Two More Failing Taxpayer Aided Alternative Energy Companies Bound To The Forefront

Just when you think that the financial carnage is done relative to the Obama administration's disastrous waste of taxpayer wealth on failed alternative energy companies, two more fiascoes pop up. We have extensively covered these other failures in previous posts, most recently:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/obama-energy-disasters-still-abound.html

which used Abound Solar as the lead story on that post. That write-up also included a list of what companies had failed up to that date in time.

But according to a recent Heritage Foundation report, two more taxpayer funded/aided companies are now also facing difficult markets and financial times:

• A pair of foreign-owned solar companies, both of whom received a combined $84 million in Energy Department tax credits, have announced they will lay off U.S. employees.
• Why foreign owned companies were granted U.S. taxpayer money is a question and scandal for another day’s discussion.
• Both companies got their funding under the Energy Department’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing (48C) Tax Credit, a credit which is worth up to 30% of the cost of manufacturing qualifying green energy projects.
• Solar World received an $82 million credit and SunTech received a $2.1 million credit.
• Solar World announced a 47% revenue decline in the third quarter and will potentially execute 37 layoffs at its Oregon plant.
• SunTech said it will likely layoff 50 employees at its Arizona production facilities.

The ironic thing about both companies is that Solar World claimed it had to lay off its employees because the Chinese government is subsidizing the sale of cheap solar panels in the U.S., which the U.S. International Trade Commission is fighting by imposing a 35.95% tariff on each imported Chinese solar panel. Meanwhile, SunTech is claiming it is laying off people because of the 35.95% tariff that is being imposed by the Commission.

Thus, the Federal government’s priorities are so screwed up that is funding two U.S. companies that have diametrically opposed business models relative to Chinese subsidies and U.S. tariffs, one gets hurt and the other gets helped depending on what the Federal government does.

More wasted taxpayer dollars for little benefit in return, in this case fewer jobs despite millions of dollars in aid. But this should not surprise anyone, given that the Federal government has thrown billions of dollars away on alternative energy companies that are either bankrupt and out of business, going bankrupt and will soon be out of business, have laid off a significant number of workers, and businesses that still exist but have failed miserably to attain their business and financial goals (the company names with an asterisk next to them indicate they have filed for or have completed bankruptcy proceedings):

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)

I have never found a list of an Obama-backed alternative energy companies that have been successful. If that list exists, I would be more than happy to publish it.

Billions of dollars down the drain with no discernible taxpayer benefit in return. As we have discussed many times in this blog, the only Americans who made out on these deals are the many Obama administration political cronies who bankrolled many of these companies to begin with and received taxpayer money from this administration and political class in exchange for political financial support. Disgracefully wasteful spending.

As a side note, these billions do no include the additional wasted billions given to other alternative transportation companies and options such as Tesla Motors and the Chevy Volt, both of which either make cars that an average American taxpayer will never be able to afford or who make cars that have proven mostly uncompetitive in the marketplace.

But it gets worse. Not only do we have SunTech and Solar World laying off employees despite burning through government and taxpayer funds, not only to we have these 33 listed companies above providing no benefit back to taxpayers, we also have found out from the Washington Guardian,

http://www.washingtonguardian.com/stimulating-investigation

that there almost 2,000 investigations underway into fraud and criminal activity relative to the huge and fruitless economic stimulus program that was passed in 2009.

These nearly 2,000 investigations and the resultant 600 arrests include many Department of Energy programs that are related to the stimulus funds that were apportioned out to many of the above listed, failed companies. Thus, not only were these bad companies given taxpayer money for no benefit, that money may have also been taken under criminal circumstances.

The Federal government 1) does very, very few things well and 2) it does not employ trained venture capitalists. Both of these facts should have prevented the Federal government bureaucracy from handing out taxpayer money to almost three dozen failed companies, it does not know how to it well. If any of these listed companies had valid market and business plans, trained bankers and venture capitalists would have been more than happy to fund their business endeavors. The Federal government never should have been involved.

An old rule business goes something like the following: If a new product or service fills a market need (right price, right features, right style, right sales channels, etc.), no government support is needed. If a new product or service does not fit a market need, no amount of government support and financing will make it successful.

At least 33 companies had alternative energy products and services that did not fill a current market need. But the Federal government went and funded them anyway, much to the expense and chagrin of the American taxpayer. The only question left is if 33 is the end of the waste or there is more to come. Given that a week ago I had never heard of Solar World and SunTech, I doubt we have heard the end of the “Abounding” number alternative energy failures from the Obama administration.

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