Government & Green Energy Debacle

[bhunter]

Why government isn't good at selecting investments.

Failing and Failed Green Companies and Government Support:

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*
SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
Solyndra ($535 million)*
Beacon Power ($69 million)*
AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)
Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
SunPower ($1.5 billion)
First Solar ($1.46 billion)
Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
Amonix ($5.9 million)
National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)
Fisker Automotive ($528 million)
Abound Solar ($374 million)*
A123 Systems ($279 million)*
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)
Johnson Controls ($299 million)
Schneider Electric ($86 million)
Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
ECOtality ($126.2 million)
Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
Range Fuels ($80 million)*
Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*
Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*
UniSolar ($100 million)*
Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*
GreenVolts ($500,000)
Vestas ($50 million)
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)
Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
Navistar ($10 million)
Satcon ($3 million)*

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/...ergy-failures/

And then the inefficiency and waste,

HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) - Workers at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium-ion battery plant heavily funded by taxpayers, tell Target 8 that they have so little work to do that they spend hours playing cards and board games, reading magazines or watching movies.

They say it's been going on for months.
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/targe...employees-idle

[barbara]

It would be nice to have a list if failed businesses that were funded privately for comparison.

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by barbara

It would be nice to have a list if failed businesses that were funded privately for comparison.

Not really. Private money is entirely different than government money. The point is that if these were good investments money would already be there without government's inept intervention and its concomitant spectre of cronyism.

[ebacon]

Originally Posted by barbara

It would be nice to have a list if failed businesses that were funded privately for comparison.

There are a bunch of private businesses that fail. You can search the web for venture capital firms and see what start-ups they are funding and which ones eventually tank.

The prime difference, though, between those failed start-ups and the failed green firms listed above is the way the deals are structured. The green failures are joint ventures between government (taxpayers) and venture capital. When the green firms fail we (taxpayers) foot part of the loss. On the other hand if they succeed then VC keeps all of the profit.

The game is rigged such that we (taxpayers) never win. We only lose. It's so************************m for the rich.

[Boreas]

Too many for me to fact check but, given the vested interests of the Heritage Foundation, its founders and backers, I think it's best to view this information with a huge degree of skepticism.

John

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Too many for me to fact check but, given the vested interests of the Heritage Foundation, its founders and backers, I think it's best to view this information with a huge degree of skepticism.

John

Policy research centers might stretch things to their favored political position, but a lot is still good research and can easliy be verified and/or refuted by opposing policy centers. I think you really need to look at their references and bibliography before discounting the worth of their positions. Do you trust academic research papers from ostensibly neutral academic institutions without checking the bibliography?

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by bhunter

Policy research centers might stretch things to their favored political position, but a lot is still good research and can easliy be verified and/or refuted by opposing policy centers. I think you really need to look at their references and bibliography before discounting the worth of their positions. Do you trust academic research papers from ostensibly neutral academic institutions without checking the bibliography?

What bibliography?

The first link I clicked on took me to a Fox News story.

John

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by Boreas

What bibliography?

The first link I clicked on took me to a Fox News story.

John

I was referring to reports produced by Heritage not the above blog post. Their reports, like most policy centers, have a bibliography. For example:
http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-of-liberalism

Notice the bibliography at the bottom. My point is that you can't discount research coming out of the policy centers. Clearly, some centers are more significant than others. Brookings, AEI, and Heritage are the most notable private think tanks IMHO.

In The Foundry post above, each name linked to a more detailed article on the economic condition of the company.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by bhunter

I was referring to reports produced by Heritage not the above blog post. Their reports, like most policy centers, have a bibliography. For example:
http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-of-liberalism

Notice the bibliography at the bottom. My point is that you can't discount research coming out of the policy centers. Clearly, some centers are more significant than others. Brookings, AEI, and Heritage are the most notable private think tanks IMHO.

At the bottom of an unrelated report. This is an old trick anyway. Their footnotes are probably packed with links to other HF studies. It all gets very incestuous. "We're right and we can prove it. Just go to this other study where we said the same thing. See? Told you!"

In The Foundry post above, each name linked to a more detailed article on the economic condition of the company.

Since the Foundry post had no bibliography but linked only to press stories, I have to wonder why you asked in the first place. There's no equivalency between a blog post and a report, even a Heritage Foundation report. That's doubly so for an academic report.

John

[barbara]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Too many for me to fact check but, given the vested interests of the Heritage Foundation, its founders and backers, I think it's best to view this information with a huge degree of skepticism.

John

Boreas
After some googleing, I found that at least 50% of small business fail in the first year and 95% in the first five years. Businesses with less than 20 employees have a 37% chance of surviving four years.

I'm guessing the failure rate for publicly funded businesses is not so different than the failure rate for privately funded businesses.