The Unbearable Lightness of Solar Power

To see the absurdities that await us in our energy future, look no further than the front page of today’s business section of the New York Times for the story entitled “The Newest Hybrid Model.”

The article features a dramatic photo of 500 acres of solar panels sitting next to an innocuous looking natural gas plant in Indiantown, Fla., owned by Florida Power & Light. The natural gas plant — which occupies no more than 15 acres — produces 3,800 megawatts of reliable electricity. The gigantic 500-acre solar complex next to it (that’s about three-quarters of a square mile) will produce 75 MW of electricity AT ITS MAXIMUM, i.e., on a hot summer afternoon. (Fortunately, this is the time when electrical demand peaks.)

... building a 1000-MW solar array — the size of an average coal or nuclear plant — would cost $5 billion, putting it right up there with the most expensive reactors and coal plants with carbon capture. But the solar panels only generate electricity one-third of the time. “We’d love to tell you that solar power is as economical as fossil fuels, but the reality is that it is not,” says Lewis Hay II, CEO of Florida Power and Light, which has built the complex.

Such facilities serve only two purposes: 1) To satisfy the whims of state legislatures; and 2) to create pretty pictures for billboard ads and the covers of annual reports. In both they are a triumphant success.

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/...zdjM2VlODk4MTg=

This winter when the humidity was really dry, I zipped up a zip-lock bag in the dark and noticed a small spark of electricity was generated.
With the proper political backing and government funding, I could build 15 acre zip lock bags capable of generating green electricity.
In humid weather we could rent them out as waterproof storage facilities.


Models demonstrating the potential use of hair drying powered by "green" electricity generated with huge zip lock bags:

I'm betting on buggy whips myself.

"Somebody Told Me" -- Vermont’s (Dark) Green Future

The buzz on the nuclear blogs this week is the recent claim by Peter Shumlin, president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate, that Germany gets 30 percent of its electricity from solar energy.

Shumlin made the claim on Fox Business News while being interviewed about the Vermont legislature's decision to close down the 600-megawatt Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently trying to find the source of a small tritium leak that has showed up in test wells around the plant. While Shumlin was still on the air, a Fox News commentator checked Wikipedia and told him the figure was only 1 percent. "That's just Wikipedia," countered Shumlinm and said that the 30 percent figure is "what I've been told." (Rod Adams, who runs the excellent Atomic Insights blog, says the correct figure is 0.6 percent.) When pressed about where Vermont was going to go to replace one-third of its electricity, Shumlin confidently predicted "the whole country is moving to renewables."

Shumlin's wild claims exemplify exactly how and why the whole country is "moving to renewables." Somebody told somebody about something that's supposedly going on over in Europe and we're going to do the same thing here.

Good luck, Vermont. It's going to be amusing to watch the Green Mountain State slide back to nature.

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/...2QxYWI1MjRmODA=

U.S. Tops in Fossil Fuel

The United States has largest reserves on Earth, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

The U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves.

While Russia is a close second with 1,248 billion barrels, other energy producing nations are far behind. No. 3 is Saudi Arabia (543 billion barrels), followed by China (494 billion barrels), Iran (426 billion barrels) and Canada (221 billion barrels.)

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...35-220d7cf8c519

Rambling Thoughts from a Self-Confessed Atomic Cheerleader

The fundamental, physical, undeniable advantages that are locked up in the nuclei of uranium, thorium, and other actinides are known to a relatively small number of engineers and scientists. In general, people in those professions have less developed communications skills and have not done a very good job of sharing the wonder that they must feel as they do their daily jobs. Some of them may not even realize just how magical the materials are that they work with on a daily basis because they entered the field after layer upon layer of extraneous caution and back-up systems had been added to disguise the massive quantities of power that come from tiny quantities of material.

I keep three simulated fuel pellets on my keyboard try to help remind me just how incredible the materials are. Those three little pellets, if actually made of uranium dioxide, would contain as much energy as three tons of coal - if they were used in a rather primitive fashion in a once through light water reactor fuel cycle. If fully fissioned, which is possible, they would produce as much heat energy as burning 60 tons of high quality coal.

