Sun News Editorial:

As Tory MPP Rod Jackson, the party’s Pam Am critic, told the Sun: “If they didn’t know this stuff was going on in 2012, they should have and if they did, they failed to act on it.”
The larger concern, as Jackson noted, is that if the government wasn’t paying attention to expense claim problems at the Pan Am committee, then what about its oversight of the “big stuff” — its overall management of the $1.4 billion publicly-funded games?

Ontario’s Ministry of Energy creates Canada’s biggest Ponzi scheme.

Although union donations to federal political parties are prohibited, Martin has been scrupulous in ensuring the union gifts are legally on the up and up.

The List of Deceased Solar Companies.
h/t Maz2

Heads will roll: Vancouver Sun accidentally republishes piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

Indianapolis Business Journal;

Charges included allegations of conspiracy, wire fraud, false tax claims, false statements under the Clean Air Act, obstruction of justice, money laundering and securities fraud.
Prosecutors allege that E-biofuels actually wasn’t producing biofuel. Instead, it was purchasing fuel and selling it to customers as its own product for a profit.
E-biofuels also fraudulently collected on about $35 million in federal tax breaks reserved for biofuel producers, according to charging documents.
Brothers Chad and Craig Ducey launched E-biofuels in 2007. The plant was supposed to produce 10 million gallons of biodiesel per year. Lawsuits against the company indicate that it did not reach that mark.

It’s a cautionary tale for the alternative energy folks – limit your activities to the government approved fraud schemes.

So let ’em burn… Rooftop solar panels pose dangers, Ontario firefighters say.
(h/t Dan)

Crazy:

A Green Car Named Desire
Electric car subsidies for the rich are now a drain on California’s budget.

Study says wind farms have killed ‘alarming’ number of eagles in past 5 years.

The research affirms an AP investigation in May, which revealed dozens of eagle deaths from wind energy facilities and described how the Obama administration was failing to fine or prosecute wind energy companies, even though each death is a violation of federal law.
Documents obtained by the AP under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act show that in two cases in Iowa federal investigators determined that a bald eagle had been killed by blunt force trauma with a wind turbine blade. But neither case led to prosecution.

h/t Kevin B

All is unfolding as predicted;

[European industry commissioner Antonio Tajani] warned that Europe’s quixotic dash for renewables was pushing electricity costs to untenable levels, leaving Europe struggling to compete as America’s shale revolution cuts US natural gas prices by 80pc.
“I am in favour of a green agenda, but we can’t be religious about this. We need a new energy policy. We have to stop pretending, because we can’t sacrifice Europe’s industry for climate goals that are not realistic, and are not being enforced worldwide,” he told The Daily Telegraph during the Ambrosetti forum of global policy-makers at Lake Como.
“The loss of competitiveness is frightening,” said Paulo Savona, head of Italy’s Fondo Interbancario. “When people choose whether to invest in Europe or the US, what they think about most is the cost of energy.”

By me, and damned few others, that is.

The government they deserve;

The price of power for many Ontario households and businesses has spurted higher as the “global adjustment’ – an extra fee tacked onto the market price – has jumped to a record high.
The market price for electricity in Ontario Tuesday was about 2.5 cents a kilowatt hour. But the global adjustment for September will add another 8.72 cents to the market price for customers who aren’t covered by the province’s regulated price plan.
[…]
It’s a fee added to the market price because most electricity in Ontario doesn’t trade on the open market; some generators have separate contracts with the Ontario Power Authority, others are covered by special rates for renewable power.
Privately owned Bruce Power sells its output under contract to the power authority, for example. Privately owned gas-fired generating stations also have separate contracts, while most wind and solar producers are covered by special feed-in tariff rates that are considerably higher than the average market price.
To cover the cost of those higher-than-market rates, as well as conservation programs, consumers are charged the extra fee, or “global adjustment.”

h/t Rob

Washington Times;

The Energy Department conceded Friday that the federal government will lose $42 million on a loan to a shuttered Michigan van manufacturer — part of the same program that provided a $529 million loan to an electric car maker that also has gone under.
Vehicle Production Group (VPG), which made vans for the disabled, ceased operations in February and laid off 100 workers, two years after receiving a $50 million federal loan under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc., according to the Associated Press.

h/t Matthew

Pulling der plug;

The German daily “Die Welt” reported in its Tuesday edition Siemens was giving up on its production of public charging points for e-cars. […]
Despite a government plan to see one million registered electric cars on German roads by 2020, consumers haven’t particularly been mad about such vehicles. Last year for instance, only 4,157 e-cars were newly registered in Germany, bringing the total to 7,112.

h/t Maz2

Bloomberg:

“The debt repayment problems at Chinese solar companies are shocking investors who can now only wait to see how the government will handle them,” said Wu Yun, a Shanghai-based analyst at Evergrowing Bank Co. “Credit defaults may be concentrated in the second half of 2014.”

h/t Maz2

“Ontario’s hundreds of wind turbines are producing just 32 MW of energy right now. Out of 1,500+ capacity. That’s 2%.”

Mothballed: RWE Npower-owned Tilbury, claimed to be biggest biomass plant in the world…

New Republic;

The Bank of America Tower, a billion-dollar, 55-story crystal skyscraper on the northwest corner of Manhattan’s Bryant Park […] would be “the most sustainable in the country,” according to its developer Douglas Durst. At the Tower’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, Gore powwowed with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and praised the building as a model for fighting climate change. “I applaud the leadership of the mayor and all of those who helped make this possible,” he said.
Gore’s applause, however, was premature. According to data released by New York City last fall, the Bank of America Tower produces more greenhouse gases and uses more energy per square foot than any comparably sized office building in Manhattan. It uses more than twice as much energy per square foot as the 80-year-old Empire State Building. It also performs worse than the Goldman Sachs headquarters, maybe the most similar building in New York–and one with a lower LEED rating. It’s not just an embarrassment; it symbolizes a flaw at the heart of the effort to combat climate change.

h/t Sid Vicious

Townhall Finance;

In the financial world there is a saying: Buy things when no-one else wants them. The person who coined that advice clearly never saw a Chevy Volt sitting on a car dealer’s lot. As GM struggles to prove that Obama’s “saving of Detroit” was not a thinly veiled handout to union workers, and that the “green movement” is backed by economical alternatives to cheap fossil fuels, it has decided to cut its Volt prices yet again.

BWWAAAHAAAA!

General Electric Co. is permanently scrapping plans to build the largest solar factory in the U.S. near Denver. […]
The factory was to have been bigger than 11 football fields and have an annual capacity of 400 megawatts. State officials said it would create 350 jobs.

Not even cronyism can save it now. (h/t peterj)

CNN;

General Motors announced Tuesday that it will knock $5,000 off the sticker price of a new Chevy Volt, making it the latest electric car to be steeply discounted as automakers battle for buyers.
Customers will be able to get the discount on 2014 Volts, reducing the car’s starting price from $40,000 to $35,000. Government tax rebates can bring the price down as low as $27,495, GM says.
Pricing and incentives on electric cars have been getting more aggressive recently as automakers try to improve sales.
GM (GM, Fortune 500) has already offered steep rebates on the 2012 and 2013 editions of the Volt. In similar fashion, Nissan and Honda have offered aggressive discounts on their Leaf and Fit EV electric cars.

Via