A good start, watch for this trend to continue in other EU countries as reality sets in.:
Spain Ejects Clean-Power Industry With Europe Precedent: Energy
By Alex Morales and Ben Sills – May 30, 2012 9:42 AM ETSpanish renewable-energy companies that once got Europe’s biggest subsidies are deserting the nation after the government shut off aid, pushing project developers and equipment-makers to work abroad or perish.
From wind-turbine maker Gamesa Corp. Tecnologica SA (GAM) to solar park developer T-Solar Global SA, companies are locked out of their home market for new business. These are the same suppliers that spearheaded more than $69 billion of wind and solar projects since 2004 that today supply more than 50 percent of Spain’s power demand on the most breezy and sunny days.
Saddled with a budget deficit more than twice the European Union limit and a ballooning gap between income and costs in its power system, Spain halted subsidies for new renewable-energy projects in January. The surprise move by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy one month after taking office helped pierce investor confidence in stable aid for clean energy across Europe.
“They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium,” European Wind Energy Association Chief Executive Officer Christian Kjaer said in an interview. “The wider implication of this is that if Spanish politicians can do that, probably most European politicians can do that.”
Spain’s $69 billion of investment in power capacity from 2004 to 2011 was about triple the spending per capita in the U.S. in that period, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Most of the 2012-2013 spending will be for the legacy of projects approved before the aid cuts to wind, solar, biomass and co-generation.
Spending SkidsInvestment in solar photovoltaic alone is headed to skid to as little as $107 million in 2013 from $879 million this year and $1.5 billion last year, New Energy Finance estimated. For new wind projects, investment should plunge to $963 million in 2013 and $244 million in 2014 from $2 billion this year.
T-Solar, which became the world’s biggest solar-farm operator by leveraging its Spanish business, currently has more than 40 running in Spain, Italy and India. While it still makes solar panels in Orense, Spain, they’re bound for Peru.
“We have an important pipeline of projects, and it’s 100 percent outside Spain right now,” T-Solar Managing Director Juan Laso, who also heads the country’s photovoltaic power association, said in a telephone interview. “If you take such a brutal measure, what you do is oblige the industry to move out,” he said of the January moratorium.
If any of these Eeek-O greeniac fantasies were anywhere close to being economically viable, the private sector would have jumped in headfirst. About a year ago the Spanish government reneged on paying promised subsidies to private investors in solar farms and that whole scam promptly dried up with many small investors going belly up. I think I did a thread on it.
If your product is only viable through massive government subsidies, there is no “market” to destroy.
@ lobo91:
Exactly! Green Energy is a scam, just aas Global Warming is a hoax. They are just ways to scare money out of the people. You can bet the CEOs of these big scams have lined their pockets and have a golden parachute ready for when their cash-cow goes belly up. It is a scam, and it was always a scam. These people didn’t think they were saving the planet of powering the future. They were just getting rich off the public’s gullibility for scams that said they were.
Iron Fist wrote:
Something on the order of 80% of those who got U.S. loans, grants and fed buck$ for this crap were Obama toadies and backers.
@ huckfunn:
Yep. The “stimulus” was the largest bank heist in history, and nobody is going to jail over it. The audacity of audacity. Nobody ever expected graft on this scale. Think of what we could have built with a trillion dollars. What did we get for it? Promises of rainbows and a bunch of bankrupt companies whose CEOs all got rich off of our dime. Oh, no doubt they’ve all contributed generously to the Democrat PArty. That isn’t sufficient reason to fund them to the tune of millions of dollars. Obama’s “Stimulus” makes James Buchannan’s Administration look positively spotless by comparison.
Haw! Obama camp: Country ‘prospering’ on green jobs.
Guess what!?! China pulled the plug on the Eeek-O crap and is building coal plants by the dozens and as fast as they can.
Iron Fist wrote:
We could have built the FPS Enterprise for a Trillion dollars.
@ huckfunn:
Even if it were true (which it’s not), that’s not particularly impressive.
How many million dollars does that work out to per job?
@ doriangrey:
I was thinking more modestly. Along the lines of an aircraft carrier battle group, including staffing the thing, fo rthe life of the ships. Think of the jobs such a project would have created! Obama’s goal was not to create obs, but to fleece the United States. That is obvious to anyone who is willing to see it.
lobo91 wrote:
I’m not sure about the Eeek-O jobs, but stimulus jobs cost about $4.1 million per job.
Iron Fist wrote:
“unprecedented” as Dear Leader would say.
I read a report a year ago -- maybe 2 -- that said for every ‘green’ job gained in Spain, 2 jobs were lost.
Germany has decided to keep its nuke plants.
eaglesoars wrote:
Really? Smart move. They were hosed without them. If you really believe the Global Warming Hoax, then nuclear power is the only emmissions-free way to go. Build breeder reactors, so you get more mileage out of the fuel. That is the power of the future, if we are willing to reach out and grab it. Nuclearizing the US power grid is another thing Obama could have done with his trillion dollar stimulus, had he so chosen. That wouldn’t have lined the pockets of prominent Democrat supporters, so that was never a real option. Not for the Obama Administration.
Iron Fist wrote:
Actually, it would have. First, there’s the construction. Second, the operators mostly work for the utility companies.
The problem is that it would have pissed of the eco-weenies.
eaglesoars wrote:
There is that, but I think there is also the “problem” that it would have been in the best interests of the United States ofg America. Everything about Obama says that that is the last thing he would want to do.
eaglesoars wrote:
Tilting at Green Energy Windmills
Here’s Der Spiegel’s article on it. It says that nuclear will be phased out.
But read the details. The cost of getting the grid up is prohibitive and electricity prices will go up. This is the gov’ts way of setting up the public for backing down. They do this all the time.
@ huckfunn:
That is the “success” that Obama wanted to model his policies on. See why I say the man is actively working against the United States? Reasonably, what more could he be doing to destroy us?
@ huckfunn:
From the Odons link
Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, associate professor at King Carlos University in Madrid, in August 2009 testimony before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, summarized findings of a study he and colleagues conducted of employment effects of the Spanish renewable energy program.
That’s the report I read. I think I have it in dead tree around here somewhere.
Iron Fist wrote:
- replace the family with the state
- make religious institutions bow to the state
oh. wait.
next up.
guns
@ eaglesoars:
I see that coming if he is re-elected. Right now he won’t touch guns. They are radioactive in an election year. When he doesn’t have to run for re-election, he’ll have more “flexibility”. I expect an end-run around the congress with executive orders, because even the Democrats would be afraid to go that far. They like their cushy jobs too much to spoil it, and gun control wrecked a lot of careers in 1994. Just ask Jim Sasser.
@ Iron Fist:
Yep. The propaganda machine keeps rolling out the lies and MFM is complicit in their silence. The idea that we’re losing the “green” competition with China, or anyone else for the matter, is a naked lie. China has thrown in the towel on the green thing.
Here’s the Alvarez report (pdf)
time to get my butt in gear
later
eaglesoars wrote:
Indeed. That’s the report that’s cited in one of the articles in my thread.
I read that report. NOt surprised that dems love this type of stuff. Shocked that the GoP isn’t outraged.
So solar power run by the government will drive jobs out of the economic area due to the energy cost chickens coming home to roost and crow.
Whereas solar power run by private business will meet market conditions or will not be financed.
I’m ok with R&D testing and carrying some basic solar research. But when a politician says green means more jobs, someone needs to shout at them “for who?” and “what is the net jobs increase”
So much smoke and mirrors by the O admin.