Why Do You Think They Call Them 'Green'?

Green Firms Get Fed Cash, Give Execs Bonuses, Fail -- from ABC no less, I am impressed. 

Secretary Steven Chu declined an interview request. The department has long defended the green energy movement as a way for government to help spur development of cutting-edge products that aid the environment and economy. Sometimes, they say, investments in potential game-changing technologies simply don't work. The potential default rate, they say, is within the parameters set by Congress.

First, we do not need the Department of Energy.  We certainly do not need the government via the DOE picking winners and losers.  Handing out taxpayer money to any company that claims to be developing renewable energy and that has the right connections to politician and bureaucrats would be hard to justify constitutionally.  But they don't have to justify it because it is part of the DOE budget.  So the first thing to do is dismantle the Carter-Era Department of Energy.

As is the case with ethanol from corn, these so-called energy companies cannot produce a viable, marketable, competitive product without subsidies.   Their "profits" are, like many of the companies booming back in the dot-comm bubble, drawn largely from venture capital or, in the present case, government loans that will never be paid back.  They have not developed anything, and they do not have anything to sell, even if there was a market for it.  Sometimes, as I believe happened with Solyndra, some of the taxpayer money from DOE gets recycled back into the campaign coffers of politicians like Obama.  It is not much different from symbiotic relationship of politicians and defense contractors -- but at least the defense contractors product something we appear to need part of the time. 

The only thing clean about most of these green energy companies is the money they launder. 

Of course, nothing is going to change.

Administration officials, from Obama on down, say they continue to support the green energy mission. "There were going to be some companies that did not work out," Obama told reporters in October, after Solyndra's meltdown. "All I can say is the Department of Energy made these decisions based on their best judgments."

Can you give me an example of one that did work?  I didn't think so.  As John Kay once said, "Your best is barely good enough/ And if that's all you've got/ Then it won't do."  In a free market, the market decides where the money goes.  If a company can come up with a viable concept and a decent business plan, it will eventually find investors in the private sector.  If somebody can produce a quality solar generator or similar product that I can depend on and that gives me some value for my money, I'll be the first in line to buy it.  Government cannot create a market.  Government mandates and government intervention will, in the long run, produce nothing except a disastrous chain of unintended consequences.