Obama's solar fantasy

Jeff Perren:

Obama has now committed $2 billion more of the taxpayers’ money to pursue his solar energy fantasy:

Abound Solar is supposed to create 1,500 “permanent” jobs, while Abengoa Solar is promising just 85 “permanent” jobs, according to the Department of Energy fact sheet, at its plant in Arizona. Add another 3,600 construction jobs, which will disappear after the three plants are built, and the cost per job created still amounts to $386,000 — which is more than seven times the median household income in this country.

Forget for a moment the absurdly high cost of government-created jobs. Forget the boondoggle, the corruption of handing out huge sums to politically connected companies. There are more fundamental problems here.

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It would be bad enough for the federal government to subsidize the construction of solar power projects if they worked. It would still be an inefficient use of resources; it would still exceed its constitutionally enumerated powers; it would still be an immoral redistribution of wealth to politically connected companies. But at least in that case American taxpayers — somewhere — might get a Hoover Dam out of the deal. In this instance, that’s simply impossible.

There is no known solar technology that can reliably deliver large-scale power in a cost-effective way. There is nothing even in the research stages that promises that result anytime soon, if we just throw enough R&D money at the right company. This is nothing less than a sheer waste of public funds to create a mere appearance, a chimera to satisfy the vanity of a powerful Green demagogue longing to appear visionary.

In true postmodern fashion, objective facts have vanished in the mist of a progressive wish.

The projects can’t actually improve the environment through the deployment of huge solar panels. Installing large panels takes large tracts of land in sunny areas, usually far from electricity consumers. That means building more roads, stringing longer cable, and handling more cadmium (a heavy metal needed to produce the panels). That’s before even considering liberal shibboleths like producing copious greenhouse gases and disrupting the habitat of native desert species.

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There is more.

We are subsidizing the inefficient energy production while the Obama administration is making war against more efficient energy producers like oil, gas and coal. The jobs created by this make work project are just a fraction of the jobs being killed by Obama with his unwise moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Those are high paying jobs that actually produce revenue for the government and produce a product that we are going to need for generations.

I don't have anything against people buying solar energy. There are probably some applications where it make sense especially where people are off the grid. It is possible that some military units that are out in the boondocks could benefit from solar instead of trucking in diesel fuel through hostile territory. But don't look for the Obama administration to push this kind of application because it wants to cut defense spending.