Spain, that socialist bastion of waste, fraud and misallocated capital has finally come to grips with the fact that the country’s “green initiatives” are a complete and utter fucking fiscal disaster.
But don’t worry Barry wants to model the American Power Act on the green template used in…drum roll…you guessed it…SPAIN!!!
Yay for Barry!!!
You can’t make this shit up.
Oh, and BTW, Spain is now abandoning their “green” because of all the red.
awesome. just awesome.
I can’t believe Obama’s “under our plan electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket” quote didn’t get more play during the election.
“Spain, that socialist bastion”
There is an old European expression that if you’re not a socialist in your 20’s then you don’t have a heart, but if you are still a socialist in your 50’s then you don’t have a brain.
But if you think free market capitalism would be better then you’re even a much bigger fool.
Man, thank GOD for Pajamas Media for getting to the bottom of this.
Man, thank GOD for Pajamas Media for getting to the bottom of this.
They are just doing the job that the Government Media Complex refuses to do.
Here are the facts about the failure of Spain’s energy “policy” (emphasis mine):
Renewable Energy: Situation and Objectives April 2010
Renewable Energy Situation: The price of electricity affects household welfare
According to EuroStat data, the cost of electricity for households in Spain moved from below the European average to slightly above the average (+5% higher)
Renewable Energy Situation: The price of electricity determines the competitiveness of Spanish industry
Energy is a key input in industrial production processes. In basic industries (cement, industrial gases, metals, basic chemicals and steel), energy costs are three times the labor cost.** The electrical cost for the Spanish industry is well above the European average (+17% higher).**
Renewable Energy Situation: The price increase is mainly due to additional costs of renewables
The price of electricity determines the competitiveness of Spanish industry
Historical evolution of the prices of light and pool price ****
A price increase cannot be explained by the evolution of electricity market price (pool), which has even fallen since 2005
Renewable Energy Situation: The price increase is mainly due to additional costs of renewables
The increase in the over-cost paid for renewable energy explains more than 120% of the variation of the electric bill, and has offset the reduction in production costs of conventional electricity (25%)
To these direct costs of renewables must be added indirect costs, as the need for additional investment in networks to integrate renewables (about 10% of planned investment in the planning) and capacity payments to the modular backup facilities (coal and gas) that are running a smaller number of hours
Situation of renewable energy: renewable energy has had a positive impact …
Thanks to the increase of renewable energies in the mix:
The rate of energy supply has increased by 3 points since 2005, to 23%, and the import of energy products has been reduced 5.500M Euro (including hydraulics).
Emissions have been reduced significantly, thanks primarily to the mix of electric generation being much cleaner (less than 120 tons of CO2 emissions per GWh of oil produced).
Situation of renewable energy: but its evolution in recent years has been too fast
From 2004-2010 the amount of premiums has increased fivefold. Only in 2009 it doubled over the previous year to reach 5.045M€, equivalent in amount to the entire public investment in R + D + i in Spain. . The forecast for 2010 is 6.300M€ (although 5.800M€ budgeted in January). This should add 1.000M€ for cogeneration.
With operational facilities, the renewable sector will receive in the next 25 years more than 126.000M€. In this factor, it adds a commitment to continue providing input to the renewable energies in the mix to meet the European objectives, which will increase this figure significantly.
8 ) Situation of renewable energy: Heterogeneity of renewables: costs
In 2009, the solar photovoltaic technology accounted for 53% of the extra cost of renewables, while they contributed only 11% of energy generated from these sources.
Situation of renewable energy: Heterogeneity of renewables: Impact on the external sector
Exports: Net exports of Spanish wind industry 1.300M€ contributed to the trade balance in 2008 and, besides, wind generation avoids fossil imports of 3.6M€.
Imports: By contrast, the PV industry growth was not gradual, hampering the formation of an auxiliary Spanish industry. In 2008 imports of photovoltaic cells and modules in Spain amounted to 5.182M€ (28.6% of net imports of crude and derivatives) as long around the 62% were imported.
Situation of renewable energy: Heterogeneity of renewables: Technical problems
Network Management. The proliferation of small plants and fluctuations in the availability of technologies hinder the management of the network.
Situation of renewable energy:
Regulatory mechanisms to support renewables have been:
– Pioneers in the world, which has allowed us to stay ahead of the industry, learn from the experience and finding some excesses.
There are numerous examples of these high returns: analyst reports, premiums accepted in other countries, over-subscription in the pre-records, facilities willing to accept lower premiums, “paper market” …
– Overly cautious about the ability of cost reduction technologies
– Inflexible, thereby preventing adjust remuneration to market signals and technological advancement
– Hardly told them by the administration in setting prices initially and have no control over the amounts … Which has caused a “bubble effect,” such as seen with photovoltaics in 2008 and the emergence of the thermal bubble (which would have continued in 2010 and successively had it not been for the pre-registration requirement imposed), as well as a sharp increase the over-costs paid to renewables in the form of a feed-in tariff.
Situation of renewable energy: Heterogeneity of renewables: International comparison
In wind power, our rates are in line with Europe. However, solar photovoltaics, Spanish retribution has been the most high, despite the higher number of hours of sun and more solar radiation.
Spain Wind € 75-84/MWh Solar €265/295/350/450/MWh
China Wind € 56-67 Solar € 121/MWh
Japan Wind € 73-89/MWh
Germany Wind € 92/MWh Solar € 287-395/MWh
France Wind € 82/MWh Solar €310-380
Italy Wind € 85/MWh Solar € 350-390
Poland Wind € 90/MWh
Situation of renewable energy: Recent technological developments
The investment costs of renewable energies mainly depend on its technological learning curve
The plots have experienced tremendous technological development in recent years, reducing their investment costs
Not being mature technologies, have much future room for improvement, which informs a decision to slow its current expansion
Situation of renewable energy: What have we done?
The Government has adapted the following initiatives:
– A new framework for PV in 2008 (RD1578/2008) that brings order to the pace of installation and marking signs ecstatic that transfer with May fast technological development gains to consumers
– Creation of a technology pre-registration for the remainder of May 2009 has allowed us to avoid the “bubble” that was generated in thermal and prevent the system being made even more untenable in 2010.
– Package of measures for the reduction to the tariff deficit with input from the traditional electric companies, consumers and government (without the contribution of renewable energy).
Situation of renewable energy: Difficulties in reducing the tariff deficit
– The Government is committed by law to eliminate by 2013 the tariff deficit
– Despite the evolution of the wholesale market (pool), the balance of certain items (the Iberian peninsula, nuclear waste) and higher light, the rate deficit was only slightly reduced.
Objectives
– Reaching 20% of final energy and 40% of electric generation from renewable sources by 2020.
– Reducing the deficit and preserve the competitiveness of industry and household welfare.
– Transfer gains in technological developments to consumers.
– Avoid speculation caused by excess profits, which damages its image and retards the construction of the plants pre-assigned (with an adverse effect on the industry).
– Mitigate the incentive for fraud that can generate the current differential between the rate and the price of the pool.
– Promote technological improvement and cost reduction, advancing the attainment of “grid parity,” which will allow greater installation of renewables until 2020
Anything “Green Energy” is a total joke. It will never be successful here or anywhere. Solar farms and wind farms sound nice until reality sets in: The reality that the thousands of acres set aside for said solar/wind farm, etc will destroy the habitat of some exotic cricket or moth that no-one has ever heard of = get your ass sued off by The Sierra Club where the case will be stuck in the courts for decades.
If green energy has any kind of future, it’s 50 years away from being viable. Unless of course B.O. bulldozes through the status quo of special interest enviro whack jobs with some aggressive eminent domain action and relaxation of permits and environmental impact studies.
Paradoxically, envrio whack jobs are Obama’s base and that kind of sucks for any aggressive green energy agenda.
Therefore, Green Energy is bullshit…although I do admire the folks who through their wits, ingenuity and resources are successful in “living off of the grid.”
Do you ever have an original thought? Everything you write follows the Republican Style Points to a T.
Do you ever have an original thought? Everything you write follows the Republican Style Points to a T.
I didn’t become a Republican (lesser of two evils) until the Democratic debacle of 2008.
PS: I prefer to be called a Federalist.
Do you ever have an original thought? Everything you write follows the Republican Style Points to a T.
I take great delight in writing about the complete and utter failure of progressive/socialistic policy decisions made by economically illiterate politicians.
If the failure of the green economy in Spain is part of the Republican’s critcism of Obama, then so be it.
