President Obama’s second inaugural speech featured climate change more prominently than did his first inaugural address. As Greenwire (subscription required) observed:

Gone was Obama’s roundabout reference to climate change through “the specter of a warming planet” from four years ago. This time, the president put the issue front and center.

Will that make any difference legislatively? Probably not. In the House, Republicans opposed to cap-and-trade, EPA regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and carbon taxes are still in charge.

Is the President’s renewed emphasis on climate change just a sop to his environmentalist base? Doubtful. As a second termer, Obama has less reason politically to restrain his ‘progressive’ impulses. Several regulatory options are now in play:

• The Department of Interior could list more species as threatened or endangered based on climate change concerns.
• The President could finally veto the Keystone XL pipeline — a key objective of the climate alarm movement.
• The EPA could issue GHG performance standards for existing (as distinct from new or modified) coal power plants, as well as GHG performance standards for other industrial categories (refineries, cement production facilities, steel mills, paper mills, etc.).
• The EPA could finally act on petitions pending from the Bush administration to set GHG emission standards for marine vessels, aircraft, and non-road vehicles.
• The EPA could finally act on a December 2009 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity and 350.Org to establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs.

I’ll make one prediction: If Obama does not veto the Keystone XL Pipeline after talking the talk on climate change, green groups will go ballistic (even though, Cato Institute scholar Chip Knappenberger calculates, full-throttle operation of the Keystone XL Pipeline would add an inconsequential 0.0001°C/yr to global temperatures). My colleague Myron Ebell reasonably speculates that Obama’s tough talk on climate was a signal to green groups to organize the biggest anti-Keystone protest ever.

Now let’s examine the climate change segment of Obama’s inaugural speech:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.  The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

Taking these statements one at a time, yes, of course, “We, the people” acknowledge obligations to posterity. Among those obligations is to secure the blessings of liberty. Liberty is endangered when non-elected officials like those at the EPA enact climate policy and erode the separation of powers.

Another obligation to posterity is not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Federal monetary and housing policies destabilized financial markets in 2008, entitlement spending imperils America’s very solvency, carbon taxes or their regulatory equivalent could inflict huge job and GDP losses by making affordable energy costly and scarce, and the green crusade against coal mining, hydraulic fracturing, unconventional oil, and energy exports threatens one of the few bright spots in the economy today. Posterity will not thank us if policymakers foolishly try to tax, spend, and regulate America back to prosperity.

The U.S. contribution to global warming over the 21st century is projected to be small – about 0.2°C, according to the UN IPCC. Even an aggressive de-carbonization program costing hundreds of billions would theoretically avert only about 0.1°C by 2100. Posterity will not thank us for consuming vast resources with so little benefit to public health and welfare.

“Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” the President says. But even assuming the President is right about the science, since even aggressive emission controls would at best avert only a tiny amount of warming, such policies would afford no protection from fires, drought, or storms.

And what does the President mean by the “overwhelming judgment of science” anyway? Mr. Obama implies that recent fires, drought, and storms would not have occurred but for anthropogenic climate change. That is ideology talking, not science.

That a warmer, drier climate will spawn more frequent forest fires and fires of longer duration is almost a tautology. Nonetheless, some studies find no change in global fire activity over the past century and more. Ocean cycles and forestry practices also influence the frequency and extent of wildfires. Whether recent U.S. wildfires are primarily due to global climate change or other factors is neither obvious nor easily determined.

As for drought, there is no long-term trend in U.S. soil moisture such as might be correlated with the increase in atmospheric GHG concentrations.

Regarding storms, studies find no long-term increase in the strength and frequency of land-falling hurricanes globally over the past 50-70 years and no trend in Atlantic tropical cyclone behavior over the past 370 years.

Hurricane Sandy was a ’super storm’ not because it was an intense hurricane (Sandy was a category 1 before making landfall), but because it was massive in area and merged with a winter frontal storm. The combined storm system contained more integrated kinetic energy (IKE) than Hurricane Katrina. Scientists simply do not know how global climate change affects the formation of such “hybrid” storms.

Inconvenient fact: The USA is currently enjoying the “longest streak ever recorded without an intense [category 3-5] hurricane landfall.”

