Free Republic

The Department of Energy withheld troubling cost and performance data on a major stimulus award from a federal watchdog before the company servicing the award went bankrupt, according to a report released on Tuesday. The report focuses on the department’s handling of a pair of federal awards worth about $126 million for ECOtality, a San Francisco-based green energy company that declared bankruptcy in September. DOE’s inspector general, which authored Tuesday’s report, released an audit in July that expressed concerns about the department’s management of ECOtality’s $100 million stimulus award for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations. The report revealed...

A taxpayer-funded “green” energy company that went bankrupt in July 2012 didn’t just leave behind a legal mess for its creditors – it left behind a mess of contaminated water and toxic carcinogens. Taxpayer Backed Green Energy Firm Takes Millions, Goes Bankrupt and Leaves Behind Toxic Mess Image Source: Associated Press. And its up to the owners of Abound Solar’s deserted 37,000 square foot facility to clean up the broken glass and hazardous wastes.

Well, this is awkward. An auction in Colorado for the right to build solar energy plants produced no bids, according to the Denver Post. "We are going to have to regroup and figure out what didn't work," Maryanne Kurtinaitis, renewable energy program manager for the federal Bureau of Land Management’s Colorado office told the Post. But Ken Borngrebe, environmental permitting manager for First Solar, said the problem likely had to do with market uncertainties surrounding solar projects. "It may come down to the lack of confidence in the market for solar today," Borngrebe said. The problems for solar energy stem...

According to a new study conducted by Texas Tech University Professor Dr. Michael Giberson for the Institute for Energy Research, the government and wind lobby aren't telling taxpayers the whole truth about how much wind energy really costs. The study comes as the wind lobby is set to receive another extension on massive subsidies with little results to show for it. "As Big Wind's lobbyists fight tooth and nail to extend the wind Production Tax Credit, it is important that we look at the true costs of wind power to taxpayers and ratepayers," IER President Thomas Pyle said about...

Renewable energy is blamed for jeopardizing Europe’s energy security this winter, a new study has found. EurActiv France reports. The French multinational company Cap Gemini warned in their European Observatory of Energy Markets that energy security in Europe was under threat and that the region could soon be exposed to massive power outages during the winter, due to a lack of production capacity. They blame wind turbines. …

The Environmental Protection Agency’s recently announced decision to, in effect, ban the construction of traditional coal-fired power plants in the United States is a non-solution to a hypothetical problem, enacted upon a legal basis that is shaky and an economic basis that is nonexistent. The cost-benefit analysis is almost entirely one-sided: The costs will be very high, and the benefits the EPA hopes to secure will remain out of reach. The EPA is demanding that new U.S. plants that will use coal to generate electricity must meet standards that today are met by no commercial coal-fired plant operating anywhere in...

The Connecticut legislature extended the two-year ban on wind turbines, striking down regulations that would have allowed for the construction of the renewable energy projects. The legislature's Regulation Review Committee on Tuesday voted 10-3 to reject the proposed wind regulations by the Connecticut Siting Council. The members were concerned about who would dismantle the structures if the owners ever went out of business. This is the third rejections of the proposed regulations since the state placed a moratorium on wind turbine development in 2011. It also marks the first rejection since June, when the legislature passed a comprehensive energy strategy...

A former top White House official and the head of President Obama’s personal advocacy group is joining the board of a green energy company backed by a major Democratic donor that recently received millions in federal contracts. LanzaTech announced Wednesday that Jim Messina, Obama’s former deputy chief of staff, reelection campaign manager, and the head of his retooled campaign apparatus Organizing for Action was appointed to the company’s board of directors. “Jim’s proven ability to merge technology, messaging, and communications in support of ideas that transcend ‘business as usual’ will help us continue our mission of reshaping how our world...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- How do you invest if you believe man-made global warming is about to decimate the planet? And how do you invest if you think that's a lot of hooey? Most would say those who deny global warming should first bet on coal, oil and gas, but that's no way to make money. If you think your thesis is right, you bet on stocks that go against the other way of thinking. So if you accept the scientific consensus that glaciers are melting, temperatures are warming and we're heading over the environmental cliff, you look to sectors...