There are a few engineers and technologists who "get it" and work hard at sharing their wonder with the rest of the world. For a time, Hyman Rickover was one of those people, before he got so worried about the sniping that he was receiving from others that he began isolating and protecting his program's knowledge and advances


http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/03...-confessed.html
.

Bait and switch solar power

Spain’s government, after using subsidies to spur more than 18 billion euros ($24 billion) in solar-power projects since 2008, may reduce the premium power rates that attracted clean-energy investors.

The state has the authority to cut prices paid to operating renewable-power plants under a 2007 law, according to an industry ministry spokesman who declined to be identified. All options are being assessed for a new strategic plan this year, he said. Spanish solar and wind developer shares fell as much as 4.1 percent.

“This is nothing less than a catastrophe” for investors, said Stephane Aderca, an energy analyst at Liberum Capital Ltd. in London. “We had believed that a promise is a promise. Going back on a promise brings the whole thing into question.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aPX9GRjTgrlk

Disturbing gulf between the chief concerns of rich countries and the problems that actually do the most damage to the world.

For example, one of the "core issues" that the organizers of this year's Earth Day say we should be worrying about is the use of fertilizers and pesticides. It may be unfashionable to point this out, but without the high-yield agricultural practices developed over the past 60 years, virtually all the forests of the world would have to have been cleared to make way for food production. And starvation would be much, much more prevalent.

What about indoor air pollution, which happens to be the world's No. 1 environmental killer? In poor countries, 2.5 billion people rely on "biomass" — wood, waste and dung — to cook and keep themselves warm. This year, the resulting pollution will kill about 1.3 million of them, mainly women and children. Switching from biomass to fossil fuels would dramatically improve the lives of more than a third of the world's population.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum...lumn21_ST_N.htm

Solar Power: NSF Projections Fall Short

In the December 1974 issue of Popular Science Magazine, there was an article titled "Solar Cells: When Will You Plug Into Electricity from Sunshine?" that discussed the future of solar energy. The article predicted that by 1986 the cost per watt at peak power would be down to $0.30 ($0.60 in today's dollars) based on projections from the National Science Foundation. There were also predictions for giant solar-cell systems that would provide solar energy to towns and utilities by 1990.

By 2007, solar prices were actually about $3.66 per watt (about six times higher than predicted), and were predicted in this 2008 article to fall to $2.14 per watt in 2010. And we still don't have any of those giant solar-cell systems yet.

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/05/solar-...fall-short.html

Green Jobs Fiasco

Even the New York Times has also figured it out that the administration’s green jobs initiative is an embarrassing mess.

- Johnson Controls plant in southern Michigan, which received $300 million in green grants and plans to create a whopping total of 150 jobs, at a cost of $2 million per position.

- Evergreen Solar Inc., which received unknown amounts of green stimulus funds on the hope that it would create “between 90 and 100 jobs” two years ago, filed for bankruptcy this week, $485.6 million in debt. Their Massachusetts plant once employed 800 people; in March it was replaced with a factory in Wuhan, China.

- Green Vehicles, an electric car “maker” in Salinas, California, took $500,000 from the city and almost $200,000 from the state but has failed to produce even one car.

- And as reported earlier on this site, Seattle was one of a handful of cities that received $20 million in federal grants as part of Retrofit Ramp-Up, a program designed to refit houses with more energy efficient materials. Unfortunately, as KOMO4 of Seattle reports, after more than a year “only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.”

I’ve posted about this failing strategy before; it’s nice to see that the New York Times has also figured it out that the administration’s green jobs initiative is an embarrassing mess.
As the paper of record reports,

Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter…
The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.

Green

Thirteen-year-old patents solar efficiency breakthrough. Ever wonder who the future belongs to?

USING FIBONACCI SEQUENCES

"Hope springs eternal!"
They also used to think they could turn lead into gold with just the right formula.
Gold spray paint was as close as they got.

(UPDATE: After this story broke over the weekend, at least one science blog is debunking these claims as impossible. As is the case with many stories on the Internet, take it with a grain of salt…)

Most importantly, by mistake he did not measure power outputs from the solar cells. Instead he measured voltage, without a load attached ("open circuit"). They are barely related -- in solar cells, voltage is actually almost a constant, independent of power.

