Renewable Energy

[Dan Allan]

Doesn't looks like there's a thread devoted to this particular topic yet, if there is one I missed feel free to merge this. Anyway, to kick things off:

White House Ignored Warnings About Solar Company

by The Associated Press
text size A A A
September 15, 2011

White House officials discussed the political ramifications of a possible default by a troubled solar energy company that received more than $500 million in federal loans, newly released emails show.

Emails released Thursday night show that Obama administration privately worried about the effect of a default by Solyndra Inc. on the president's re-election campaign.

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," an official from the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a senior OMB official. "The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

The email, released by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee as part of its investigation into the Solyndra loan, showed that Obama administration officials were concerned about Solyndra's financial health even as they publicly declared the solar panel maker in good shape.

Solyndra, which received $528 million in federal loans under the stimulus law, declared bankruptcy late last month and laid off 1,100 workers.

The Silicon Valley company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under the 2009 stimulus law, and the Obama administration frequently touted Solyndra as a model for its clean energy program. President Obama visited the company's California headquarters last year.

Even as Obama praised the company's plans to hire more than 1,000 workers, warning signs were being sent from within the government and from outside analysts who questioned Solyndra's viability as a "going concern."

At least three reports by federal watchdogs over the past two years warned that the Energy Department had not fully developed the controls needed to manage the multibillion-dollar loan program that provided more the loan to Solyndra.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that a White House official dismissed reports about Solyndra's gloomy future. An email from Greg Nelson, a White House official who had been involved in the planning of Obama's May 2010 trip to Solyndra's headquarters, to a Solyndra executive downplayed a July 2010 news story in a trade publication that criticized the company's financial health.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the White House did not influence the Solyndra loan, which he said was made on "a merit-based process" by the Department of Energy.

"There's no evidence that the White House was involved in the loan," Carney said Thursday. Emails that show White House officials pressuring the administration's budget office about the loan were about scheduling, he said.

"The White House was involved in trying to find out when a decision would be made, so ... staff here could make a decision about the vice president's having an event" at Solyndra headquarters in September 2009, Carney said.

The FBI recently raided Solyndra's headquarters, shortly after the company filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case under seal, said the search was related to a fraud investigation into whether Solyndra filed inaccurate documents with the government.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department's inspector general said Thursday it has opened an investigation into the Solyndra loan.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/15/140523...-solar-company

[Dawn Cannon]

In less than a week, more than 180,000 Spanish citizens have signed a petition against plans for a new ‘sun tax’ on use of batteries for residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain.

Meanwhile more than 150,000 citizens signed a petition calling for the immediate resignation of José Manuel Soria, the minister of industry, energy and tourism, whose department put forward the draft law.

The new tax could increase payback time for solar-plus-storage owners from around 16 years to 31 years. Hefty fines for infringement, capped at €60 million (US$67.7 million), had also been proposed, which is double the fine for releasing nuclear waste.

The tax applies to grid-connected solar PV installations of up to 15kW. Depending on the size of the installation, the fee would be from €8.9 (US$10) per kilowatt for domestic consumers up to €36 (US$40.6) per kW for medium size businesses.

José Donoso general director of the Spanish PV association, Union Espanola Foltovoltaico (UNEF), told PV Tech that more than 35,000 comments against the minister were presented. He said the government internet server crashed several times under the number of signatures and comments. He also said the petition had "record" numbers in such a short time.

Waiting for the ministry to make a decision, Donoso said: “We will see if the rules will change, or only cosmetic change, or nothing.”

A statement on Avaaz, the online platform for the petition, said: “The Ministry of Industry is working around the clock to protect the powerful electric oligopoly imposing new barriers to economically asphyxiate those citizens who wish to produce their own electricity using solar energy. Let us unite to prevent this shameful [sun tax]”.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/record_p...ors_picks=true

[Dawn Cannon]

Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party plans to require new wind turbines be built a mile away from homes and schools, citing concerns about rising electricity bills, reducing costly green energy subsidies, aesthetics and health issues.

Poland installed more wind turbines in 2015 than any other European country except Germany. The sheer number of turbines has created a domestic political backlash against them.

“There’s a number of reasons our country isn’t run by wind,” Dan Kish, the senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Where people are familiar with wind power, they tend to develop contempt for it fairly rapidly. Wind turbines are not aesthetically desirable and make no sense from an economic perspective. It only makes sense to politicians who take checks from green energy companies. It ain’t all its cracked up to be.”

Naturally, wind lobbyists in Poland are panicking about the potential law. Poland’s plans “will tie projects up in red tape and make life difficult for developers by imposing arbitrary rules that serve no other purpose than to prevent wind turbine deployment,” Oliver Joy, a spokesman for the European Wind Energy Association, told Bloomberg.

Even in comparatively progressive places like Vermont or the United Kingdom, wind farms tend to be aggressive opposed by local residents.

One of most common complaints about wind turbines by local residents is that they cause “flickering” when the sun is behind their blades. This is generally agreed to be incredibly annoying and there’s evidence that it can cause headaches, sleep disorders and anxiety and depression symptoms in people who live nearby.

read full article at source: http://www.cfact.org/2016/03/04/pola...-lobby-panics/

[John Adams]

There are a range of problems with the lefty/greens renewable energy crap

1 Wind turbines only create power when the turbines are spinning, no wind = no power generated
2 Solar, needs light, does not generate power at night
Until we can come up with something that can provide the guaranteed 24/7 power that coal or nuclear generators can provide than talk of renewable is just talk

[Crowe]

The green energy faggots want to ban cheaper forms of energy like coal and replace it with methods that can't generate as much energy for as low of a price. My electric bill has nearly tripled in the last 8 years because of all the anti-coal bullshit.

Ironically, most of these green energy faggots also happen to be animal rights activists, yet these giant wind turbines are meat grinders for birds. They don't seem to care about the later. But I never implied these people had a fucking brain to begin with.

[John Adams]

Originally Posted by Crowe

The green energy faggots want to ban cheaper forms of energy like coal and replace it with methods that can't generate as much energy for as low of a price. My electric bill has nearly tripled in the last 8 years because of all the anti-coal bullshit.

Ironically, most of these green energy faggots also happen to be animal rights activists, yet these giant wind turbines are meat grinders for birds. They don't seem to care about the later. But I never implied these people had a fucking brain to begin with.

The greens/leftys here want the Latrobe Valley coal mines and the generators shut down. Those generators supply power to 80% of the state (Victoria is roughly 3 times the size of England)
A question was put to the greens during one of their anti coal rants....at night during summer when there is no wind or light, how do you expect to power your air conditioner when its nearly 40c during the day and still high 20 or low 30 at say 9 pm when everyone has their air con on as well as provide energy for everything else, they had no answer
Shutting down the Latrobe Vally mines/generators would mean that those green idiots would not even be able to recharge their phones and laptops yet they seem incapable of understanding that