Free Republic

Think electric cars are the only form of transportation that can save the world from the dangers of the gas-powered engine? A new study warns that they could actually have the opposite effect. Gannett’s Cincinnati website cites the findings of a study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences next week. In it, co-author and University of Minnesota engineering professor Julian Marshall explains the findings. “It’s kind of hard to beat gasoline [for the environment]… A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean … are not better than gasoline.” Electric cars...

It is a basic principle of psychological warfare that the side that controls the language of the argument controls the argument. Barack Obama's own website is using this PsyWar technique by calling opponents of his cap and trade agenda "climate change deniers." He has also used the financial resources of the federal government, such as whitehouse.gov, to marginalize everybody who doesn't agree with him as a climate change denier. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse, Harry Reid, and Peter DeFazio also have followed Joseph Goebbels's advice to the effect that if you tell a big lie vigorously and often enough, people will believe...

While environmentalists tout benefits of solar power, three solar companies filed for bankruptcy in the past week. Each of them blamed intense global competition for its downfall. The German companies Conergy AG and Gehrlicher Solar AG filed for insolvency in German courts in the past week. The Hawaii-based solar company Hoku also filed for bankruptcy protection, reports Renewable Energy World. Hoku owes up to $1 billion to creditors and had to cancel building a manufacturing plant in Idaho, which had already been delayed several years. Conergy’s 800 German workers are now in line to get three months of government unemployment...

Shi Zhengrong was called a “hero of the environment” by Time Magazine. He was a billionaire who ran the worlds largest seller of solar PV cells. But the glory days of 2008 – 2011 are gone. Another bubble bursts. Wiped out in two years. How fast was this fall? In 2008, CNN named Shi “China’s Sunshine Boy.” In 2009, Fortune anointed him “China’s new king of solar.” That year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also cited Shi and Suntech as models of China’s green leap forward — which he called “the Sputnik of our day” and a spur for...

Japan is backtracking on battery electric-car development, as even Nissan’s vice chairman, the so-called “father of the Prius,” announced plans to copy Toyota and pursue fuel-cell cars that convert hydrogen to electricity. “Because of its shortcomings — driving range, cost and recharging time — the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars,” said Nissan’s vice chairman, Takeshi Uchiyamada,..

WASHINGTON - Have you seen the latest development in President Obama's waste-ridden, clean energy program that's now under federal investigation at the U.S. Treasury Department? Three of the country's biggest residential solar panel installers -- SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity -- have been subpoenaed by Treasury's Office of Inspector General for their financial records to determine if they had inflated the market value of their costs when they applied for federal reimbursement. The firms have reportedly received more than $500 million in federal grants and tax credits. Officials in two of them, Solar-City and SunRun, have been among some of Obama's...

Exactly two years ago, in November 2010, the Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn assured reporters that his auto alliance would sell half a million electric vehicles a year by the end of 2013. In 2011, it sold just short of 10,000 electrics, but in April 2012 Ghosn still claimed that the 2012 sales would double to 20,000. On November 15, he had to give up and admit that, after selling less than 7,000 vehicles, the 2012 target cannot be reached. That is just the latest in a less than electrifying saga of modern electric vehicles (this qualification is needed because...

The cost to taxpayers for the failure of solar panel company Solyndra may be much higher than the $535 million dollar federal loan guarantee the company received. After the company went bankrupt in last August, 2011, the Energy Department, which had given the original loan, okayed an unprecedented deal to attract more private investment to Solyndra. One result of this deal is that it has allowed more than $350 million in tax write-offs to pass to those private creditors, one of which is owned by a major donor to President Obama. The House Oversight Committee now warns the total loss...

SolarCity (SCTY), another “green energy” company and recipient of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, in under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), sources reveal. The company, which recently filed for its initial IPO, has disclosed that it received subpoenas in July from the U.S. Treasury Department. The Treasury Department is investigating whether companies overstated the market value of solar panel arrays they installed when claiming the 30% federal cash grant. The IRS also notified SolarCity that it is auditing two of its investment funds and reviewing the claimed value of solar systems submitted to receive the federal cash...

