"Clean energy projects powered by massive subsidies; With risk low, big companies eager to invest" by Eric Lipton and Clifford Krauss | New York Times, November 12, 2011
WASHINGTON - Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes.
The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009.
The government support - which includes loan guarantees, cash grants, and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates - largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG - even Google.
The BILLIONS-PER-QUARTER in PROFIT BANKS benefited, as well as GE and Google?
The GE that paid "no federal tax bill last year, even though it turned a $14.2 billion profit," and still got a $3.2 billion "refund" courtesy of the American taxpayer who is facing social service cuts?
Related: Google $oak$ Up $ome $un
Americans, why does it take HUGE WADS of TAXPAYER LOOT to get these robber-baron corporations to DO THE (allegedly) RIGHT THING that YOU ARE LECTURED ABOUT and told that YOU NEED TO PAY A TAX for that energy use!?
Oh, btw, your SOCIAL SERVICES NEED SOME CUTTING.
A great deal of attention has been focused on Solyndra, a start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop cutting-edge solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lower-risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources.
Yeah, it is AMAZING how the AmeriKan media picks small-fry looting and fraud (not that I approve, mind you) and MAGNIFIES it while the banksters and corporations that front for absconds with the real loot (to the tune of trillions with a t).
When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over.
They SAW (borrowed at interest, sigh) TAX LOOT AVAILABLE, and the STAMPEDE BEGAN!!
As NRG’s chief executive, David W. Crane, put it to Wall Street analysts early this year, the government’s largess was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and “we intend to do as much of this business as we can get our hands on.’’
Okay, in other words, the LOOTING of the NATION has NOW COMMENCED!
That is the LAST ACT of CRIMINALS that DESTROY NATIONS, Americans.
Is Occupy already too late?
NRG, along with partners, ultimately secured $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees plus hundreds of millions in other subsidies for four large solar projects.
The BILLIONS-PER-QUARTER in PROFIT BANKS benefited, as well as GE and Google?
The GE that paid "no federal tax bill last year, even though it turned a $14.2 billion profit," and still got a $3.2 billion "refund" courtesy of the American taxpayer who is facing social service cuts?
Related: Google $oak$ Up $ome $un
Americans, why does it take HUGE WADS of TAXPAYER LOOT to get these robber-baron corporations to DO THE (allegedly) RIGHT THING that YOU ARE LECTURED ABOUT and told that YOU NEED TO PAY A TAX for that energy use!?
Oh, btw, your SOCIAL SERVICES NEED SOME CUTTING.
A great deal of attention has been focused on Solyndra, a start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop cutting-edge solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lower-risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources.
Yeah, it is AMAZING how the AmeriKan media picks small-fry looting and fraud (not that I approve, mind you) and MAGNIFIES it while the banksters and corporations that front for absconds with the real loot (to the tune of trillions with a t).
When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over.
They SAW (borrowed at interest, sigh) TAX LOOT AVAILABLE, and the STAMPEDE BEGAN!!
As NRG’s chief executive, David W. Crane, put it to Wall Street analysts early this year, the government’s largess was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and “we intend to do as much of this business as we can get our hands on.’’
Okay, in other words, the LOOTING of the NATION has NOW COMMENCED!
That is the LAST ACT of CRIMINALS that DESTROY NATIONS, Americans.
Is Occupy already too late?
NRG, along with partners, ultimately secured $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees plus hundreds of millions in other subsidies for four large solar projects.
“I have never seen anything that I have had to do in my 20 years in the power industry that involved less risk than these projects,’’ he said in a recent interview. “It is just filling the desert with panels.’’
From 2007 to 2010, federal subsidies jumped from $5.1 billion to $14.7 billion, according to a recent study. Most of the surge came from the economic stimulus bill, which was passed in 2009 and financed an Energy Department loan guarantee program and a separate Treasury Department grant program that were promoted as important in creating green jobs.
A separate surge -- and so was the surge of jobs out of the country.
States like California sweetened the pot by offering their own tax breaks and by approving long-term power-purchase contracts that, while promoting clean energy, will also require ratepayers to pay billions of dollars more for electricity for as long as two decades....
That's the state working for you, California citizens and taxpayers!!!
The windfall for the industry over the last three years raises questions of whether the Obama administration and state governments went too far in their support of solar and wind power projects, some of which would have been built anyway, according to the companies involved.
Can we get any of that $$$ back?
Obama administration officials argue that the incentives, which began on a large scale late in the Bush administration but were expanded by the stimulus legislation, make economic and environmental sense. Beyond the short-term increase in construction hiring, they say, the cleaner air and lower carbon emissions will benefit the country for decades.
“Subsidies and government support have been part of many key industries in US history - railroads, oil, gas and coal, aviation,’’ said Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman.
So much for the free market we are endlessly told about.
Even companies whose business has little to do with energy or finance, like the Internet giant Google, benefit from the public subsidies. Google has invested in several renewable energy projects, including a giant solar plant in the California desert and a wind farm in Oregon, in part to get federal tax breaks that it can use to offset its profits from Web advertising.
I'm wondering how much tax loot was kicked back to Google -- and will be for years to come (sigh).
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Related:
"Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged mistakes and said that if he had the chance to do it again, he would not have approved the $528 million loan. Chu also said he does not expect taxpayers will recover much of the money lost in the deal.
Meaning nothing. It's just gone.
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Also see: Obama's Ro$e-Colored $ungla$$e$
Paid a bundle for those, American taxpayers -- and yet there he is out there on the stump preaching the inequality distraction and diversion after extending the Bush tax cuts and putting us in this mess. I only type that again to emphasize the s*** fooley nature of AmeriKan politics in the early 21st-century.
Clean-tech firms lose luster
Good. People starting to see clearly now.
You didn't escape unscathed in this state, either.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Evergreen Turns Brown
Oddly, the above piece regarding Goldman and Google, et al, was also a Slow Saturday special.
Also see: Evergreen Defaults
Then why can't governments (that means you, taxpayers that had no say in the debt-enslaving deals cooked up by international finance).
And another well-intentioned initiative by government?
"Congress removes funding for Obama’s high-speed rail plan; Supporters look for ways to keep building going" November 18, 2011|By Joan Lowy, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Congress voted yesterday to kill funds for President Obama’s rail program, but the initiative may have some life in it still.
Republican lawmakers are claiming credit for killing the program. But billions of dollars still in the pipeline will ensure work will continue on some projects. And it is still possible money from another transportation grant program can be steered to higher-speed trains....
But House-Senate bargainers agreed this week to a broad spending bill that eliminates any funding specifically for higher-speed trains. The House approved that legislation yesterday 298-121, and the Senate followed suit 70-30, sending the measure to the White House.
The votes avert a weekend government shutdown that neither party wants.
Despite the bill’s easy passage, the vote highlighted fissures in the House GOP majority as 133 Republicans voted for the legislation and 101 voted against. Though none spoke against the bill during debate, conservatives were unhappy that the bipartisan legislation would spend too much and potentially leave taxpayers on the hook for even more by expanding the size of mortgages that could be insured by the Federal Housing Administration in wealthy areas from $625,500 to $729,750....
Yeah, let the taxpayer cover more of the bank and insurance company liabilities while once again serving the wealthy elite.
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