It does nothing to change the facts about our socialist President’s looming policy failures, which is more important than some virtual list of talking points concocted by you.
Its funny to watch those with a clue in Europe screaming at the administration not to follow their lead and yet we just plug away and the general populations gets mad about who won Dancing with the Stars.
Or course Erin Andrews could easily be the cause of global warming.
Its funny to watch those with a clue in Europe screaming at the administration not to follow their lead and yet we just plug away and the general populations gets mad about who won Dancing with the Stars.
Or course Erin Andrews could easily be the cause of global warming.
Seriously, if this is part of the Repubs talking points, then their talking points suck, because I haven’t seen shit about this here in the US.
Of course, if it comes from pajamas media(and they have primary source material to back up their piece) it must be garbage–such is the contorted liberal/progresive midset these days.
But in reality, they know the facts are correct, they know that green = fraud, but since it doesn’t fit the redistribution storyboard, they don’t want to hear about it.
But…but…I thought Social Justice was good.
**I didn’t become a Republican (lesser of two evils) until the Democratic debacle of 2008. **
What was the Democratic debacle in 2008?
**I didn’t become a Republican (lesser of two evils) until the Democratic debacle of 2008. **
What was the Democratic debacle in 2008?
Being taken over by their radical wing?
Or course Erin Andrews could easily be the cause of global warming.
I know she gets me all hot…
How fortunate for Obama that the BP oil disaster has allowed him to revive his green jobs agenda–remember it is modeled after Spain’s bankrupt system outlined above.
Never let a crises go to waste will again be in full swing.
And in between rounds of golf and White House concerts by suck ass musicians, Obama has found time to craft an email asking people to help back his “clean energy” agenda.
My favorite line is the following:
“There will be transition costs and a time of adjustment.”
Really, no shit?
In my OP it is shown conclusively that Spain’s green job utopia is now a fucking unmitigated financial nightmare.
The people are having to adjust all right, they are adjusting to their fucked up situation, including 20% unemployment.
The cost will be untold amounts of wealth summarily destroyed.
Spain’s green economy has failed, that is a fact.
Obama’s green economy will fail too, that is a fact.
Read it for yourself:
Dear xxxxxxx,
The BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast is the worst environmental disaster of its kind in our nation’s history. I am returning to the region today to review our efforts and meet with families and business owners affected by the catastrophe.
We are working to hold BP accountable for the damage to the lands and the livelihoods of the Gulf Coast, and we are taking strong precautions to make certain a spill like this never happens again.
But our work will not end with this crisis. That’s one of the reasons why last week I invited lawmakers from both parties to join me at the White House to discuss what it will take to move forward on legislation to promote a new economy powered by green jobs, combat climate change, and end our dependence on foreign oil.
Today, we consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than two percent of the world’s oil reserves. Beyond the risks inherent in drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month — including many in dangerous and unstable regions.
In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk. We cannot delay any longer, and that is why I am asking for your help.
Please stand with me today in backing clean energy. Adding your name will help Organizing for America create a powerful, public display of support for making this change happen.
The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a new future. That means continuing our unprecedented effort to make everything — from our homes and businesses to our cars and trucks — more energy-efficient. It means rolling back billions of dollars of tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development.
Many businesses support this agenda because shifting to clean energy creates opportunities for entrepreneurship. This is how we will reinvent our economy — and create new companies and new jobs all across the country.
There will be transition costs and a time of adjustment. But if we refuse to heed the warnings from the disaster in the Gulf — we will have missed our best chance to seize the clean-energy future we know America needs to thrive in the years and decades to come.
The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill, and there is currently a plan in the Senate — a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans — that would achieve the same goal. But this is an issue that Washington has long ignored in favor of protecting the status quo.
So I’m asking for your help today to show that the American people are ready for a clean-energy future.
Please add your name to mine:
http://my.barackobama.com/CleanEnergy
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Obama will destroy
Jobs
I would like to keep this thread front in center since it is such a great example of the spectacular failure of progressive energy policy.
I have provided evidence that Spain’s green economy is a failure.
But of course this is probably just an isolated economic disaster, right?
Wrong!
The green jobs fraud is just that, a full on fucking fraud.
There is no such thing as a green job, these are taxpayer subsidized jobs that detract from overall net job creation.
Please turn your attention to the Danish wind industry.
Here is the study link: http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf
“Denmark’s subsidies for wind power ended up having no net impact on job creation, but instead just shifted workers from unsubsidized to subsidized jobs, and at the cost of two average annual salaries per job.”
“The Danish Wind industry counts 28,400 employees. This does not, however, constitute the net employment effect of the wind mill subsidy. In the long run, creating additional employment in one sector through subsidies will detract labor from other sectors, resulting in no increase in net employment but only in a shift from the non-subsidized sectors to the subsidized sector. Allowing for the theoretical possibility of wind employment alleviating possible regional pockets of high unemployment, a very optimistic ballpark estimate of net real job creation is 10% of total employment in the sector. In this case the subsidy per job created is 600,000-900,000 DKK per year ($90,000-140,000). This subsidy constitutes around 175-250% of the average pay per worker in the Danish manufacturing industry.”
So, let’s recap:
Spaniards lost 2.2 jobs for every 1 green job created since 2000.
A subsidized wind industry job in Denmark costs $140k per year.
Obama wants to model his energy policy after countries like the above.
His energy policy will be a fucking disaster, mark my words.
Solar and wind are really cool technologies, but they are not economically viable.
Sometime I’ll post some pics of my small PV system and show you all how fucking cool it is, I’ll also show you how much it cost and how fucking impractical it is even for the tiny project I’m using it for.
The bottom line is the only people benefiting from the push for green jobs are communists like Van Jones that exploit the sheeple who think this shit is going to change their lives.
I really like this thread so I thought I would update it with some new information on Spain’s unfolding green energy clusterfuck shitpot.
This article from today paints a picture only a socialist could love.
Maybe they should just call it “red energy.”
Amazing, the laws of economics hold, even for solar power energy funded via government subsidy.
Fucking amazing!
Vilimelis, 35, a procurement manager for a consumer goods company, pooled his family savings and mortgaged his apartment to obtain a loan of more than 400,000 euros ($558,500) to cover the investment. Within nine months, the family’s 80-kilowatt generation unit – 500 solar panels on seven racks angled toward the sun – was feeding power into the national grid.
Solar investors such as Vilimelis were lured by a 2007 law passed by the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero that guaranteed producers a so-called solar tariff of as much as 44 cents per kilowatt-hour for their electricity for 25 years – more than 10 times the 2007 average wholesale price of about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour paid to mainstream energy suppliers.
Thanks to the incentives, the family met the monthly cost of the loan and even earned a small profit. Once the debt was paid off in 2018, Vilimelis looked forward to making even more money during the 15 additional years of subsidies guaranteed under Spanish law.
‘You Feel Cheated’
Now Vilimelis and more than 50,000 other Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster as the policy makers contemplate cutting the price guarantees that attracted their investment in the first place.
“You feel cheated,” he says. “We put our money in on the basis of a law.”
The **green **jobs fraud is just that, a full on fucking fraud.
There is no such thing as a **green **job, these are taxpayer subsidized jobs that detract from overall net job creation.
Funny… You can substitute the word SPACE for the word GREEN and you’d think we were talking about the US space program when it was in its infancy during the 1950’s.
My grandfather (who worked for NASA during the Apollo missions) used to say that the American public was avidly against funding US space exploration. That all changed when the Russians launched Sputnik and the US population became fearful.
We dropped endless money (the numbers are astounding) into the initial space programs. We had rockets blow up on live television, we had the entire crew of the Apollo 1 mission die in a fire while prepping for launch.
These failures and sacrifices were all part of a greater cause. Was the American public skeptical? Sure, I would be too. And the same can be said about the government’s funding of “green” research in today’s world. But unless you sacrifice in the present, what chance do we have of finding a clean/efficient energy substitute for oil and coal in the future? We’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to waste money. But look back in history and you can see a few examples where this same argument was made about programs that were thought to have been “science fiction” and turned out to be benchmarks in WORLD history.
My .02
I think we need to keep sending $700B/year to unstable foreign countries (and Canada). As we approach peak oil and skyrocketing energy costs it’s not at all wise to expend capital on energy independence. We need to wait for the crisis to happen before we bother developing alternative infrastructure. The oil and coal industries know what’s best for us, and we shouldn’t consider alternatives. They have absolutely no conflicts of interest with planning for the long-term energy needs of the U.S.