The actual power delivered by a solar cell is not linearly related to the open-circuit voltage; actually, as a semiconductor, it has a horribly nonlinear relationship. Here's the current-voltage (I-V) curve:


[National Instruments] Photovoltaic Cell I-V Characterization Theory

VOC denotes the "open circuit" voltage: when there is no load attached, and no current flows (I = 0). Power goes as V*I; a real solar system will maximize efficiency, by working at the point on the I-V curve which maximies power (PMAX).

The kid is measuring VOC. As it happens, this is practically independent of power output! Here's how the I-V curve changes with incident solar power ("irradiance", areal density of radiation in [W/m2]). As this solar module datasheet shows, VOC is almost a constant, regardless of incident light!

Thanks to the new technique of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which makes it possible to recover oil and natural gas trapped in shale, the United States now has more reserves of oil, coal and natural gas than any other nation, concluded the Congressional Research Service.

"Shale gas doesn't change everything, it's much more important than that," said British energy expert Nick Grealy.

If these resources were exploited properly, America could be energy independent very soon. Millions of well-paying jobs would be created. New tax revenues would flood the Treasury. The cost of gasoline and electricity would plummet.

But the government forbids oil drilling in most of Alaska, most areas offshore and much of the West. Regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coal and electric power industries, and send electric bills soaring.

so-called "renewables" require massive government subsidies to produce little energy. Studies in Spain, Britain and Italy indicate each subsidized "green" job costs, respectively, 2.2, 3.7 and 4.8 jobs in the private sector.

Energy

Oil sands pipeline project from Canada

Canadians can do what they want with their oil in Canada, and there’s little American protesters can do to stop them

That, presumably, is why the White House announced today that the pipeline will go ahead, greens and New York Times editorial board notwithstanding. There was no other rational choice he could make.
No significant political force in the United States is as incompetently organized and led as the greens. Republicans should rejoice; green extremism, hysteria and incompetence seriously undercuts Democratic coherence and credibility. That is the point that TPM and its allies need to be making; until the rest of the left knocks some sense into green heads, the environmentalists will continue to serve as one of the Republican Party’s most helpful auxiliaries.

Pipeline

IMAGINE HOW TODAY WOULD BE DIFFERENT IF THE TREASURY FOUND AN EXTRA $14 TRILLION IN GOLD RESERVES!
Just as the Beverly Hillbillies went from starvation to untold wealth so too are those STATES extracting GOLD from the dirt.

It's amazing how AMERICA'S HEALTH AND COMMON GOOD WOULD benefit from Black Gold, that BEAUTIFUL ORGANIC NATURAL TREASURE: CRUDE OIL!

Texas Tea.


North Dakota enjoys the spoils of full employment

Budget deficits, slashed services and higher taxes have been the norm across the country during the past three years as states scramble to make up for revenue shortfalls. Not in North Dakota. Investments in education, health and human services, the environment and transportation will boost total state spending by 12.5 percent, or $1.1 billion, during the next biennium.

Geology, not tax policy, explains North Dakota's incredible run. They've been drilling for oil in the Williston Basin since the early 1950s, but new horizontal drilling technologies have allowed prospectors to tap into the rich Bakken Formation. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the region holds about 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable reserves of oil, larger than all other current oil assessments in the lower 48 states.
North Dakota is now the fourth-largest oil producer in the United States. The number of people working in its oil industry has tripled since 2007, to more than 16,000, and the growth in jobs since then can be almost entirely accounted for by the state's oil industry.
According to the North Dakota Petroleum Council, crude oil taxes on production and extraction brought in about $750 million in state revenue. In addition, the industry spent $1.49 billion in taxable sales and purchases. The state tax department has said that "every $1 increase or decrease in the price of oil impacts gross state revenue by $9.3 million a year."

$535 Spent Million on Solyndra Solar Energy Firm in 2010; Firm Went Bankrupt Today; Pricetag $486,363 Per Job Saved for 18 Months

The federal government should get out of the business of picking technology and "green" winners. Government backing of alternate energy companies has been nothing short of disastrous.

In this case, it is rather amazing how fast Solyndra wasted over half a billion US taxpayer dollars, so fast I suspect fraud.

In general, if companies cannot survive without government subsidies then they should not survive at all.

