Don’t sell the power companies—throw money my way instead [updated]

"Selling our power companies is the worst way to go,” says Green co-leader Russel Norman. “ They should instead be supercharged,” says Norman, “so they can develop clean, green energy technology we could sell around the world."

Really?

Dr Norman says “"smart, green economics" is the way to go because the international market for sustainable products and clean energy technology is growing rapidly.”

Really? Is that right?

Well, no.  It’s not. Like virtually everything else the Ginger Whinger says, it’s not right. Not right at all. The international market for “clean energy” is bankrupt.  Not just struggling. Not just a little bit bankrupt. It’s completely, wholly and abjectly bankrupt.

It’s bankrupt in Spain where 12 billion Euros were spent in 2009 alone, €571,138 creating each “green job,” and with each “green” megawatt installed destroying 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the Spanish economy.

It’s bankrupt in Germany, where even with subsidies 300% higher than conventional electricity generation consumers pay nearly ten percent more—and carbon abatement costs at $1,000 per ton for solar power are roughly fifty times the European price for carbon.

It’s bankrupt in the Netherlands, the home of the windmill, where after billions of euros of subsidies, most going outside the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte now recognises today’s “windmills turn on subsidies.”

It’s bankrupt in the United Kingdom, where it raises the cost to consumers by £1.1billion; where for every job created in the United Kingdom in “renewable energy” 3.7 jobs are lost; and in winter (when they’re needed most) Britain’s forest of wind turbines consumes more power than it produces.

So where is Norman getting his news from? Certainly not from Europe. And not from the States either, where despite the combination of Obama’s windy rhetoric and billions of dollars of subsidies “sustainable energy” is still not sustainable--where the White House sank half a billion taxpayer dollars into Solyndra, a company it knew was failing, and did--where the companies Ener1 and A123 Systems floundered after sucking another half-billion from taxpayers--which are dwarfed by the failure of company Solar Trust of America, which failure on its own leaves US taxpayers on the hook for a further $2.1billion!

And these are  just the headline failures. Sterling Burnett lists the whole sorry mess of America’s green energy’s bankrupt blackout, first, the bankruptcies:

• Beacon Power Corp: Received $43 million in federal loan guaranteed in 2009 and also received $29 million in PA grants – Bankrupt in October 2011
• Ener1 (parent company of EnerDel): Received $118.5 million in federal loan guarantees — Bankrupt in January 2012 – has since exited bankruptcy
• Evergreen Solar: Received $58 million in MA loan guarantees (an undisclosed portion sourced from federal ARRA block grant) — Bankrupt in August 2011 with $485.6 million in debt
• Solyndra:  Received $535 million in federal loan guarantees in 2009 and $25.1 million in CA tax credit — Bankrupt in August 2011
• SpectraWatt:  Received $500,000 in federal loan guarantees in 2009 — Bankrupt in August 2011
• Babcock and Brown: Received $178 million in federal grants in December 2009 (4 months after it went bust) – Bankrupt in early 2009
• Mountain Plaza Inc.: Received $424,000 in federal grants through TN Department of Transportation in 2009 — Bankrupt      in 2003 and again in June 2010
• Solar Trust of America (parent company: Solar Millennium from Germany): Received $2.1  billion loan guarantee in April 2011 – Bankrupt in April 2012

And the other subsidized “Green Energy” companies in decline:

• A123: Received $300 million in federal grants and $135 million in MI grants —Declining orders and have forced multiple layoffs
• Amonix, Inc.: Received $5.9 million in federal tax credits in 2009 through  ARRA —Laid off 2/3 of work force
• First Solar: Received $3 billion in federal loan guarantees — Biggest S&P loser in 2011, CEO fired
• Fisker Automotive: $529 million in federal loan guarantees — Multiple 2012 sales prediction downgrades for first car release, delivery and cash flow troubles;Assembling cars in Finland
• Johnson Controls: Received $299 million in federal grants in 2009 — Low demand caused cancellation of a new factory, operating at half capacity
• Nevada Geothermal: Received $98.5 million in federal loan guarantees in 2009 —Defaulting on long-term debt obligations, 85% drop in stock value
• Sun Power: Received $1.2 billion in federal loan guarantees — Debt exceeds assets; French oil company took over last fall
• Abound Solar: Received $400 million in federal loans in 2012 — ½ work force laid off
• BrightSource Energy: $1.6 billion federal loan approved in April 2012 – loan obtained through political connections with the administration; absent the loan, Brightsource’s solar power purchase would have fallen through.

That’s the record so far, and by year’s end once tax breaks on this madness lapse fully one-half of the industry’s jobs will be gone—gone because without the special favours these “green energy” “innovators” absorb more resources than they produce.

So that’s how well “green energy” is doing.  This really is “the worst way to go.”

“Sustainable energy” is not sustainable—not even with subsidies. “Renewable energy” is not renewable—not even by  leaving the taxpayer on the hook for billions.

So why does the media not challenge Russel Norman for continuing to pretend he owns the source to some economic magic bullet?

UPDATE: Liberty Scott makes an excellent point about the Ginger Whinger’s taxpayer-funded referendum:

If the parties that lost the last election can demand that the Government seek an additional electoral mandate to implement the policies National stood on in its 2011 manifesto, then surely the same applies in reverse.
Every time the state buys something with taxpayers' money, it should ask permission…