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"Renewable" energy subsidies have become an unaffordable feel-good luxury. First Solar Corporation was indeed first at something: It was the first solar company to lose more than $15 billion of market value. FSLR's stock plummeted from $140 per share a year ago, and $170 a few weeks before that, to under $21 per share early this week before rebounding modestly on Tuesday. In fact, $15 billion substantially understates the peak-to-trough drop in the company's value, as the stock traded above $250 per share for most of 2008, briefly peaking over $300. As of Tuesday, the company's value was just under...

China will accelerate the use of new-energy sources such as nuclear energy and put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says in a government report published on March 5.China will instead develop nuclear power in 2012, actively develop hydroelectric power, tackle key problems more quickly in the exploration and development of shale gas, and increase the share of new energy and renewable energy in total energy consumption.The guidance indicates a new trend for new-energy and renewable energy development in China from 2012. Analysts believe that the...

An Ohio-based solar company received millions of dollars in state and federal subsidies despite government officials’ knowledge that the company was in financial trouble, and now a local newspaper reports little activity at the manufacturer’s Perrysburg plant. According to a report last month in The Toledo Blade, Willard & Kelsey Solar Group was lent $10 million by two state agencies even though the company showed little more than a half million dollars in revenue for 2009 – that being a grant from the Buckeye State – and a loss of $4.2 million. State officials told the newspaper that loan...

Complete title: Judicial Watch, Human Events Sue Obama Administration for Records Detailing Bailout Loan to California Solar Manufacturer Heavily in Debt$1.2 Billion in Loan Guarantees to SunPower from Department of Energy Followed Successful Lobbying Campaign by Firm Connected to California Congressman’s Son (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on February 1, 2012, against the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of the Treasury for records regarding a controversial $1.2 billion government loan guarantee from the Obama Department of...

Snips from excerpt website: Japanese solar company Sanyo plans to lay off about 140 employees in California, or about 40 percent of its manufacturing workforce in the United States, as it shifts its strategy in order to compete with large rivals, particularly those from China. The company, which is part of Panasonic, is buiding a large factory in Malaysia that will make wafers and turn them into solar cells and then panels. Panasonic plans to invest 45 billion yen (about $580 million) in the new factory. A fellow manufacturer in Japan, Sumco, announced Friday it would get out of the...

Economic South Asian superpower India has firmly embraced solar power, advancing the target date by five years for selling solar-generated electricity at the same rate as electricity generated by fossil fuel plants, from 2022 to 2017. According to government officials, the reason for moving the date forward is plummeting tariffs in the latest solar development projects, a trend that they believe is likely to continue. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy Joint Secretary Tarun Kapoor said, "The prices will come down further next year and will continue to fall. Earlier, our aim was that solar power will achieve grid-parity by...

There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling. Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable. There were always known to be additional untapped reserves of oil and gas in the petroleum-rich Gulf of Mexico, off America’s shores, and in the American West and Alaska....

Enlarge Image Artificial leaf. A new device absorbs sunlight (blue) and sends that energy to catalysts that split water (green) and generate hydrogen gas (black). Credit: S. Y. Reece et al./Science Two independent research teams report today in Science that they've taken key strides toward harnessing the energy in sunlight to synthesize chemical fuels. If the new work can be improved, scientists could utilize Earth's most abundant source of renewable energy to power everything from industrial plants to cars and trucks without generating additional greenhouse gases. Today, humans consume an average of 15 trillion watts of power, 85% of...

President Obama's nominee for Commerce secretary served as chairman of the board of a solar energy company that recently received a $1.37 billion federal loan guarantee – the largest the Department of Energy has ever given for a solar power project. Now that company, BrightSource Energy, is attempting to build the world's largest solar power plant amid concerns such ventures may be too risky an investment for the federal government. In June, BrightSource Chairman John Bryson was nominated by Obama to head the Commerce Department. WND reported in June that Bryson co-founded an environmental activist group that is a member...

Solyndra, the solar panel company whose highly publicized failure and consequent investigation by federal authorities has flashed across headlines recently, isn't the only business to go belly up after benefiting from a piece of the $800 billion economic stimulus package passed in 2009. At least four other companies have received stimulus funding only to later file for bankruptcy, and two of those were working on alternative energy. Evergreen Solar Inc., indirectly received $5.3 million through a state grant to open a $450 million facility in 2007 that employed roughly 800 people. The company, once a rock star in the solar...

Solyndra, the solar panel company whose highly publicized failure and consequent investigation by federal authorities has flashed across headlines recently, isn't the only business to go belly up after benefiting from a piece of the $800 billion economic stimulus package passed in 2009. At least four other companies have received stimulus funding only to later file for bankruptcy, and two of those were working on alternative energy. Evergreen Solar Inc., indirectly received $5.3 million through a state grant to open a $450 million facility in 2007 that employed roughly 800 people. The company, once a rock star in the solar...

Scandal: The White House pressured federal officials to OK a loan to an insolvent but politically tied green energy company in advance of a vice-presidential photo-op. Corruption is not an energy policy. Emails released to the Washington Post before Wednesday's hearings on the $535 million stimulus loan guarantee issued to now-bankrupt Solyndra Inc. reveal the extent of, and resistance to, White House pressure to get the loan approved so Vice President Joe Biden could announce it at a Sept. 4, 2009, groundbreaking event. The White House has denied applying pressure or even monitoring the review process, saying the stimulus loan...

House Republicans look beneath the green fig leafPresident Obama is selling a repackaged “jobs” spending spree to the nation. Americans need assurance that blowing another half-trillion dollars on stimulus - the American Jobs Act - isn’t a recipe for more crony capitalism. It’s telling that hours before the president pitched his plan last week to a joint session of Congress, the FBI raided the Fremont, Calif., offices of Solyndra, a solar-panel manufacturer Mr. Obama once held up as a model for the coming “green” economy. The firm blew through $535 million in federal loans to build a state-of-the-art facility. Then...

Bay State start-up 1366 Technologies Inc. has steered clear of the dark clouds shrouding the nation’s solar industry. The Lexington company yesterday finalized a $150 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy — the same day FBI agents raided bankrupt Solyndra, a DOE-backed California solar panel maker that’s become a symbol of “green” government investment gone wrong. “There are a lot of taxpayer protections in here,” 1366 spokesman Craig Lund said. “If we deliver on certain milestones then we’ve got certainty of funding, and on the flip side I think the government has very strong conditions in there.”...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Residential solar power provider SolarCity and the U.S. government announced a deal Wednesday to put solar panels on military housing units, a move that could double the number of rooftop solar power installed in the United States. The complex plan calls for SolarCity to receive a $344 million Department of Energy-backed loan from financiers U.S. Renewables Group and Bank of America. SolarCity will then use the money to put up to 160,000 rooftop solar installations on top of privately run military housing complexes at 124 military bases across 34 states. SolarCity will own and operating the...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration said Wednesday it is providing a loan guarantee for a massive solar energy project that could double the number of glimmering solar panels on residential rooftops in the U.S.The Energy Department said it provided a partial guarantee for a $344 million loan to San Mateo, Calif.-based SolarCity for the SolarStrong Project, which seeks to place solar panels on 160,000 homes across 124 military bases in 33 states."This is the largest domestic residential rooftop solar project in history," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a news release. "This groundbreaking project is expected to create hundreds of...

Last week, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy announced it is extending an $852 million loan guarantee to something called the Genesis Solar Project in California. Genesis, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, will be built on federal land and ultimately employ perhaps 800 people during its construction and 47 people once it is up and running. This would seem to be a lot of money to generate very few jobs at a time when the nation is on the verge of bankruptcy, but the project really isn’t about jobs. It’s the latest in the administration’s attempt to turn us...

Corruption: A top bundler and major investor in a now-bankrupt green company made multiple White House visits before he got a guaranteed stimulus loan that the administration monitored to ensure it was granted. During the Clinton administration, when the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House became a favorite place for campaign contributors to rest their weary wallets, the infamous Johnny Chung made the observation that the White House was like a subway turnstile. You put your token in and you got inside. Getting inside the White House was easy for billionaire investor George Kaiser, who made multiple visits to the...

Power Sources: A solar panel manufacturer touted by the president as a symbol of his successful green energy policies files for bankruptcy and cuts a thousand green jobs. Maybe its time to drill, baby, drill. During a visit to Solyndra Inc.'s Fremont, Calif., facility in spring of 2010, President Obama boasted of what the company was going to do with the $535 million in loan guarantees his stimulus package provided. "We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra," he said. "Through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the...

In a preview of what’s likely to become a common occurrence in the Obama energy strategy, a California manufacturer of solar systems that was financed by a half-a-billion loan through the Obama administration announced that it would seek bankruptcy protection last week. Last month publicly-traded Evergreen Solar filed for bankruptcy protection as the solar market continues to shake out on declining government handouts and fierce competition. More trouble is expected in the solar industry in the weeks to come. Some of it will come from Congress. "Last February, the House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation. Now that Solyndra has bit the dust, the DOE loan...