Solar

For better or worse, the free market seems to work best.
Government subsidized anything always turns into just one more slush fund for the looters and moochers to divide up the spoils.
It would be real interesting to discover where and with whom most of that that $1/2 Billion wound up.

Imagine if they would have built a $1/2 Billion modern oil refinery.
We all would have seen that money returned many fold for years to come in reduced fuel costs for taxpayers.
While creating permanent jobs.

It's the Usual Suspects.
The $1/2 Billion government "loan" was a slush fund repayment for Tulsa's own Kaiser Söze, who bundled political contributions for politicians.

Current investigations are underway.
Business as usual while our children and grandchildren will cough up the money.

Fracking is obviously the way to go.

Why worry about contaminating water.

I reckon we should revert to whale oil as a lamp source.

If it was good enough for Jonah then we should kill more whales.

The whole idea of new energy which is renewable is ludicrous.

Ever heard of Moore's law in regard to computer power.

It suggested and still works on the principle of halfing cost wihile doubling power.

Why won't that work for renewable energy?

It will but how about we do the Canute thing and try and hold back the tide.

Flat earthing is a philosophy that appeals to flat minds.

Whether oil runs out in 20 years or 200 years, the fact is it runs out as does coal etc.

Why anyone would oppose renewable energy is beyond me.

How long have you been off the grid?

Funny thing, in Australia with home solar power, the need for new power stations has changed from 2013 to 2020 and with more installation will be extended to what?

Yep, this renewable energy is a crock.

A crock of gold!

The days of remote power generation is coming to an end.

Why pay for power when the technology is cheap and sustainable.

Every year the technology is more efficient and cheaper.

Soon every tile on your roof will be a solar cell or it will be here.

So my next car will be powered for free.

All my household power will be free.

At the moment it may cost some thousands to install but recooped in several years.

This will become cheaper as the technology improves.

Hardly a new innovation as when I was a kid most people had windmills in my area generating all their power needs.

Investigators Probe White House Role in Massive Energy Loan

House investigators said they have uncovered evidence that White House officials became personally involved in an Energy Department review of a hot-button $535 million loan guarantee to the now-failed California solar company Solyndra.

"How did this company, without maybe the best economic plan, all of a sudden get to the head of the line?" Upton told ABC News in an interview this week. "We want to know who made this decision ... and we're not going to stop until we get those answers."

Solar

Why did it take so long to uncover the green jobs racket?

The Washington Post Explains

It seems like just a week or so ago when “green jobs” were still the rage. But in the wake of the Solyndra debacle, there is now a stampede to cough up the truth: It’s pretty much been a racket from the get-go. David Brooks is the latest to discover the scam

Green jobs, like any federal program, stick around as a plaything of government well past they’ve been shown to be a failure. That is the nature of government — a constituency forms, agencies are set up, and lobby groups arise. The pols and the bureaucrat defend the use of the taxpayer’s money, enlisting the media to run sunny stories about the “success” of the endeavor. It takes a very long time, or until a high-profile collapse, for the Potemkin village to come down.

Green

"Green jobs" - A total failure in Germany as well

Green energy used to be Germany's great hope for its economic future. But now the German solar industry is in trouble amid huge losses, job cuts and the threat of bankruptcies.

The situation is desparate in town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, once nicknamed the "German Solar valley":

One photovoltaic manufacturer after another located in the area. The clean, future-oriented industry generated jobs and income, employing as many as 10,000 people in its heyday.
But now Q-Cells is struggling to survive. The company made a heavy loss in the second quarter of 2011. It doesn't take a business degree to recognize the desperate situation in which the company, once the world's largest solar cell manufacturer, now finds itself.
Solar Valley threatens to turn into a vale of tears. Mayor Wust fears that her town is heading toward another historic watershed. This time the fates of 3,000 workers are at stake
---
Now, of all times, the green industries of the future are faltering. The goal of developing a new leading industry with global aspirations has become a distant hope. German players play only a secondary role in global markets and are steadily losing market share -- despite being heavily subsidized. Or maybe the industry is ailing precisely because of the billions in government aid.
Hardly any other industrial sector has received such generous political support as the producers of green electricity, especially the solar industry.

Solar

Decent discussion from several sides.

Why Isn't the U.S. Losing the Green Race?