The outgoing government in Norway has buried much-vaunted plans to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground amid mounting costs and delays. The oil and energy ministry said the development of full-scale carbon dioxide capture at Mongstad oil refinery had been discontinued. It said it remained committed to research into carbon capture. When the Labour Party presented the plan in 2007, it was hailed as Norway's equivalent of a "Moon landing". Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his allies lost a general election to conservatives and centrists this month, and are due to step down shortly. Mongstad had already run into...

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said in 2009 he "never want[s] another coal plant built,” but in the meantime, he hasn't been above taking money gained through coal investment for his campaign. Tom Steyer, a California-based financier and one of McAuliffe’s wealthiest out-of-state supporters, told his advisers in August to launch climate change television ads via his group, NextGen Climate Action Committee, in Virginia to help turn out the vote for McAuliffe, Politico reported in August. Steyer (pictured, left) said, “I would say there’s a very clear choice on this topic between these two candidates, and I think the citizens...

Many Europeans complain about their high energy costs, largely due to their increasing dependence on renewables — the most costly energy sources. ... This is killing European economies. Electricity costs in Europe are more than double the cost of electricity in the U.S. High electricity costs make it difficult for businesses to operate if they need a lot of electricity.

After the Department of Energy announced this week ithad given up on not-bankrupt-but-should-be Fisker Automotive, and will auction off its loan for a pittance, you’d think (and hope) Congress would have had enough of this kind of thing. Senator John Thune certainly has. “The Obama administration has gotten into the business of picking winners and losers at a significant cost to taxpayers,” said the South Dakota Republican yesterday. “I’m calling for the Senate to consider my amendment to eliminate the wasteful ATVM loan program and for my colleagues to join me in protecting taxpayer dollars from any future risky green...

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: shale gas is fracking green. A new study confirms that natural gas helps decrease greenhouse gas emissions by displacing the much dirtier and more carbon intensive coal. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, and it pokes a hole in one of the last gripes greens have about the American shale boom. Prominent greens like Bill McKibben and the misleading documentary filmmaker Josh Fox have criticized fracking for leaking the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, nullifying the fact that burning natural gas emits...

Aleo Solar AG, a German solar-module manufacturer that has its U.S. headquarters in Denver, said it will withdraw from the United States immediately. ... the US operation had failed to meet recent sales targets and was not operating profitably

It looks like General Motors is attempting to make up for the money it loses on every Chevy Volt in volume as August sales, spurred by recent price cuts, reached an all-time high of 3,351. The fact that the car has been on the market for about three years and initial much-hyped proclamations from GM would have put sales at 20,000 per month by now goes unrecognized by those that think 3,351 vehicles is a lot of cars to sell in a month. To put the sales in perspective, it took Toyota about 2 ½ days to sell that many...

Syria isn’t the only battle into which President Obama is injecting himself where he doesn’t belong. True, on a global scale, Arizona’s fight over net metering seems insignificant. However, on a personal scale, what is taking place in Arizona’s sunny desert has the potential to directly impact far more Americans than the shots being fired in Syria’s desert. Syria’s conflict is often called a proxy war in that it is an indirect confrontation between superpowers via substitute actors. According to the definition of a proxy war found on the Intro to global security blog, “Modern non-state actors do not necessarily...

As I say, though, the Keystone pipeline will save everyone a lot of money and headaches, and the Canadians are understandably way past impatient with the Obama administration’s eternal dithering. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper actually wrote to President Obama last week, wondering if they mightn’t work out a tit-for-tat of some kind: Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama formally proposing “joint action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector,” if that is what’s needed to gain approval of the Keystone XL pipeline through America’s heartland, CBC News has...

Paul Krugman has an interesting piece in the New York Times entitled “Years of Tragic Waste.” I thought for a brief second that Krugman was going to mention the reckless waste by the Obama Administration on green energy initiatives like GM’s VOLT, Solyndra or Fisker. Or high speed rail fantasies. But no. Krugman is whining that Congress and the Administration didn’t waste even MORE money! Take the recent example of VPG. From AP: The Energy Department conceded Friday that the federal government will lose $42 million on a loan to a shuttered Michigan van manufacturer — part of the same...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy Department said Friday it will lose about $42 million on a loan to a now-shuttered Michigan company that made vans for the disabled.