Even with massive gov't subsidies, the huge renewable energy project in Spain, Abengoa, is still going bankrupt on a mountain of over 29 billion dollars of debt they can't pay:
--
- Giant ‘Green Energy’ Boondoggle Flops in Spain (Tenebrarum)
[..] since Spain’s government and banking system are de facto insolvent and their temporary rescue has been tied to conditions, Spain can no longer subsidize many of the pet projects of social engineers and the vast hordes of cronies they have hitherto kept in bread by enlisting the involuntary help of taxpayers. In a way, it is a case of socialism running out of people to loot. Solar energy has surely come a long way in recent years, as technological progress has undoubtedly improved its economics. Evidently though, the improvement isn’t sufficient yet to make it actually viable. One would think that it makes sense to deploy it in places that are sunny most of the time (such as, well, Spain), but even there, it evidently depends on subsidies.
People often forget that it actually costs energy to produce solar panels. Whether they will in turn produce enough energy during their lifetime to make this investment viable remains questionable. It remains questionable precisely because so many companies in the sector depend both directly and indirectly on a vast variety of government subsidies (including the introduction of inane trade barriers to the detriment of consumers). With the subsidization scam in Spain reaching its limit, it turns out that not even sunny climes can keep solar boondoggles afloat. In the current case, a cool $29 billion (€27.3 bn.) in liabilities have just been exposed to intense vaporization danger, as “green energy” company Abengoa has finally filed for bankruptcy. It is the by far biggest bankruptcy in Spain’s history. 24,000 employees will have to look for a new job.
The sovereign wealth fund of oil junkie Norway holds 2.7% of the company’s shares, an investment it will now have to write off. More than 200 banks are creditors of Abengoa, with total exposure of €20.2 billion. Abengoa’s business activities are described as “renewable electricity generation, converting biomass into biofuel and desalination of seawater” – practically a what’s what list of businesses that cannot possibly survive without subsidies. Abengoa incidentally provides an excellent illustration of Austrian Business Cycle Theory, as more than 20 giant ongoing construction projects the company has initiated will remain incomplete. These empty shells are testament to the fact that there is a big difference between money and real capital. Banks and investors had no problem providing the company with money (much of it created from thin air), lending it huge sums. But the economy’s pool of real funding has proved unable to support the company’s investments.
[..] US taxpayers are on the hook as well in this “Spanish Solyndra”. According to the US media: “When the Free Beacon interviewed a pair of former Abengoa managers last year, one predicted that the company would go under. “This company eventually will go bankrupt. The question is at what expense to the United States people and government,” said Mike Alhalabi, formerly the senior lead mechanical engineer at Abener, a subsidiary of Abengoa. The cost to U.S. taxpayers could be enormous. Abengoa has received nearly $3 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy, as well as more than $100 million in federal grants.
Read more …
====
but our world commie global warming hoax leaders are still about to legislate that world economies go down the same path as the massive boondoggle in Spain:
--
- COP-21 Climate Deal In Paris Spells End Of The Fossil Era (AEP)
A far-reaching deal on climate change in Paris over coming days promises to unleash
a $30 trillion blitz of investment on new technology and renewable energy by 2040, creating vast riches for those in the vanguard and potentially lifting the global economy out of its slow-growth trap. Economists at Barclays estimate that greenhouse gas pledges made by the US, the EU, China, India, and others for the COP-21 climate summit amount to an epic change in the allocation of capital and resources, with financial winners and losers to match. They said
the fossil fuel industry of coal, gas, andoil could forfeit $34 trillion in revenues over the next quarter century – a quarter of their income –
if the Paris accord is followed by a series of tougher reviews every five years to force down the trajectory of CO2 emissions, as proposed by the United Nations and French officials hosting the talks.
By then
crude consumption would fall to 72m barrels a day – half OPEC projections
– and demand would be in precipitous decline. Most fossil companies would face run-off unless they could reinvent themselves as
21st Century post-carbon leaders, as Shell, Total, and Statoil are already doing.
The agreed UN goal is to cap the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels by 2100, deemed the safe limit if we are to pass on a world that is more or less recognisable. Climate negotiators say there will have to be drastic “decarbonisation” to bring this in sight, with negative net emissions by 2070 or soon after. This means that CO2 will have to be plucked from the air and buried, or absorbed by reforestation.
Such a scenario would imply the near extinction of the coal industry unless there is a big push for carbon capture and storage. It also implies a near total switch to electric cars, rendering the internal combustion engine obsolete. The Bank of England and the G20’s Financial Stability Board aim to bring about a “soft landing” that protects investors and gives the fossil industry time to adapt by forcing it to confront the issue head on. Barclays said ,
$21.5 trillion of investment in energy efficiency will be needed by 2040
under the current pledges, which cover 155 countries and 94pc of the global economy. It expects
a further $8.5 trillion of spending on solar, wind, hydro, energy storage, and nuclear power.
Those best-placed to profit in Europe are: Denmark’s wind group Vestas; Schneider and ABB for motors and transmission; Legrand for low voltage equipment; Alstom and Siemens for rail efficiency; Philips, and Osram for LEDs and lighting.
But this is a minimalist scenario. While the Paris commitments suggest a watershed moment, they do not go far enough to meet the targets set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). The planet has already used up two-thirds of the allowable “carbon budget” of 2,900 gigatonnes (GT), and will have used up three quarters of the remaining 1,000 GT by 2030. Barclays advised clients to prepare for a more radical outcome, entailing almost
$45 trillion of spending on different forms of decarbonisation
. “The fact that COP-21 in itself is clearly not going to put the world on a 2 degree track does not mean that fossil-fuel companies can simply carry on with business-as-usual. We think they should be stress-testing their business models against a significant tightening of global climate policy over the next two decades,” it said.
[..] Mr Jacobs said a deal in Paris is highly likely. “You can never rule out a break-down. These meetings always go to the wire. But we have gone past the turning point in the US and China, and both countries have come to the realisation that it is possible to decarbonise without hurting economic growth,” he said. It will not be a legally-binding treaty, but it is expected to have the same effect as each country transposes the targets into its own law. In the US it will be enforced through the legal mechanism of the Clean Air Act, anchored on earlier accords, without need for Senate ratification. The sums of money are colossal. Macro-economists say this is just what is needed to soak up the global savings glut and rescue the world from its 1930s liquidity trap. There might even be a boom.
Read more …
=========
Of course all this is going to do is give gov't huge powers of redistribution from taxpayers into the pockets of people like Al Gore.
These people are not going to stop until they have every last one of our dollars and we are completely subserivient to them.
