Government Meddling Leads to Another Failure
President Obama has made statements recently that the government is essentially the force behind business success, not the entrepreneurs investing their own money and risking potential failure. If he’s right, and the government is so fantastic at making businesses successful, why are the ‘green’ energy companies they showered with millions of loans and grants sputtering, or closing their doors? Government can’t successfully pick which companies will be successful because they don’t have the correct incentives to choose wisely—it’s not their money on the table it’s ours! If these ‘green’ companies looked like solid companies with the possibility for growth and success, private investors would be more than willing to jump into the market. , What is really going is Obama’s war on reliable, affordable energy. While attacking fossil fuels such as coal, the Obama administration is subsidizing exotic alternative fuels in an attempt to make them competitive with our more affordable and reliable sources of energy. The problem is, it’s not working. President Obama is quoted saying that companies would receive Recovery Act money through merit, not by favors or political ties. That, however, did not end up being true. Of the Department of Energy ‘green’ loan guarantees, 80 percent went to Obama backers or companies that had ties to administration officials. Back in 2008 Obama promised that $150 billion of stimulus money would lead to 5 million jobs over the next ten years. How can these companies be creating jobs or clean energy when they are shutting down? Simple, they aren’t. In November of 2010 the ‘green’ energy projects could only count 225,000 people finding employment—far from the promised 5 million. It’s not due to the sluggish economy, it’s because the ‘green’ energy companies are not viable because they are not competitive . Since 2009 the oil industry has seen an increase of 75,000 jobs, during that same time 10,000 jobs were lost in the wind industry.
The latest ‘green’ energy comapny to file bankruptcy is Amonix a North Las Vegas solar manufacturing plant and beneficiary of Obama stimulus money. The company received over $20 million in federal grants and credits, but is now closing its doors after one year in operation. Rene Kenerly a former employee of Amonix had this to say about the company: “the plant has been idle since May 1. At the peak the plant had about 700 employees who worked three shifts a day”. Even after receiving $15.6 million for research and development, the company still wasn’t producing effective products, “A lot of stuff was coming back because it had some functionality issues”, said Kenerly. The company has not been successful in creating jobs or making ‘green’ energy more affordable and obtainable for Americans; it was a failure.
Unfortunately for Americans. this is not the first Obama-backed ‘green’ energy company to fail and sadly it probably won’t be the last. The administration’s attempts to tilt the scales in favor of their pet energy projects is only decreasing reliability and affordability of energy for consumers across the nation.
