the greens use 1) cost way more than alternatives (Read Natural Gas) 2) Kill endangered species 3) require vast amounts of tax dollars to stay afloat fail- I gotta think twice about throwing more tax dollars down that rabbit hole.

Guys this is very simple, this form of energy generation is not ready for prime time. Our overlords forget that this is a market driven commodity. You have consumers in the market (me and you). We want the lowest possible rates for our energy regardless of where it comes from. What our overlords fail to understand is that's all we want. We don’t want to feel good about where the power comes from and paying a premium to do so. But as is always the case with liberals - they understand that we (the consumer) really don’t understand what we want. So they, in their infinite wisdom, rig the game with billions of our tax dollars on a failing technology. Not just once but over and over again:

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
27. Vestas ($50 million)
28. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30. Navistar ($39 million)
31. Satcon ($3 million)*
32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

And yet the new DOE Secretary is rearing to give it another try. Unbelievable.