Explains University of Colorado Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.: ”When the Atlantic hurricane season starts next June 1, it will have been 2,777 days since the last time an intense (that is a Category 3, 4 or 5) hurricane made landfall along the US coast (Wilma in 2005). Such a prolonged period without an intense hurricane landfall has not been observed since 1900.”

If, as the President seems to assume, all weather anomalies are due to global climate change, then how would he explain the extraordinary 7-year “drought” of intense landfalling U.S. hurricanes?

Mr. Obama says that, “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.” Indeed. In the famous “Crisis of Confidence“ speech of July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter proposed a plan to obtain 20% of America’s energy from solar power by the year 2000. More than three decades later, solar provides 0.25% of U.S. energy (solar contributes 2.5% of all forms of renewable energy combined, which in turn provide 10% of total U.S. energy). Moreover, the piddling contributions of wind, solar power, and biofuels depend on a panoply of government favors: mandates, direct subsidies, and special tax breaks.

The allegedly “sustainable” energy sources championed by the President are not self-sustaining. The main reason is that they are inferior to fossil fuels in terms of energy density (bang for buck) and — in the case of wind and solar power – reliability and dispatchability.

Solyndra, the Obama administration’s mascot solar company that burned through $535 million of the taxpayers’ money before going broke, is not the only failure in the President’s green investment portfolio. The Institute for Energy Research provides information on eight other “stimulosers“ that also “failed, laid off workers, or have a bleak financial outlook.”

Because politicians get to play with other people’s money, hope continually triumphs over experience, and they never learn what three MIT scholars learned from the Carter administration’s energy programs:

If an energy technology is commercially viable, no government support is needed; if it is not commercially viable, no amount of government support can make it so.

The President says that, “America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.” But that’s just it — how does he know, despite the Solyndra and other failures, the tiny market shares of politically-correct renewables, and the intractable dependence of renewables on policy privileges – that wind and solar power are the future? What information does he have that tens of thousands of savvy investors don’t?

The President alludes to the great clean energy ‘race’ that America supposedly cannot afford to lose. But as my colleague William Yeatman points out, the race is itself a creature of mandate and subsidy. China subsidizes its solar panel manufacturers, for example, because U.S. states establish Soviet-style production quota for renewable energy and EU countries subsidize renewable electricity via feed-in tariffs (FITs). China’s subsidies, in turn, are the official justification for the Stimulus loans to companies like Solyndra. But Beijing is flush with cash; Washington, deep in debt. We cannot outspend China in a subsidy war.

Throwing good money after bad makes even less sense given the global financial crisis and the cutbacks Spain, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, and Ontario (Canada) have been forced to make in their FITs. The renewable market increasingly resembles a bubble (over-investment relative to actual market demand). Yeatman cautions:

When the renewable energy bubble bursts, the global industry leader will be the biggest loser. With that in mind, the supposed race with China for green technological supremacy is one the U.S. would be wise to forfeit.

The climate segment of Mr. Obama’s speech concludes with a theological flourish:

That [investing in clean tech] is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

A lot may be implied in those words. Obama refers to the creed — the philosophy of rights and government — articulated in the Declaration of Independence. He seems to suggest that its meaning for our times lies in the doctrine of ‘creation care,’ a green variant of progressive theology. But whereas the Declaration articulated a philosophy of limited government, green theology aims to expand the reach and scope of government. Al Gore gave voice to similar views in his 1992 book on “ecology and the human spirit,” Earth in the Balance. He famously  declared that the time had come to “make rescue of the environment the central organizing principle of civilization.”

Where does Mr. Obama stand on creation care theology and Gore’s central organizing principle? I don’t know but will loudly applaud any journalist who, interviewing the President, has the curiosity and moxie to pursue this line of inquiry.

Last week on National Journal’s Energy Experts Blog, 16 wonks addressed the question: ”Is Washington Ready for a Carbon Tax?” Your humble servant argued that Washington is not ready — unless Republicans are willing to commit political suicide. That’s no reason for complacency, because spendaholics have on occasion gulled the Dumb Party into providing bi-partisan cover for unpopular tax hikes. President G.H.W. Bush’s disastrous repudiation of his ‘read-my-lips, no-new-taxes’ campaign pledge is the best known example.

To help avoid such debacles in the future, I will recap the main points of my National Journal blog commentary. Later this week, I’ll excerpt insightful comments by other contributors.

