Solyndra: Green energy under fire

The American people “deserve answers” on the exploding Solyndra scandal, said Washington​Examiner.com in an editorial. The California solar-panel manufacturer declared bankruptcy last month, laying off 1,100 employees and leaving taxpayers holding the bag on a $535 million federal loan guarantee. Why did the Obama administration approve that costly guarantee? The company’s biggest backer, billionaire George Kaiser, is also a major campaign fund-raiser for President Obama, and Kaiser visited the White House four times in March 2009. That same month, the government suddenly approved Solyndra’s request for help. Last week, company executives repeatedly invoked their Fifth Amendment rights before a congressional committee, said Megan McArdle in TheAtlantic.com, but here’s a question someone will eventually have to answer: Why provide taxpayer support to a company that makes $6 solar panels that sell for $2?

This scandal hasn’t merely exposed another episode of Washington “crony capitalism,” said Steven F. Hayward in WeeklyStandard.com. What it lays bare is “the whole edifice of massive subsidies that green energy requires to survive.” The green tech bubble is “already bursting,” with the sector providing fewer Silicon Valley jobs than it did 10 years ago. Yet the Obama administration has been “handing out billions in loan guarantees like Halloween candy.” The effect is to undermine free enterprise and distort America’s energy policy into a green jobs program—without creating any jobs.

What blatant hypocrisy, said Brad Plumer in The Washington Post. Republicans now say the government shouldn’t be “picking winners and losers” in the energy industry, but they’ve given the nuclear and oil industries billions in loan guarantees and tax breaks. And many Republicans “have begged the Energy Department for loans for clean-energy projects in their own districts.” It’s no crime for the government to support solar energy, said Joe Nocera in The New York Times. Solyndra failed when cheap Chinese solar panels—supported by $30 billion in government subsidies—suddenly flooded the market, collapsing the panels’ price. Should the U.S. just cede solar energy to China, even though solar already employs more Americans than steel or coal? The Solyndra loan guarantee represents just 1.3 percent of a program designed to encourage new energy projects; “it’s not a taxpayer rip-off if you don’t bat 1.000.” And it’s imperative to America’s future that we keep batting.

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