Green Math, a la Canada

Ontario’s green energy numbers don’t add up:

Wholesale Average Weighted Cost (YTD) of Ontario electricity: 3.35 cents/kWh

Guaranteed 20-year contract price per kWh for solar panels (ground level): 64.2 cents/kWh

Guaranteed 20-year contract price per kWh for solar panels (roof-top): 80.2 cents/kWh

Guaranteed 20-year contract price per kWh for wind turbines: 13.5 cents/kWh


Cost to the province in 2011 to reduce bills by 10% to hide increases caused by green energy programs until after the election: $1.1 billion

Ontario

What is hampering solar power has everything to do with cost.
It is five to eleven times more expensive to produce electricity from the sun than it is from coal, hydro or nuclear sources.
The first problem is with the cost of the technology.
The efficiency of solar cells is only about 22%. The rest of the sunlight that strikes the panel is wasted as heat. More efficient photovoltaic cells have been discovered but these are still in their experimental phase and are expensive to manufacture.

Giant solar farms have been built in desert regions and have reduced the installation cost since a larger economy-of-scale is created (parts, material & installation people are in one location). But these large, inexpensive tracks of lands are found far from cities where the power is needed. Expensive transmission lines are needed to bring the power to a distant market.

Maintenance costs are high since every inch of a solar panel must be kept clean and clear of debris. Their efficiency drops drastically even when a small portion is blocked by a leaf or a thin film of dust.

Child labor is the most economical way to keep panels clean.


The main problem with solar power that has stifled its use is the fact that energy production only takes place when the sun is shining.
Large storage systems need to be developed (these are environmentally damaging) to provide a constant and reliable source of electricity when the sun isn't shining at night or when a cloud goes overhead.
When solar panels are not producing energy, it takes longer to recoup their installation and maintenance cost. Countries that rely on expensive solar power will be at a severe disadvantage compared to ones that don't or can't use solar power.
Scientists need to discover more efficient semiconductors that are more efficient at electricity production.
Engineers need to develop more efficient production techniques.
New transmission technology is needed to bring the clean energy to market. Energy storage systems will also help smooth out the production bumps caused by climate and atmospheric interruptions.

Until all of these problems with solar energy are overcome, the promise of pollution-free energy from the sun will remain unfulfilled and marginally used in our society.

http://www.solarpoweristhefuture.com/probl...ar-energy.shtml

Solar power absurd, a la Europe

The costs of Alex Salmond’s green energy revolution are “going through the roof” and threaten to bankrupt companies by doubling energy bills, business leaders have warned the First Minister. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) said electricity is currently about nine times more expensive to generate from wind farms than gas-powered plants. It warned this would hold back the Scottish economy and lead to businesses going under.
–Simon Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 29 September 2011

Poland would veto any EU legislation that threatened its sovereignty in energy policy, Maciej Olex-Szczytowski, an adviser to the Polish foreign minister on economics and business, said yesterday
–Bloomberg, 28 September 2011

In an age of austerity, cheap gas—domestically produced and available in large quantities—could be a major tool for restoring European prosperity. It allows EU member states to directly tackle their alarming growth of fuel poverty while providing a new means to help rebuild competitiveness. That is an investment no country in Europe can afford not to make.
–-Alan Riley, The Wall Street Journal, 30 September 2011

The shale boom of oil & gas is one of the few bright spots in the Obama economy. So it seems more than a bit paradoxical that Obama’s EPA and Department of the Interior continue working in attempts to find an excuse to shut it down — or at least slow it to a crawl.
–Al Fin Energy, 29 September 2011

energy

Green Energy Industry Staggers

The political assumptions underlying the green investment boomlet turned out to be false. There will be no global carbon regime for the foreseeable future; there will be no cap and trade and no aggressive federal programs to raise energy prices during the deepest recession since World War Two.

Perhaps even worse from the green point of view, a cascade of discoveries and technological advances has dramatically increased the supplies of oil and gas in the western hemisphere — including huge new domestic energy supplies in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and upstate New York. These discoveries are devastating to the politics of the environmental movement.