Nearly all Republicans in Congress have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a promise not to increase the net tax burden on their constituents. Although a “revenue neutral” carbon tax is theoretically possible, the sudden interest in carbon taxes is due to their obvious potential to feed Washington’s spending addiction. If even one dollar of the revenues from a carbon tax is used for anything except cutting other taxes, the scheme is a net tax increase and a Pledge violation. Wholesale promise-breaking by GOP leaders would outrage party’s activist base. 

Even if the Taxpayer Protection Pledge did not exist, the GOP is currently the anti-tax, pro-energy alternative to a Democratic leadership that is aggressively anti-energy and pro-tax. Endorsing a massive new energy tax would damage the product differentiation that gives people a reason to vote Republican. Recognizing these realities, House GOP leaders recently signed a ‘no climate tax’ pledge.

That’s good news. But this is a season of fiscal panic and I was there (in 1990) when the strength of Republicans failed. Perhaps the best time to kick carbon taxes is when they are down. So let’s review additional reasons to oppose a carbon tax.

Carbon taxes are regressive, imposing a larger percentage burden on low-income households. If Republicans support a carbon tax in return for cuts in corporate or capital gains taxes (a popular idea in some circles), they will be pilloried — this time fairly — for seeking to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.

If, on the other hand, the tax provides “carbon dividends” to offset the impact of higher energy prices on poor households, it will create a new class of welfare dependents. Guess which party is better at organizing people on welfare?

Carbon taxes pose an existential threat to the development of North America’s vast coal, oil, and natural gas deposits — one of the few bright spots in the economy. The core purpose of a carbon tax is to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate carbon doxide-emitting activities. The tax ‘works’ by shrinking the economic base on which it is levied. To keep revenues up, carbon tax rates must continually increase as emissions decline. Likely result: an exodus of carbon-related capital, jobs, and emissions (“carbon leakage”). Problem: Nobody knows how to run a modern economy on cellulose, wind turbines, and solar panels. Bipartisanship on carbon taxes means co-ownership of U.S. economic decline.

In umpteen hearings on the Solyndra debacle, Republicans excoriated the Obama administration for trying to pick energy market winners and losers. A carbon tax is an even more ambitious green industrial policy than the $34.5 billion in loan guarantees  lavished by the Department of Energy (DOE) on a few dozen renewable energy projects. Carbon taxes attempt to pick and losers across the entire economy, handicapping all firms that produce or rely on carbon-based energy. Indeed, central to Solyndra’s business plan and DOE Secy. Chu’s green tech strategy was the bet that Congress would enact cap-and-trade, the regulatory surrogate for a carbon tax.

Some economists say government should tax ‘bads’ like emissions rather than ‘goods’ like labor and capital. This is sloppy thinking. In technical economic terms, only finished products and services are ‘goods.’ Labor and capital are inputs, production factors, or costs. Energy too is a key input. Without energy, most labor and capital would be idle or not even exist. About 83% of U.S. energy comes from carbon-based fuels. So a carbon tax also taxes what these economists loosely call ‘goods.’ Pretending that carbon taxes only tax emissions and nothing of value is free-lunch economics — a recipe for failure and worse.

Some speculate about a grand bargain in which carbon taxes replace carbon regulations — everything from the EPA’s greenhouse gas emission standards to California’s cap-and-trade program to State-level renewable electricity mandates. The EPA, the California Air Resources Board, the major environmental organizations, and the renewable energy lobbies have spent decades building the regulatory programs they administer or influence. They want to add carbon taxes to carbon regulation, not substitute one for the other. Talk a grand bargain is a ploy designed to lure gullible Republicans to the negotiating table. Few if any of the Left’s regulatory sacred cows would be traded away. In the meantime, carbon tax negotiations would divide GOP leaders from their rank and file and demoralize the party’s activist base.

The backlash against GOP leaders’ complicity would be swift and severe. Yet for all the economic pain inflicted and political damage incurred, they would accomplish no discernible environmental gain. As hurricane expert Roger Pielke Jr. points out, even under IPCC assumptions, changes in energy policy “wouldn’t have a discernible impact on future disasters for the better part of a century or more.” Similarly, also using IPCC assumptions, Chip Knappenberger of the Cato Institute Center for the Study of Science calculates that even if the U.S. eliminated all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the impact on global temperatures would be a reduction ”of approximately 0.08°C by the year 2050 and 0.17°C by the year 2100 — amounts that are, for all intents and purposes, negligible.”

