by Matthew Boyle
President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan.
According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds.
Based upon the last three posts by Dan all “Green tech” seems to be failing absent a subsidy. Wonder why? Read an article in the Washington Post or LA Times on North Dakota a few days ago. Understand that they may have enough oil in ND and other States to be energy independent by 2030? Obama, when it was broached simply said that Secretary Chu claimed that cars will have the capacity to go 150 miles per gallon with alternate energy absent oil and blew the reporter off? What has this guy been smokin’???? Has Chu got a spell on him or is he simply not as astute as we all thought he was with hope and change? Yes, I “hope for change” in 2012.
I thought wind energy technology was pretty simple and straight forward. Isn’t it? So why are we the taxpayers giving this company $10 million for testing and evaluation of wind technology; and $45 million to research and test drive-train systems for wind turbines? That’s $55,000,000!!!! I know that when we talk about govt spending it doesn’t sound like that much money, but think about it. What would you do with $55,000,000? But that’s not all they got, they got $68 million to build a demonstration model of an energy-efficient office building; $19.2 million for solar, geothermal and fuel cell equipment too. That’s an astounding $142,200,000 all told. But now they have to lay off 100-150 people? Where did all that money go, and how much of it went into the Obama re-election campaign fund? That’s what I’d like to know.
Time to ask isn’t it?
OWS is asking… people all over the world are asking…. hello? wake up you two.
Sleepy time is over…
OWS is a joke period. Was in downtown LA for a week in October. OWS were protesting. Met five individuals that were there and they had no idea why. Thought it was “cool man,” One thought it was a war protest, one thought it was fun, another wanted to be like everyone else etc. Not one rational statement made about why. Those people are the future of our country? Yeah it was cool that evening temperature wise. Nothing but trust babies with nothing better to do. What a waste as some went to the same hotel where I was staying. They were not out of work other than the homeless that will always be with us unfortunately. They were eating the nice expensive food in the restaurant (as I walked to “Familia” for a cheap sandwich every evening), drinking at the hotel bar buying expensive drinks I could never afford and were at Starbucks every morning on their laptops drinking their latte’s as I asked the hotel for additional coffee packets in my room to make my own. Man, they have a tough life don’t they?
It continually amazes that no one ever talks about the hidden cost of “green energy” (wind and solar) and I’m not talking about the tremendously expensive subsidies either. The fact is that for every watt, kilowatt or megawatt produced by “green energy” you have to provide the equivalent power generated by conventional means (fossil fuels,Hydro or nuclear) on continuous “stand-by”, for when solar or wind-power cannot produce.