Can President Obama Name ONE Clean (Green) Energy Success?
Heritage Action for America ^ | 04/10/2012 | Ashe Schow
Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2012 10:12:44 AM by Responsibility2nd
For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama?s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you?ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven?t.
Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra (received $535 million)
Beacon Power (received $43 million)
AES? subsidiary Eastern Energy
Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
First Solar (received $3 billion)
Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
Amonix (received 5.9 million)
The National Renewable Energy Lab
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar (received $400 million)
Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
Solar Trust of America
A123 Systems (received $279 million)
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
That?s 17 (that we know of so far). We also know that loans went to foreign clean energy companies (Fisker sent money to their overseas plant to develop an electric car), and that 80% of these loans went to President Obama?s campaign donors.
The President is trying to claim in his first official campaign ad that he?s created 2.7 million clean energy jobs. When you look at all the companies going bankrupt, some of those jobs might have been paid for by the stimulus, but they are gone now. You can?t claim we?re up 2.7 million jobs if so many of those jobs have been subsequently lost.
Keep this list in mind the next time the media pretends that Solyndra was the only failure.
That old expression "there's no free lunch" comes to mind. There are some affordable steps that can be taken to improve environmental conditions, such as electric shore power for cruise ships in port so they don't run diesel in urban areas, but most are expensive and many are impractical. Without government subsidies most would have failed sooner or not even gotten off of the ground. Then there's the hidden environmental costs of green energy, such as the pollution from manufacturing electric car batteries, and the killing of raptors by wind farms.
I ran a somewhat loose Al Gore twisty (CFL) light bulb test. It was a "freebie" though my state permits a green energy rider on my bill. The package said 8000 hour life, but my estimate is a bit over 2000 hours (usage is about six hours per day). Next time I will have more precise data as I marked it with installation date. I wonder if China gives Al a kickback on the twisties?
I've lost count of the number of convoys I've seen driving down I-76 in the Akron area with three "oversize load" trucks each hauling a giant wind turbine blade, and a fourth truck hauling the giant hub. I don't know what wind farm they're hauling these things to, but it's got to be a big one.
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We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
I've lost count of the number of convoys I've seen driving down I-76 in the Akron area with three "oversize load" trucks each hauling a giant wind turbine blade, and a fourth truck hauling the giant hub. I don't know what wind farm they're hauling these things to, but it's got to be a big one.
All that diesel being burned to save a little electricity.
All that diesel being burned to save a little electricity.
Isn't that seeing the short term cost and ignoring the long term gain?
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"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. Never forget that everything the Founding Fathers did was not." Martin Luther King, Jr.
Just for a little perspective, each of those 4 trucks produced about 500hp to transport the large components. The assembled turbine is rated at 3 megawatts, or just over 4000hp.
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We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
For another green-energy success, how about Hoover dam? Or are we limited only to contemporary projects?
As for the CFLs, the less they are flicked on and off, the longer they burn. And they've gotten significantly better in just the past two years. Up until about 2 years ago, I had to replace at least one of the 6 bulbs in my bathroom light fixtures every month. The lights were never on for very long, but they'd get switched on and off continuously throughout the day. The overhead lights in my kitchen are usually on; I'd have to replace one of the 4 bulbs in my kitchen fixtures every 3 months or so. We've got a small light in a stairwell that we leave on nearly continuously; that bulb has been burning for 2 years, draws about as much power as an incandescent nightlight, produces about as much light as a 40-watt incandescent bulb.
Lately, though, I can't remember the last time I replaced a light in the bathroom or kitchen. It's been several months.
LEDs are a huge improvement over CFLs. Solid-state "bulbs" last decades. I've got some LED undercabinet lighting in my kitchen that we use all the time - task lighting during the day, safety lighting at night. We installed it 7 years ago, still runs great.
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We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart