Stimulus Killing Renewable Energy Industry

Posted July 8th, 2009 at 2.51pm in Enterprise and Free Markets.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that investment in renewable energies, and the green jobs that go with it, is being stifled by the stimulus.

How? No one knows where, when, or if the stimulus money from Washington will arrive, sowing uncertainty among investors and businesses alike:

New incentive programs haven’t yet been defined, and uncertainty about program rules has deterred investors from backing companies that also may get government money. At the same time, companies are holding off from accepting private capital because of the possibility of getting it more cheaply from the government.

“It artificially slowed the recovery,” Matt Cheney, chief executive of Renewable Ventures, the U.S. subsidiary of Fotowatio SL, a Spanish developer of renewable-energy projects, said of the stimulus plan.

President Obama’s guarantees about the stimulus keeping unemployment below 8% are bogus, and today the GAO reports that states “generally have not directed the money toward long-term expansion.”

No surprises there. However, the uncertainty created by a centrally-planned recovery jeopardizes America’s long-term economic health. The stated purpose of Obama’s stimulus is to create jobs via government largesse. Permitting people the liberty to make their own investment decisions by easing their tax burden would have been far better.

The cracks are showing in this new Progressive Era.

Author: Gerrit Lansing
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8 Comments

July 8, 2009 Gabby writes:

It’s pretty simple to figure out—The MONEY will go overseas for job growth there. I’m sure the G8 Summit folks will ALL have a Bank Routing number set up for the funds to be delivered to SOOOOON! BANK ON THAT FACT!

July 8, 2009 J.C. Hughes, Texas writes:

” … via government largess.”????? Thanks Gerrit for pointing out such Al Capone charity with the 16th amendment’s extortion tax. It’s shameful to say the least.

July 8, 2009 Stimulus Killing Renewable Energy Industry « Conservative Thoughts and Profundity writes:

[...] Stimulus Killing Renewable Energy Industry Posted in Heritage.com by nhiemstra on July 8, 2009 via: Heritage [...]

July 8, 2009 JimC Chicago writes:

I think the whole economy is stifled by the manic nature of this administration. There are so many contingencies, so many dangling questions, so much uncertainty for businesses, that it appears to me that our economy is still frozen. Does it make any sense to anyone that we should have about 10 major government initiatives all being crammed into a single year? Nobody can invest with any confidence because you don’t know when the next shoe will drop.
An utter calamity.

July 8, 2009 Roger S., MA. writes:

Surprise! Or, not really?! Stimulus = Stymulus.

The supercomputer which can collect, sort, evaluate, and calculate sufficient data to manage even one large market has not yet been invented.
The whole economy? Fuhgetaboutit! No way!
100 projects in 100 days? That’s the result:
Stagnation. Everybody and everything gets in each other’s way. Thereafter, nothing moves.

This guy’s a moron as far as his economics goes, and he’s a moron as far as his knowledge of American history is concerned. –Everything he’s attempting now was tried during the Hoover and FDR administrations, with similarly horrible results.– Makes you wonder what they taught in the PoliSci program at Columbia in the 80’s.

(Come to think, he’s probably also a foreign policy moron. See the handling of Honduras “coup” and Iran elections, the Israel problem. Simple “street smarts” should tell this guy that none of what he’s doing is very good.)

So, yes, they should toss all of these projects and instead deficit-finance a clear-x-board tax-cut while winding down significantly Fed.Gov. regulatory interference in just about everything. We’d be on a roll? Yes, probably, but it might still take awhile. Why isn’t it happening? Idology is one possible reason. A more horrible reason just occurred to me: we’re so broke, that a tax-cut would reduce Gov. intake by so much, so rapidly, that our international debt service would plummet with all of the horrible consequences predicted for much later happening immediately, before the economic recovery could refill the Gov.t till? So, once again the attempted solution is to postpone “U.S. Chapter- 11 Filings” until the next administration might be stuck with it? This time, I think, we’ll need to be very lucky!

July 9, 2009 Keith somewhere in the Andes writes:

The new New Deal may be the worst stimulus since the old New Deal, and may reap similar results, like the Great Depression. Is the Administration planning another stimulus?

July 9, 2009 Al, The Villages, Fl writes:

Roger S is correct. When VP Biden said they misread the economy, he really meant to say they misread history. I must admit, when it comes to the renewable or green industry, my reaction is to say what industry? Although there are some good things that could be done with renewable energy, most reports that I have scanned talk about energy outputs that will never reach the levels of power generation that can power a nation. We will spend a lot of money on science projects but not effect any national solution. Something like putting solar panels on each house/building to be the primary power generation source might work, at least in parts of the nation, but there is no leadership that is required to sort out which source (viability & cost effectiveness) and how to focus on an effective effort.

July 9, 2009 B Sirrine, Traverse City, MI writes:

Government wants us all to “do as I say, not as I do.” Government needs to lead by example, not just throw $$ at every special interest. WEait until Universal health care promotion starts.

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