There will be the usual NIMBY-motivated opposition (some of it justified) to frakking and to oil and gas pipelines, but overall millions more Americans are going to be economically tied to domestic energy production and they will not want their congressional representatives voting against the industry on which their paychecks depend. Nor will they support presidential candidates who promise to eliminate their jobs. It will not just be the people who work in the extraction business who feel this way. Those who supply the industry, those who operate pipelines, those who sell goods and services to gas and oil workers: they will form a powerful phalanx of pro-oil and gas interests that will reach far beyond Texas.

At the same time, key environmental arguments will be seriously weakened. The western hemisphere looks set to become energy independent for the foreseeable future; the US is moving steadily away from the dependence on Middle Eastern oil that makes many national security experts think green. Importing from Canada just isn’t the same kind of problem as importing from Iraq.

energy

How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia

Harold Hamm, discoverer of the Bakken fields of the northern Great Plains, on America's oil future and why OPEC's days are numbered.

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers.

How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."

If he's right, that'll double America's proven oil reserves. "Bakken is almost twice as big as the oil reserve in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska," he continues. According to Department of Energy data, North Dakota is on pace to surpass California in oil production in the next few years. Mr. Hamm explains over lunch in Washington, D.C., that the more his company drills, the more oil it finds. Continental Resources has seen its "proved reserves" of oil and natural gas (mostly in North Dakota) skyrocket to 421 million barrels this summer from 118 million barrels in 2006.

Hamm

Clean Energy Index Down 80% in 3 Years

The S&P Global Clean Energy Index provides liquid and tradable exposure to 30 companies from around the world that are involved in clean energy related businesses.

S&P Global Clean Energy Index YTD -44.47%

ICLN

"Green is Good" - Gordon Gekko

80% of ‘Green Energy’ Loans Went to Top Campaign Donors

Some of the loans dwarf in size those given to George Kaiser, owner of the now defunct Solyndra.

The list—which features the likes of Google owners Larry Page and Sergey Brinn, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Turner, John Doerr, and Al Gore—raises new questions about the procedures used to administer the now-controversial DOE loans.

Green

Google quits plans to make cheap renewable energy

Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.


In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal.

"It is even odds, more or less," Weihl said at the time. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."

A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

Google

And in the US while the oil men and their employees (the U.S. Congress) fiddle:

THE JOB CREATORS

And you will fly to the moon on a rainbow colored unicorn.

America's Vast Energy Resources

Happily, the publicity that has recently been given to massive shale oil and natural gas deposits in North Dakota, Pennsylvania and elsewhere has awakened many Americans to the fact that our energy resources are truly vast–greater, in fact, than any other country’s.

Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making.

OIL
6 times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.

NAT GAS
More nat gas than the 5 other largest countries.

COAL
More than 3 times as much as Russia, which is second.


As it turns out, many of the problems of energy scarcity and rising costs in the United States have been caused by the government itself. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report that outlined many of the policy and regulatory constraints that impact domestic energy production. While the report focused on natural gas specifically, many of the laws and procedures also represent roadblocks to any form of safe and responsible energy production.

Energy

Solon SE (SOO1) slumped in Frankfurt trading after becoming the first publicly traded solar company from Germany to file for insolvency.

News that the pioneer German solar power company Solon filed for creditor protection Tuesday suggests last year’s seep of air out of the jolly green subsidy giant has become a great vacuum blowout. The various corporate-welfare seekers that have been straddling the renewable sector will not give up easily or gracefully, but the hot-air balloon that is green-energy economics is rapidly losing the ga-ga popular support it has had for the past decade.


link

Fastest Growing Jobs 2007-11 Are Energy-Related

Not a green job to be found

For job growth over the last four years, six of the top eight occupations and nine of the top 15 fastest-growing occupations are related to the boom in domestic oil and natural gas extraction in places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania.
Here are some details on the energy-related jobs:

1. Extraction workers for oil and natural gas: #2 overall, 46% growth, median hourly wage of $16.62.

2. Geological and petroleum technicians: #4 overall, 42% growth, median hourly wage of $18.86

3. Mining machine operator: #5 overall, 40% growth, $17.52 wage


link

BP Shuts Down Solar Business – “Also In Germany Solar Industry Faces Collapse”

Energy giant British Petroleum (BP) announced that it was shutting down its solar module business for good.

BP is the latest in the long string of failures that have swept over the solar industry recently.

