Obviously, this only goes to show business models reliant on gubment subsidy don't last very long. To this company, I say good riddance. And, before I'm castigated for being heartless to those losing their jobs, I'll simply say this: how many real, money-making jobs were killed, or not created, because the government sucked money from the productive private sector, and injected into this failed venture?

The sooner "green" subsides are killed, the better. Drill, baby, drill.

Damn that inconvenient weather in Europe...

We think we have about milked this cash cow dry, and before we have put any of our own money in, or try and find a way to make a profit, we are quitting.

If this global warming continues, I'd say it's time to put your money in snowblower and shovel stocks. No government subsidy required.

I hope it's cold as death in Ontario for the next few winters to kill these off:
http://news.ontario.ca/mei/en/2010/10/ontario-welcomes-the-worlds-largest-solar-pv-farm.html

Don't worry. I'm sure Gore and Suzuki will bail them out. After all they believe in this shit. Don't they?

Solar farms in SW Ontario would be employing a lot of people right now, if they had been built yet. Removing the three feet of snow from the panels is very labour intensive.

Hahahahahahah!

Minuteman @4:35:

You're not thinking crookedly enough to be a true Warmista. What you do is simply reverse the current to the solar panels, heat them up, and melt the snow off. Then you announce to the lapdog press: "Even in the depths of a snowy Winter, our solar farm handled X megaWatt-hours of power this past month."

I guess the poor guys who run that company weren't in the know with regard to the latest in climate research.

We are not being told that extremely cold European winters are caused by global warming. If only these guys had been reading RealClimate.

Oh wait, the climate scientists are only telling us now that this is so. I guess it slipped their minds when there were a couple of warm winters.

grrrrr...not = now

hate when that happens.

It gets sweeter by the day. I don't mind telling the warming maniacs "I told you so!"
Now start to think of all the rest of the BS you've been drilled in. How many more lies where you corrupted with, the mind toyed with?
JMO

More grist for the mill; an exceedingly pertinent aphorism, no?

...-

"Solar Grinch: Spain Does the Unthinkable [Cut Subsidies]

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -In another sign of the desperation European finance ministers are dealing with headed into 2011, Spain has taken a step that many solar industry watchers thought was unthinkable: retroactively lowering feed-in tariff rates."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2646856/posts

Merry Christmas Rajendra Pachauri.
Everyone in Europe is hoping for coal in their stockings this year. Can't burn a Carbon Credit.
BWAAAAHAAAA!

There is nothing like freezing in the dark to shake people out of their stupidity.

Here in Lambton County Bantario, we host the world's largest solar farm. During construction it provided many jobs. A month or two ago it was completed and opened with much fanfare. The next day approximately 90% of the workforce was permanently laid-off. My electrican neighbour included. He claims the operation can run with as few a six employees. This is just one of McGuinty's "Green job creation" initiatives.

Out of curiosity just how much coal can I buy for a carbon credit? That carbon credit and some good dry kindling wood might be enough to start a fire but it won't heat the house.

A little off topic but I came across some great ice photos. Some go back years but all would wreck havoc on solar or puff technology. Nature is awesome.

http://tinyurl.com/2g37swv

Of all the get rich schemes around, the solar cell is the number one.

There are so many things that are patently wrong with the solar power generation.

What you do when it's cloudy? What do you do at night? How do you store generated power?
Remember, you can't put the electricity into the grid, the way it's done is you store the generated power in the batteries or some such and then you use it for what ever.
You have to have a constant output, not willy-nilly as the wind blows (a figure of speech).

Tonto, "All my life I've had cold hands and that's even gone now."

Ugh, Lizard May.

...-

"Brit boss gets freezing staff hypnotised into thinking they're warm

A boss in Britain, who refuses to buy heaters to keep his freezing workers warm, has instead had them hypnotised into thinking that they are warm.

Martin Connellan bought coats for the lads in his cobblers workshop where temperatures have plunged to -13 degree C, but with doors left constantly open to clear solvent fumes, the workers were still left shivering in the snow.

But after a five-minute session with hypnotist James Kerwin, the men were seen stripping down to shorts and T-shirts, and saying they were too hot.

"I definitely feel much hotter than I was. All my life I've had cold hands and that's even gone now. It's crazy how you can go from one extreme to the other like that," the Sun quoted worker Adam Hood, 27, as saying.

Connellan, a self-confessed Scrooge, who runs the workshop in Bromsgrove, Worcs, said hypnotising them was the last resort.

"It's all about mind over matter. It's a case of reprogramming people like you would a computer," hypnotist Kerwin of Studley, Warwicks, said.

"You can retrain people into thinking differently about how they feel. It seems to have done the trick," he explained. (ANI)"

http://www.sify.com/news/brit-boss-gets-freezing-staff-hypnotised-into-thinking-they-re-warm-news-international-kmxr4miaiag.html

Joe, not very much. When the Chicago carbon exchange died, credits were worth 5 cents/short ton. Today, steam coal will cost you a minimum of $9 a ton, with prices ranging up to $55 depending on grade. That means a credit gets you about 11 pounds of coal at best or as little as 2 pounds if you want say anthracite.

Wow that's some Scrooge there Maz, now if we could only hypnotize our polititians into refusing to sink any more borrowed money into this SCAM. Here in Alberta we have more windmills than gophers, just wait till the final bill comes in for these bird debeakers. With the carbon sequestration 2 billion dollar windfall, just think of the scam artists and mafia dudes that are now and will soon be transferring that money out of Alberta to some "parking lots", like Europe. Gore and Suzuki and their ilk should be held responsible for this collosal waste of resources, their conduct has helped to stifle industry, never thought I would thank the CIBC for anything, but thanks CIBC, for giving Joe Clark lite, Jim Prentice a job that got his pansy ass out of govt and away from any more assinine decisions that cost any more good people jobs like the mine in BC and soon the oilsands. Good riddance jackass Jim.

Here in Lambton County Bantario, we host the world's largest solar farm. During construction it provided many jobs. A month or two ago it was completed and opened with much fanfare. The next day approximately 90% of the workforce was permanently laid-off. My electrican neighbour included. He claims the operation can run with as few a six employees. This is just one of McGuinty's "Green job creation" initiatives.

A goodly number of politicians, their relatives, and friends would wind up in jail for fraud if a serious investigation ever took place into tax funded actions that were taken under the catchall of "fighting global warming".

One thing is sure. The AGW, Climate Change, Climate Disruption crowd will not give up easily their dreams of parting you from your money, your government from its sovereignty and their hopes of a world government under the U.N.

Is it time to go back to whale oil?

Check Thursday's cartoon in the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/cartoon/editorial-cartoons-december-2010/article1819732/

It's no. 2 you want, but no. 1 of 21 shows up when the page loads. Click the right-pointing triangle in the circle, in the upper right hand corner, to get to no. 2.

If honesty should trump deceit; have you ever thought that "An Inconvenient Truth" was a title better suited for our side of the fence? I have.
The inconvenient fact being that their scam has been thoroughly exposed and mother nature is now also confirming it.

Look at that big fireball in the sky, shes the boss.

'Nuff said.

AGW Progress Report: 1,2,3 >>> 1.

...-

"Area company riding the winds of change

IROQUOIS -- A strong gust of financial wind from the Caribbean has placed an Iroquois- based turbine company in position to embark on an expansion of its operations.

ReDriven Power Inc. of Iroquois has received $5 million from an investor who holds a private equity fund in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The funding will help the three-year-old wind turbine company on a couple of fronts, interim CEO Bruce Fischer told The Recorder and Times Wednesday.

"The biggest thing is a ramp-up of production in manufacturing, and delivery of our backlog," he said. "We've got a big backlog of sales we've got to ramp up and get rid of."

The company, which has a plant in China and dealers in seven countries on three continents, currently has a backlog of almost 100 wind turbine systems, he said.

Fischer said the investment will also allow the company to expand its sales, engineering and production staff. Locally, he said, he expects approximately eight new jobs to be created at the Iroquois operation over the "next couple of months."

The Iroquois location currently houses the company's electronics manufacturing.

ReDriven manufactures small wind turbines in the 5 to 50-kilowatt range. It is currently positioned as the sixth-largest manufacturer of small wind turbines in the world, according to company statistics. Fischer said the new financing and some other pending projects may help the company climb even higher.

"We will be a world leader in the next couple years," he said. "If not Number One, Two or Three, then Number One because of the product we build. There's a patent on this product that makes it very unique in the world."

http://www.recorder.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2902333

AGW Progress Report.

...-

"Area company riding the winds of change"

http://www.recorder.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2902333

Be charitable,to the warmies, folks. It's Christmas. I mean who could have foreseen that solar collectors would not work so well when buried in snow?

Carbon? C*?

Where's CO2?

'Nother/more/hype AGWPR.

