Obama's Green Energy Failures Continue To Abound

Another stimulus-backed solar panel maker, one the president touted in a weekly radio address, lays off most of its workers. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

President Obama is the Little Orphan Annie of presidents. He is always singing that the sun will come out tomorrow and shine on the American economy and his dreams of green energy. Yet companies such as Solyndra have proved the rule rather than the exception, producing more pink slips than green jobs as solar power and alternative energy continue to be eclipsed by advances in fossil fuel production.

The latest casualty is Abound Solar Manufacturing. The Longmont, Colo.-based recipient of a $400 million federal loan guarantee to expand solar panel production said Tuesday it is laying off 280 workers and delaying a new factory in Indiana. That amounts to a 70% reduction in its workforce.

The company says it's merely restructuring. "We are facing tough market conditions and falling prices," said Steve Abely, Abound's chief financial officer, in remarks eerily reminiscent of Solyndra's last will and financial testament.

Lost in the tap-dancing verbiage is the simple fact that solar power is not financially competitive without subsidies like Abound and Solyndra have received.

This is a far cry from the bright future painted by the president in his weekly radio address of July 3, 2010. Touting his push for a clean energy economy, Obama said Abound would "manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs" at plants in Indiana and Colorado.

Apparently Abound was not helped by last July's $9.2 million Export-Import Bank loan to support exports of thin-film solar photovoltaic modules from Abound Solar to Punj Lloyd Solar Power Ltd., a company in India building a five-megawatt solar project on a 62.5-acre site near the village of Bap.

In a January report, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News counted at least 12 clean energy companies that were having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: the junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and the infamous Solyndra.