The solar industry in Germany faces a collapse. [...] The Sarasin Bank puts companies Conergy, Q-Cells, Solar-Fabrik, and Sunways under the category of ‘endangered’.”

solar

Yes, absurd. A double from the November bottom.

Do you ever buy stocks?

Click to view attachment

Washington Post: The administration's entire green energy/clean energy program was about politics, not good policy

The documents reviewed by The Post ... show that as Solyndra tottered, officials discussed the political fallout from its troubles, the “optics” in Washington and the impact that the company’s failure could have on the president’s prospects for a second term. Rarely, if ever, was there discussion of the impact that Solyndra’s collapse would have on laid-off workers or on the development of clean-energy technology.

“What’s so troubling is that politics seems to be the dominant factor,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “They’re not talking about what the taxpayers are losing; they’re not talking about the failure of the technology, whether we bet on the wrong horse. What they are talking about is ‘How are we going to manage this politically?’ ”

The administration, which excluded lobbyists from policymaking positions, gave easy access to venture capitalists with stakes in some of the companies backed by the administration, the records show. Many of those investors had given to the 2008 campaign. Some took jobs in the administration and helped manage the clean-energy program.


green

Oil versus Clean Energy (XLE versus PBW)

Did anyone invest their life savings into clean energy?


3 yr performance:

XLE +40%

PBW -44%

Solyndra, Schweizer says, is only the tip of the iceberg.

According to his research, at least 10 members of the Administration's campaign finance committee and more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers were big winners in getting tax dollars from these programs. One chart in the book details how the 10 finance committee members collectively raised $457,834, and were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.4 billion -- quite a return on their investment.

In the loan-guarantee program alone, Schweizer writes, "$16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted went to companies either run by or primarily owned by the Administration's financial backers -- individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama's National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party." That is a staggering 71 percent of the loan money.

Throw Them All Out - Peter Schweitzer

They're giving "loans" to green energy while they're only giving "subsidies" to big oil? Absolutely disgraceful!

I often wonder if big oil will be able to survive in a green-energy future without its annual donations from taxpayers.

TIME FOR CONGRESS TO END BIG OIL SUBSIDIES

First Solar Craters

Wall Street identified First Solar (FSLR) as one of “the 13 worst big stock stories of 2011,” with prospects looking poor for this year as well. Shares peaked just above $175 in February, but now stand at around $33, despite being named one of Forbes’s 25 fastest growing tech companies in America nearly a year ago.

The company’s stock collapse is alarming considering the massive infusion of government support, and the healthy boost it received when it was sold in 1999 to an investment firm that handled the Walton family’s money. The late John Walton, son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, reportedly infused First Solar with $150 million and took a seat on the company board. His estate unloaded much of its First Solar stock in mid-2009. Good timing.

The downturn in value led to the firing of company CEO Rob Gillette in October, which 24/7 Wall Street characterized as “strange and sudden.”

In addition the company spent heavily in that gravy train of states for renewable incentives, California. Bloomberg reported the company gave more than $150,000 to Golden State political campaigns last year – more than triple what BP gave – and has received $3.43 million in state sales tax credits.

First Solar will also quickly learn that markets for its energy technology do not exist. Its stock price has tanked even with those subsidies, so look for the job losses and taxpayer outrage to increase, just like with Solyndra.


FSLR

A SOLAR COMEBACK PREDICTED FOR 2012 (YGE, FSLR, SPWR, STP)

Buy low, sell high, but timing is everything.

Progress.

Germany's Solar Power Output up 60 percent in 2011

More than half of Germany's renewable energy owned by farmers, citizens"

In a land where pesticides are good for people, vegetables grow on trees, food and land are free... and unicorns run wild...
..
FEDERAL GOV'T SLAPS FINE FOR NOT USING BIOFUEL -- THAT DOES NOT EXIST!

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide.
The mandate requires the use of three alternative fuels: car and truck fuel made from cellulose, diesel fuel made from biomass and fuel made from biological materials but with a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. Only the cellulosic fuel is commercially unavailable. As for meeting the quotas in the other categories, the refiners will not close their books until February and are not sure what will happen."

Of course that plan may just be about raising taxes without saying so.
I wonder who will pay the higher fuel prices in the end?
The FEDs rob us but blame evil fossil fuel producers.
Reel 'em in.