Under a carbon tax, the U.S. would keep emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide annually for a long time – otherwise the tax wouldn’t raise much revenue. So the notion that carbon taxes can measurably reduce extreme weather risk or climate change impacts within any policy-relevant timeframe is ludicrous.

Stimulus spending on environmentalist policy is a green albatross around the neck of President Barack Obama. Inspectors General are having a field day auditing stimulus-funded programs for so-called “green jobs,” and the media LOVES stories about wasted taxpayer money. What started as a sop to his environmentalist base, now threatens to become a slow-drip nightmare of negative press. The timing couldn’t be worse for the President. It takes time to disburse scores of billions of dollars, so we are only now starting to scrutinize stimulus spending. By November 2012, we’ll be able to account for most of the money, and unless the current trend changes radically, the Executive in Chief is going to look conspicuously incompetent.

Here’s the back-story: In early 2009, the Executive and Legislative branches of government had a popular mandate to defibrillate America’s moribund economy with a huge injection of taxpayer dollars. Instead of limiting this “stimulus” to state bailouts and infrastructure spending, the Obama administration (led by climate “czar” and former EPA administrator Carol Browner) and the Congressional majority (led by House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills)) also sought to advance environmentalist policy.  As a result, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. the stimulus, included almost $70 billion in spending for green jobs and renewable energy infrastructure.

Every single link along the green energy supply chain was showered with subsidies. There was funding for green jobs training, funding for factories to make green products, and funding to incentivize demand for green goods and services. It was as like a green Gosplan!

Most of the money went to the Energy and Labor Departments. Budgets ballooned. To cite a typical example, in 2008, the Department of Energy’s weatherization program budget went from $450 million to $5 billion. Making matters worse, federal bureaucrats were told to spend the stimulus as fast as possible, in order to jumpstart job-creation. Exploding budgets and a mandate to rush money out the door—that’s a recipe for poor stewardship of taxpayer dollars. This is borne out by an increasing number of watchdog reports concluding that stimulus spending for green goals was wasteful. Here’s a laundry list of what they’ve found so far:

• On November 2, Eliot P. Lewis, the Department of Labor’s IG, testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Labor Department received $435 million to train 96,000 people in the renewable energy trade. The goal was to create 80,000 green jobs. Through June 30, according to Mr. Lewis’s testimony, the Labor Department had spent $130 million, which is 30% of the program budget, and created a scant 1,336 jobs, which is 2% of the program target.

• During the same Congressional hearing, the Department of Energy IG Gregory Friedman said that he had launched more than 100 criminal investigations into green energy spending. Each one is a potential scandal.

• GreenWire’s (subscription required) Annie Snider has reported on a series of IG investigations by the Department of Defense faulting the military for wasteful stimulus spending on green energy projects. The report titles say it all: “American Revoery and Reinvestment Act Wind Turbine Projects at Long-Range Radar Site in Alaska Were Not Adequately Planned”; “The Departmnet of the Navy Spent Recovery Act Funds on Photovoltaic Projects That Were Not Cost-Effective”; “U.S. Air Force Academy Could Have Significantly Improved Planning Funding, and Initial Execution of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Solar Array Project”; and “Geothermal Energy Development Project at Naval Air Force Station Fallon, Nevada, Did Not Meet Recovery Act Requirements.”

• On November 7, the Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General issued a “management alert” regarding the Western Area Power Administration’s $3 billion, stimulus-created loan program to facilitate the transmission of electricity from renewable energy projects in the west. According to the IG alert, “Western had not implemented the necessary safeguards to ensure its commitment of funding was optimally protected.”

• In October, Resources for the Future released a report suggesting that the $3 billion, stimulus funded “cash for clunkers” program, whereby the government subsidized the purchase of fuel efficient cars for consumers that agreed to junk their less fuel efficient cars, was an economic and environmental failure.

• Since February, the Energy and Commerce Committee has been investigating Solyndra, the California solar panel manufacturer that declared bankruptcy in September, leaving the taxpayer on the hook for a $535 million stimulus-funded loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.

Why is the green stimulus failing? As I note above, ballooning budgets and a mandate to spend fast are conducive to waste.

More fundamentally, central planning of the economy is a loser. Invariably, politics corrupts the process. Members of Congress are less concerned about the economic viability of the industries into which they invest taxpayer money, and much more concerned with getting pork to their districts. Civil servants, no matter how disinterested, know that their political overlords are watching their decisions carefully, so as to ensure that taxpayers give-aways reach their constituents. (For an archetypical example of a Member of Congress browbeating a civil servant, see this post about Sen. Al Franken shaking down Energy Secretary Steven Chu).

When parochial politics isn’t interfering, crony capitalism is. According to “Throw Them All Out,” a new book by Peter Shweizer, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted by the stimulus-created loan guarantee program (whence the Solyndra debacle) “went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Of course, political payback is a poor substitute for sound financial analysis.

Gross fiscal mismanagement by government attracts media like flies to dung. So far, most coverage is by local papers reporting on local failures. (See “Seattle’s Green Jobs Program a Bust,” by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and “Stimulus Funds Provide Training, But Openings Few in State,” by the Detroit News.) However, even the New York Times, whose editorial board supports green energy subsidies, published a story titled, “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live up to Promises.” Expect many more of these types of articles as the watchdogs continue to do their work.

As the negative press mounts, the President will become ever-more burdened by his foolish bet on green energy.

Tomorrow, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold its second hearing on Solyndra, the manufacturer of innovative non-silicon-based solar panels that borrowed $527 million only to file for bankruptcy, shutter its brand new Freemont, Calif. factory, and lay off 1,100 employees on September 6. Expect Committee Democrats to blame China and the allegedly unforeseen fall in the price of conventional silicon-based solar panels for the debacle.

That’s the line the Department of Energy’s (DOE) witness, Jonathan Silver, took at the Committee’s first (September 14) Solyndra hearing, noting China’s provision of more than $30 billion in subsidized financing to its solar manufacturers, which rapidly dropped silicon prices, “taking Solyndra, and many industry analysts, by surprise.” DOE’s blog, Energy.Gov, had already adopted this explanation on August 31, the day Solyndra announced it would file for bankruptcy.

Similarly, Solyndra’s August 31 announcement coyly cited the “resources of larger foreign [i.e. Chinese] manufacturers” and a “global oversupply of [mainly Chinese] solar panels” as factors foiling the company’s business plan. Solyndra’s ex-employees have applied to the Department of Labor (DOL) for aid under the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, claiming that China put them out of work. If DOL approves the application, Solyndra’s former workers will receive allowances for job retraining, job searching, and health care for up to 130 weeks, or about $13,000 per employee. Blogger Scott Linicom decries such double dipping:

So to recap: massive government subsidies created 1,100 “green jobs” that never would’ve existed but for those massive government subsidies.  And when those fake jobs disappeared because the subsidized employer-company inevitably couldn’t compete in the market, the dislocated workers blamed China (instead of what’s easily one of the worst business plans ever drafted) in order to receive . . . wait for it . . . more government subsidies. Behold, the Circle of Government Life.

Whether it’s Solyndra execs and DOE officials trying to save face, ”progressives” defending the honor of green industrial policy, or former employees looking for more taxpayer freebies, they all would have us believe that Solyndra’s $535 million loan guarantee was a good bet at the time it was made. They need a scapegoat for Solyndra’s crash, so they blame China. Indeed, some (e.g. Grist) claim Solyndra’s collapse shows that the U.S. government isn’t doing enough to help our “clean tech” companies “compete.” Balderdash.    

Solyndra’s business plan was dubious from the getgo. Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) claims that “under both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration, DOE officials strongly backed Solyndra.” In fact, on January 9, 2009, Bush’s DOE declined to approve Solyndra’s loan guarantee application, citing several “unresolved” issues including lack of an independent study of the company’s long-term prospects, questions about the company’s financial strength, and concern about the scale-up of production assumed in the business plan (Documents Entered into Record, p. 1).

As for the allegedly unanticipated glut in rooftop solar panels, which made Solyndra’s thin-film panels uncompetitive, it was the topic of a January 12, 2009 USA Today article. In an email dated January 13, 2009, Bush DOE staff cited the glut, reported in USA Today, as the reason for the DOE Credit Committee’s “unanimous decision not to engage in further discussions with Solyndra at this time” (Documents Entered into Record, p. 2).

Emails obtained by the Committee suggest that White House pressure for quick approval may have compromised the depth and quality of DOE and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review of Solyndra’s loan application (Documents Entered into Record, pp. 4, 11, 12):

• “There’s a recurrent problem with the [White House] scheduling office looking for events [loan guarantee approvals] before they are ready to go.” (March 10, 2009)
• “As long as we make it crystal clear to DOE that this is only in the interest of time, and that there’s no precedent set, then I’m okay with it. But we also need to make sure they don’t jam us on later deals so there isn’t time to negotiate those, too.” (August 27, 2009)
• “We have ended up in the situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week). We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews and have the approval set the date for the announcement rather than the other way around.” (August 31, 2009)

DOE approved the Solyndra loan guarantee on September 4, 2009 — an event timed to coincide with the ground breaking ceremony for the company’s Freemont, California factory. Speakers included DOE Secretary Steven Chu, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Vice President Biden (via satellite feed). But a scant two weeks before, on August 19 and 20, emails between DOE staff note that when Fitch modeled Solyndra’s cash flow over time, the company ”runs out of cash in Sept. 2011 even in the base case without any stress. This is a liquidity issue” (Documents Entered into Record, pp. 8-9). Rarely has a government business forecast been so accurate!

In addition to the liquidity problem, it is unclear whether Solyndra had a viable plan to reconcile its production costs and sale prices. According to an ABC News analysis:

While Energy Department officials steadfastly vouched for Solyndra — even after an earlier round of layoffs raised eyebrows — other federal agencies and industry analysts for months questioned the viability of the company. Peter Lynch, a longtime solar industry analyst, told ABC News the company’s fate should have been obvious from the start.

“Here’s the bottom line,” Lynch said. “It costs them $6 to make a unit. They’re selling it for $3. In order to be competitive today, they have to sell it for between $1.5 and $2. That is not a viable business plan.”

Along the same lines, ELECTRO IQ (November 8, 2010) posed the question: “Can Solyndra reconcile cost-per-watt and sale price?” From the article:

In the last year, there have been numerous stories about CIGS [copper idium gallium selenide] thin-film manufacturer Solyndra’s troubles — a pulled IPO, a restructuring of the executive team, and, most troubling, the high cost of module production. (In an S-1 filing a year ago, the company said its average sales price was over $3.20 a watt, about 65% more than leading crystalline-silicon PV manufacturers. Its cost of manufacturing was over $6 a watt). Solyndra aims at $3.5 per watt by the end of 2011.

Tim Worstall, writing in Forbes (September 17, 2011), argues that, “Yes, it was possible to see this failure coming.” Defenders of the loan argue that the fall in silicon solar prices was unforeseen, hence “Solyndra’s non-silicon technology got bushwhacked by something no one could have anticipated.”

In reality, it was “blatantly obvious” that competitors’ prices would fall. In the mid-2000s demand exceeded supply and the price soared. But as Econ 101 tells us, soaring prices create incentives to increase supply, which then push prices down.

What’s more, says Worstall, by 2008, First Solar, a leading supplier of non-silicon modules, had already achieved lower cost-per-watt than Solyndra hoped to achieve by 2011.

Concludes Worstall: “It wasn’t an unexpected fall in silicon prices that did in Solyndra: they were never even close to being competitive on pricing against non-silicon technologies. They weren’t even in the right ballpark at all.”

Let’s take a closer look at DOE loan program director Silver’s ’don’t-blame-DOE-or-Solyndra’ explanation of why the company went bust:

In 2009, Solyndra appeared to be well-positioned to compete and succeed in the global marketplace. Solyndra manufactured cylindrical, thin-film, solar cells, which avoided both the high cost of polysilicon — a crucial component used in conventional solar panels — and certain costs associated with installing flat panels. But polysilicon prices subsequently dropped significantly, taking Solyndra, and many industry analysts, by surprise. Among the principal beneficiaries of this pricing environment were four of Solyndra’s Chinese competitors, which sell polysilicon panels and received $20 billion in credit from the China Development Bank in 2010.

* * *

Unfortunately, changes in the solar market have only accelerated in 2011, since the restructuring [of Solyndra's loan guarantee in February 2011] — making it more difficult for the company to compete. Chinese companies have flooded the market with inexpensive panels, and Europe — currently the largest customer base for solar panels — have suffered from an economic crisis that has significantly reduced demand and forced cuts in subsidies for solar deployment that were important to Solyndra’s business model. The result has been a further and unprecedented 42% drop in solar cell prices in the first eight months of 2011.

All of that may be correct, but the pertinent issue is whether anyone could have foreseen these changes in the marketplace in 2009 and 2010 when the U.S. government decided to bet taxpayers’ money on Solyndra. Far from being unforeseeable that China would subsidize its ”clean tech” companies to beat out U.S. firms and capture market share, this was a major premise of DOE’s loan guarantee program. We had to fight fire with fire or else lose the “clean energy race,” Obama officials warned. As DOE Secretary Chu said in testimony on October 27, 2009:

China has already made its choice. China is spending about $9 billion a month on clean energy. . . .The United States, meanwhile, has fallen behind. . . .We manufactured more than 40 percent of the world’s solar cells as recently as the mid 1990s; today, we produce just 7 percent. When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled. But I remain confident that we can make up the ground. . . .The Recovery Act includes $80 billion to put tens of thousands of Americans to work developing new battery technologies for hybrid vehicles, making our homes and businesses more energy efficient, doubling our capacity to generate renewable electricity, and modernizing the electric grid.

Moreover, one did not need to be a rocket scientist to predict that if the U.S. government leverages billions of dollars in private investment to compete with Chinese firms, China would up the ante. After all, Beijing is flush with cash, whereas Washington is deep in debt.

Nor was any great acumen required to anticipate that the economic crisis would cut subsidies and thereby reduce demand for solar panels in Europe. In October 2009, the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut (RWI) reported that Germany’s feeder tariff system was on course to subsidize solar voltaic modules to the tune of $73 billion from 2000 through 2010, yet solar power was providing less than 1% of the nation’s electricity. Such lavish subsidies are unsustainable, especially during a financial crisis.

One also wonders why Solyndra had to hire 3,000 people to build a brand new factory (“Fab 2″). Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to rent space in an existing building? Ah, but then there would have been no groundbreaking and no photo-op for Secy. Chu, Gov. Schwarzenegger, and Vice President Biden. Mixing politics with business politicized Solyndra’s business plan.

Even if one makes the dubious assumption that Solyndra’s business plan was sound at the time DOE approved the loan guarantee, why did S0lyndra stick to the plan when it became clear the company was going broke?  ”The Fed money was explicitly tied to being *solely* used to build Fab 2. Solyndra could not use the loan proceeds for *anything* else,” according to an anonymous member of Solyndra’s management team. The DOE loan guarantee, it seems, reduced Solyndra’s ability to adapt to changing market conditions.

Sadly, the one lesson Team Obama will never draw from Solyndra’s failure is the most important one: the folly of government trying to play venture capitalist. Heritage Foundation economist David Kreutzer offers some choice words in two recent blog posts:

“We have such a great product that nobody will lend us the money,” was the nonsensical argument from Solyndra and its backers. Those who did not see the logical flaw in 2009 cannot help but see the flawed result in 2011. Unfortunately, some still do not see the logical problem that led to the mess.

Indeed, two of the criteria for the loan program show how silly it is to have government run a bank. One is that the loan must be for a commercially viable project. Another is that the applicants have to demonstrate that they could not get private financing. By definition, the second criterion rules out the first.

The most astonishing event this week was President Barack Obama endorsement of more oil production—in Brazil.  In a speech to a CEO Business Summit in Brasilia, the President said:

By some estimates, the oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States.  We want to work with you.  We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.  At a time when we’ve been reminded how easily instability in other parts of the world can affect the price of oil, the United States could not be happier with the potential for a new, stable source of energy.

This is the same President who has spent the last two years doing everything he can to reduce oil production in the United States.  Cancelled and delayed exploration leases on federal lands in the Rocky Mountains; the re-institution of the executive moratorium on offshore exploration in the Atlantic, the Pacific, most Alaskan waters, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico; the deepwater permitting moratorium and the de facto moratorium in the western Gulf.  The result is that domestic oil production is about to start a steep decline.  An article on Red State by Steve Maley summarizes the future effects of the Obama Administration’s war against oil.

Maley quotes an authoritative summary (PDF) provided in a recent publication by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration:

Off shore oil production in [the 2011 forecast] is lower than in [the 2010 forecast] throughout most of the projection period [through 2035] because of expected delays in near-term projects, in part as a result of drilling moratoria and in part due to the change in lease sales expected in the Pacific and Atlantic outer continental shelf (OCS), as well as increased uncertainty about future investment in off shore production. [page 8]

I’m all for more oil production in Brazil, but what’s good for Brazil would also be good for the United States.  Were the federal government to open some of America’s vast untapped offshore and Alaskan oil resources, it would lower our trade deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, provide billions of dollars in royalties to the federal treasury, create hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs not subsidized by taxpayer dollars, and contribute significantly to our long-term prosperity.  Given the economy’s current dismal long-term prospects, continuing to lock up our resources is detestable.

President Obama’s remarks in Brazil show that he understands this.  He clearly thinks prosperity is good for Brazil.  But it is something that he is working mightily to deny to Americans.  He and his administration have adopted policies that they know will reduce oil and coal production, raise energy prices, and make Americans poorer.  As the President said when gas prices reached $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008 when he was running for President, the problem wasn’t the price, but that prices had risen too suddenly. In fact, the Administration is full of senior officials who are on record supporting much higher gasoline and electricity prices, starting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Victor Davis Hanson takes a stab at explaining the background assumptions that have led to the left’s insane war against energy:

The administration’s energy visions are formulated by academics and government bureaucrats who live mostly in cities with short commutes and have worked largely for public agencies. These utopians have no idea that without reasonably priced fuel and power, the self-employed farmer cannot produce food. The private plant operator cannot create plastics. And the trucker cannot bring goods to the consumer — all the basics like lettuce, iPads, and Levis that a highly educated, urbanized elite both enjoys and yet has no idea of how a distant someone else made their unbridled consumption possible.

I think that’s part of the explanation, but only scratches the surface.  At its core, the modern environmental movement (and the Obama Administration has been staffed with professional environmentalists) hates access to energy because it gives people power over nature.

CEI’s Iain Murray has an op-ed in The Washington Times today explaining what can be learned from the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan.

Here’s an excerpt:

Without this vigorous defense of nuclear, the Obama energy plan will have a massive hole at its core – one that cannot be filled by wind and solar power any more than it can be filled by fairy dust. The obvious answer is for the administration to stop its war on coal, but that is unlikely. The only other plausible choice is natural gas, derived by hydraulic fracturing – a procedure that environmentalists are already trying to ban. If they want to keep their plan going in any workable form, the president and Mr. Chu need to tell Americans unequivocally where their future power is going to come from, and push back against ideological environmentalists who are trying to ban practical sources of energy.

Read the rest here.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the Obama administration’s  budget for the Department of Energy (DOE). Despite the fact that the DOE has yet to spend $21 billion in stimulus money (about 60% of its 2010 budget), the White House proposed a 12% budget increase.

Minnesota Senator Al Franken was unconcerned with the deficit implications of giving billions more taxpayer dollars to a bureaucracy that has yet to spend the billions of taxpayer dollars it already has. Instead, he had a much more parochial matter in mind.

His line of questioning for the Energy Secretary focused on Sage Electrochromic, a Minnesota-based window manufacturer. Senator Franken explained that the window company had received a $70 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, which you’d think would be  pleasing to the Senator. After all, a federally backed loan is a taxpayer subsidy that allows recipients to obtain better financing.

Yet it wasn’t generous enough for Senator Franken. He noted that the company was still on the hook for the credit subsidy cost, which is (roughly speaking) the value of the risk that the government undertakes by backing the loan. Point blank, the Minnesota Senator told Secretary Chu, “I’d like to get this credit subsidy cost waived.”

Is this not a shakedown?

The primary Republican talking point for today’s hearing was that the government should not be picking and choosing winners and losers in the energy industry. Secretary Chu vigorously denied this accusation; Senator Franken proved it.