Solar panel installer SolarCity Corp filed with U.S. regulators to raise up to $201 million in an initial public offering that could help rekindle investor appetite for cleantech stocks. ....Companies including Google Inc and U.S. Bancorp have provided funds to finance SolarCity's projects. Those investors are able to collect a 30 percent federal tax credit for solar energy systems...... ...SolarCity was founded in 2006 by brothers Lyndon and Peter Rive along with their cousin, PayPal co-founder and Tesla Motors Chief Executive Elon Musk.... SolarCity hopes it can buck the lackluster trend among recent cleantech IPOs.... ....[SolorCity's] total revenue was $46.6...

DETROIT: The fledgling electric car business is in turmoil as predictions about potential sales have proven to be wildly optimistic despite volatile fuel prices and plenty of media hype. Weak consumer demand is hitting both the big automakers like General Motors and Nissan -- which have failed to meet sales targets on the plug-in Volt and all-electric Leaf -- and smaller start-up firms trying to carve out a piece of a very small niche. "Electric vehicles don't make any more sense today than they did in 1912," says Sean McAlinden, an analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann...

Mitt Romney labelled electric carmaker Tesla Motors a “loser” during Wednesday night’s U.S. presidential debate. The Republican candidate took a jab at Tesla while discussing tax breaks to energy companies. He criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for providing “$90 billion in breaks to the green energy world.” “Now, I like green energy as well, but that’s about 50 years’ worth of what oil and gas receives,” Romney said. “You put $90 billion — like 50 years’ worth of breaks — into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1. I mean, I had a friend who said,...

If he succeeds in his run for a second term, President Obama doesn’t intend to tone down his efforts to push for green energy. Instead of learning from his mistakes, he plans to “do more.” During his recent sit down with Steve Kroft for the interview that aired on 60 Minutes, the President was asked about green energy—though the clip was omitted from the program that the American public saw.Kroft: “You said one of your big campaign themes was that green energy, the green economy, was going to be a tremendous generator of jobs and that has not turned out...

As we dig deeper in the green-energy crony corruption-story, it begins to sound more and more like the making of a big-budget Hollywood thriller. Today’s installment on First Solar includes billionaire investors, corporate welfare, favoritism, threats, exaggerations, lawsuits over inferior quality, layoffs and outsourcing, and even a romantic dalliance. The screenplay would be riveting. Too bad it is not fiction. The film would have to be a documentary.  The trailer would open: “What do Goldman Sachs, several Goldman executives, and quite a few billionaire investors have in common? Add in millions of campaign donations followed by billions doled out of...

Abound Solar, a company that won a $400 million Energy Department (DOE) loan guarantee in 2010 to manufacture advanced solar panels, is closing and filing for bankruptcy, according to DOE. Abound’s collapse follows last year’s demise of the solar company Solyndra and is sure to feed Republican attacks on White House green energy programs despite support for Abound’s loan from several GOP lawmakers ahead of its approval. The Colorado-based Abound had drawn $70 million of the loan, according to DOE. Abound will close its doors and file for bankruptcy next week, the department said.

First Solar , the beneficiary of at least $3 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees, paid its former CEO $32 million over two years as he stewarded its stock price from $143 to below $100. Today it sells for less than $21-per-share, hitting a 52-week low last week, and yesterday the company announced it would slash global payroll by 2,000 workers in Malaysia, Europe and the U.S. The Arizona Republic reported Thursday that Rob Gillette, who was terminated as CEO in October, received $16.55 million during the first three months of employment in 2009 (October to December), and...

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...

A123 Systems – the taxpayer-funded electric vehicle battery manufacturer that famously shipped duds toFisker Automotive, which caused one of its luxurious Karma EVs toshut down just before aConsumer Reports test – is now the defendant in an investor class action lawsuit and its stock has tanked to below $1. Massachusetts-based A123received more than $279 million in grants from the Department of Energy, most of it used to refurbish two plants in Livonia and Romulus, Mich., for the production of EV batteries. The company laid off 125 factory workers in November, lost $257.7 million in 2011 (including an $11.6 million...

The Oakland-based company has held rights for the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project in the Southern California desert, which last April won $2.1 billion of conditional loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy. It is unclear how the bankruptcy will affect that project.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), which mandated a steep rise in domestic ethanol production, is causing unforeseen negative consequences for food prices while failing to live up to the desired gasoline results and other expectations, concludes a Texas A&M University research team headed by an economics professor who studies energy issues.James Griffin James M. Griffin, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy, which is part of Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Mauricio Cifuentes Soto, a graduate student assisting him, say in their report that the goal of...