The Economist;
As a clean-energy company, Suntech at least had the chance to fulfil BP’s misleading promise of going beyond petroleum. Alas, Suntech has instead ended up beyond profit.
The company’s solar-panel operations in Wuxi, China, were declared bankrupt on March 20th. That came just days after it defaulted on some of its bond obligations. Suntech has been shutting down various facilities worldwide and Mr Shi, who once was a green hero among the fat cats who gather at the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos gabfest, has been ignominiously booted out of his job as company chairman.
[…]
So dire is the industry-wide crisis that, on one estimate, over 30 solar firms have gone bust globally of late. Clearly, any company, never mind the world’s largest, would find it hard to survive in such an environment.
h/t Bob H
Not at all surprising.This is what will always hapen if Ideological concerns are given more weight than the open market.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects
Within The Frame Of Physics
Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)
And once you’ve read the above paper you will realize that there is no such thing as a ‘green house gas’ and that AGW is not a ‘threat to humanity’; governments will realize that all their tax subsidies to fight this non-threat have been wasted.
Solar power will never be as cost efficient as large scale hydro-electric or nuclear generation, ask any engineer.
This will come to you, well unless you’re smoking the stuff in the topic below or a raving Dr Suzuki acolyte.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
This trend is less a rejection of green tech as it is the very real effect of global economic stability. When the good times are no longer rolling, superficial feel good spending is the first to go. It does however, show that no matter how well established and technically updated green alternate energy is, it is certainly far from indispensable in our daily life such as a fossil fuel car or gas-generated electricity and heat are.
A practical demonstration of green tech’s not ready for bear markets.
Oxygen is a ‘green house gas’.
Carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants in green houses while oxygen is emitted.
And I stayed at a Holiday Inn once.
Yes I’m sure you read the paper…
Solar panel surplus?..No problemo, Ontaxio should buy them all up soon…Like Germany, Ontaxio has gone the way of the imbecile…I never gave much faith in my fellow Canad’uhians, especially the eastern ones but I thought Germans were much smarter than that.
You build a Lada (aka 72 Fiat) with lots of government largesse and try to sell it for more than a Rolls Royce. What could go wrong?
“governments will realize that all their tax subsidies to fight this non-threat have been wasted.”
Hans…thanks for the Sunday morning laugh. Have you been into your cups all ready?? -:)
Don’t get your hopes up. The shake-out is a well-recognised and well-researched phase in the development of a new technology and the emergence of the new industry based on it, and this is it. What happens now is a wave of bankruptcies, buyouts and consolidations leading to the domination of the business in the long term by two or three large firms and a very few nimble smaller ones. Think Google or GM or Siemens.
See, unlike the wind lunacy – which has pretty much already reached its technological limits, and is shown up as inherently unworkable without Gubmint support – solar still has plenty of room for improvement, and may one day stand on its own two feet in the right places and the right configuration.
Just sayin’.
Jeez…who is gonna stand behind the warranty of panels already installed for the green sheeple?
Crickets…more crickets….nobody is….
It looks like the Solar Bandwagon has lost its wheels.
As governments scale back and cancel their subsidies, solar will go back to a niche energy solution for isolated spaces and places. It can work in special applications, but it is not economical for large power applications.
Wind turbines are next.
Actually Thon, viable industries are infused with young start-ups, turnkey operations selling to the highest bidder and various support industries trying to jockey themselves into ‘supplier of choice’ agreements. These enterprises have the feel of an exciting and bustling frontier town.
With the end of taxpayer subsidies and 30 recent company/plant closures, the solar industry appears more like a gold mining ghost town or one of those plague villages where the only survivor is a crazy old coot that looks a lot like David Suzuki.
A pig is a pig no matter how much lipstick you put on it. There are people that should be strung up for what they have done, and are still doing to the economy.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/the-sorry-lessons-of-green-power-subsidies/article4103467/
If it’s good enough for Anthony Watts it’s good enough for me.
It all started at Enron.
Their political pals worldwide thought it was a fabulous scam for shearing
the stupid taxpayers and creating huge government tax and spend programs.
Finding gullible true believer idiots ready and willing to front the fraud for
them must have seemed like a miracle.
At the risk of being vilified, I think that the alternative energy movement has few, if any INTJ personality types
(Myers-Briggs, Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging)