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Solar power, like ethanol, is not a ‘business’. It’s better understood as a welfare scheme. Your tax money is being used to feather-bed this useless parasitic project.

Sorry, but I have to disagree in that you cannot compare solar power and ethanol.

The problem with ethanol is science. The problem with solar is economics of scale. Let me explain: Ethanol doesn't make scientific sense for a number of reasons. First of all, photosynthesis is not a terribly efficient means of storing solar energy, just a few percent efficient. So even futuristic algae fuel only makes sense for "premium" applications like personal transport or aviation, not for heating your home. But corn is even less efficient AND it competes with food production. (The only thing that makes sense is to process agricultural waste into energy.)
Then you have a net energy gain of maybe 20% or so, meaning you need 4 liters of fuel to produce 5 liters of ethanol. Making your car engine 20% more efficient is cheaper and more sensible.
Solar on the other hand has a net energy gain of ~ 5-20 (400%-2000%). You make much better use of the insolation per area (e.g. a PV cell has an approx. ten times better efficiency than photosynthesis). What you need is economically viable energy storage and mass production to drive prices down - which if current market trends prevail will happen.

So solar might actually work - there are no obstacles when it comes to physics - it just isn't competitive yet with today's technology.

Ethanol on the other hand will most likely never work. And therein lies the difference.

So solar might actually work - there are no obstacles when it comes to physics - it just isn't competitive yet with today's technology.

Even if you could get a 100% conversion of all incoming solar energy to electricity, there is not a great enough energy density per square meter to justify the extremely enormous expenditure for any kind of large scale "harvesting" of solar when you have coal and nuclear means of generating the electricity.