Free Republic

Renewable energy is the alternative that Democrats and other environmental nuts want to replace reliable oil, gas and coal. But time and time again, people who rely on wind and solar power have had to learn the tough lesson that such alternatives are both undependable and susceptible to the same elements they are supposed to harness. Nowhere was that more true than in Nebraska, where a thunderstorm dumped baseball-sized hail on a solar farm on Friday at a speed of 150 mph — destroying the facility in just a few minutes. Cowboy State Daily reported a storm moved east out...

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...

The World Bank announced on Wednesday $US5.5 billion ($A6 billion) would be invested in solar energy projects in five countries of the Middle East and North Africa in a bid to combat climate change. The Washington-based bank's Clean Technology Fund approved financing of $US750 million ($A824 million) on December 2 to boost the use of concentrated solar power, an advanced technology that concentrates sunlight to harness energy. The fund's financing "will mobilise an additional 4.85 billion dollars from other sources, to accelerate global deployment of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)," the development lender said in a statement. The Clean Technology fund...