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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (255515)	7/9/2014 3:35:33 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 543273

Shudda gone to both. I only have a problem with Solyndra, part of a GBush program started in '05, ( Exclusive Timeline: Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the Story ) getting its clock cleaned by the Chinese government, while people use it to diss Obama and/or the stimulus. Some of that loan $ also went to Tesla; now a big deal in this economy, but tiny compared to where it will go. Solar Disarray China is stealing America’s solar manufacturing industry. Should we fight back—or rejoice? But for American companies that manufacture solar panels, the triple whammy of cheap natural gas, austerity in the United States and Europe, and cheap Chinese photovoltaics has been devastating. The most dramatic flameout happened at Solyndra, the California startup that was trying to make solar panels more efficient. Solyndra, though, struggled to make its solar tech affordable, and when prices for traditional panels plummeted, the company went bankrupt. It took with it some $500 million in federal guaranteed loans, to the outrage of Republicans who felt the government shouldn’t have been investing so heavily in clean energy to begin with. More significantly, the ensuing media storm (which included unfounded allegations of cronyism and fraud) made the entire clean-technology industry political poison. Solyndra was only the most visible in a line of dominoes It was preceded into insolvency by Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar and Intel spinoff SpectraWatt.* Next to fall was Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems, followed by Solar Millennium, a German giant with a big U.S. presence. First Solar, a 13-year-old Arizona-based firm that went public in 2006, was until recently the world’s largest solar-panel manufacturer. Just last year, it topped Forbes’ list of America’s 25 fastest-growing tech companies. But last month, the company announced it was laying off 2,000 workers, shuttering a factory in Germany, and idling plants in Malaysia. Its shares have tanked, falling from a high of $170 last February to just $18 today, with no sign of improvement ahead. slate.com