...-

"Carbon Fiber Cars

BMW's Electric Automobile Revolution

Carbon Fiber Cars: BMW's Electric Automobile Revolution

BMW is hoping to revolutionize the electric car industry. Whereas most manufacturers rely on traditional -- and heavy-- steel car bodies, the German company hopes that carbon fiber components could lead electric cars into the future."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,736296,00.html

*C Periodic Table.

We have several local farmers who have installed solar receptors under Ontario's MicroFIT program.

When they started inquiring as to when they would get paid, Hydro One's response was "Uh, we'll get back to you."

What a deal!

They were offered subsidies that never arrived and couldn't compete with lower cost panels from China.

I tried finding some satellite photos showing South Western Ont in order to show just how many solar panels have popped up last year(no luck though). You would have to see it to believe it. I think there are going to be some disappointed farmers after the next election in Ontario when the next government gets a good look at the books and finds out just how broke we are here.

Lev:

To be fair to solar power, it can be effective in some situations. When I worked for Mitel, a telecom switch maker, their low power technology enabled them to develop the "SkySwitch", a small telephone system that used satellite links to provide phone service in remote locations. These were powered by the (very inefficient) solar cells of the 1980's, resulting in telecom capability in small villages cut off from traditional links. The development of low cost satellite phones eliminated its market, but it was a nice confluence of technologies at the time.

Now, according to which source you believe, air conditioning accounts for 11% to 18% of US electricity use. When is A/C needed most? On hot, sunny days - exactly when solar cells are most efficient, and when the rest of the grid is strained. (I swear, when it hits 95+ in Toronto, I can hear the wires hum as I walk down the street.) I don't have enough figures handy to determine what the payback is on a system, but I'd be willing to bet that for low commercial buildings with large flat roofs, paying US commercial rates of $0.16-0.20 kW/h, it wouldn't be outlandish - especially if you factored in a constant rate increase, as McSquinty has promised for Ontario. (And I'm not apologizing for the IKEA deal - that was economic only because Ontario's paying IKEA 4-5 times the regular rate for generated power.)

But, yes, I agree that in general, wind/solar/wave power can never be more than supplemental supplies to nuclear, hydro, or carbon stations. I'm somewhat surprised that the only alternative source that comes close to the same availability rates as the big 3, geothermal, isn't receiving more attention. Average utilization rates (power generated/generation capacity) for this technology are about 70+%, whereas for wind, I understand that the UK's turbines aren't even producing 4%, and solar's rate is even worse.

This follows on the heels of the closing of a Solyndra plant in California.

Kevin, if solar is cost-effective for a particular business, then they would and should adopt it without a subsidy. There's no sense paying people to buy what they would have bought anyway.

But part of what makes solar cost-effective are the subsidies it gets on the supply side. So the cost-benefit analysis is being rigged on both sides.

Now, all our subsidized solar plants which were supposed to "create or save" hundreds of thousands of jobs are losing market share to the Chinese.

Schadenfreude!

The last time I flew in a regional jet, "low and slow", I noticed something about the landscape: a lot of green.

For a country that is supposedly paving over every inch of flora and fauna, we sure have a lot of wide open space.

Looking down at the sparse urban centers from 20,000 feet, I could barely see the rooftops. I imagined that if every single one of them were painted white, they wouldn't be any more noticeable to me at altitude. They would scarcely reflect any more of the suns rays back out of the atmosphere. On sloped roofs, the light would be reflected around inside the atmosphere.

The moon has an extremely low albedo. It's surface has about the same reflective capacity as a lump of coal. The opposition effect, however, makes it the second brightest object in the sky. So dark objects reflect light too.

My point is that painting every rooftop on the planet white would scarcely change the albedo of the Earth relative to its own atmosphere.

Look at a photo of the Earth at night. The lit urban portions are a small percentage of the Earth's surface, and the nighttime lights emit thousands of times more light than the additional light that would be reflected from white roofs. In fact, the brightness of the urban areas in the photo come mainly from reflected light (glare) rather than the lights themselves.

The increased reflection of white roofs wouldn't be worth the cost or the environmental damage of producing the paint. White paint is generally made with titanium dioxide or, less commonly today, lead.

Solar panels over the same surface area wouldn't generate much electricity. If it were cost-effective, I'd buy panels though if the payoff period were short and the depreciation rate slow.

We are shutting down because no-one is buying our sh*t.

So, let's get this story straight. A company i n Iroquois, a village outside of nowhere Cornwall, Ontario, will get loads 0f dough from a Caribean compnau, gratis its Chinese manufacturer.

Does anyonelse see a possible disconnect here? Possibly a money funnel fromn here to there?