You can’t make this stuff up. GM replacing almost all Chevrolet Volt power cords

Smitherman elephant herd grows;

We have an excess of electricity. You can’t store it, so the only way to get rid of it is to spill water that could be used to generate electricity for two cents a kilowatt-hour at Niagara.
Instead, until now we paid more than 80 cents a kw/h for solar and 13.5 cents for wind. Bentley announced Thursday those prices are going down–to 54.9 cents for solar and 11.5 for wind.

Heh.

Don Surber;

“The big news yesterday was that Energy Secretary Steven Chu does not own a car. But his wife owns a 2002 BMW 325i, which gets 21 MPG, according to the Daily Caller. Why did Chu not get her to trade in the Beamer for a Chevy Volt? Also, as a Cabinet secretary, he gets a security detail that drives him around in an SUV, most likely a Cadillac Escalade. We can mince around with words over whether he owns a car or not, but he is not taking public transportation, walking or riding a bicycle to get everywhere.”

Via Instapundit

….as the bird carcasses pile up—two more dead golden eagles were recently found at the Pine Tree wind project in Southern California’s Kern County, bringing the number of eagle carcasses at that site to eight—the wind industry’s unofficial license to kill wildlife is finally getting some serious scrutiny.
Some 77 organizations—led by the American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Endangered Species Coalition and numerous chapters of the Audubon Society—are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to toughen the rules for the siting, permitting and operation of large-scale wind projects.
It’s about time. Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.
But the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines. A violation of either law can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for two years.

h/t Ed S.

Ric Morano;

‘One of Fisker primary financial backers is venture captital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, of which Gore is a partner. Fisker received a $528.7 million conditional loan from Dept. of Energy’s…That’s a LOT of money to produce only 200-300 thus far, some of which seem to be lemons. This is the same company that caught flak because after it secured US govt financing, started assembling their cars in – Finland. Fisker Automotive seems headed for the same fate as Solyndra’

More at Consumer Reports. Via Drudge.

SDA gets results!

General Motors Co. announced the temporary suspension of Chevrolet Volt production and the layoffs of 1300 employees, as the company is cutting Volt manufacturing to meet lower-than-expected demand for the electric cars.

h/t Adrian

Low-Voltage sales. Lots more here.

America gets its Volkswagen.

The memo, sent to employees of GE Healthcare Americas team explains that all sedan, crossover, and minivan purchases in 2012 will be replaced by the Chevy Volt. Only field engineers are exempt from having to drive a company Volt.
GE will offer estimates for installation Level 2 Charging Stations, though all-gas use will be allowed when there is no electric option. Any employees who opt out of the Volt program will not be compensated for their expenses. Those who do choose to drive the Volt will be reimbursed for public charging and home charging costs, in addition to gas uses.

Energy Conversion Devices files for bankruptcy as solar energy lags
In the latest setback for the solar energy industry, Auburn Hills-based Energy Conversion Devices said today that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and intends to sell its assets, including its main subsidiary United Solar Ovonic.

h/t Revnant Dream

Out of the blue last November, Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) began the (non-union labour) construction of an industrial wind turbine on the grounds of its Family Education Centre, a facility designed to “encourage…people …to discuss their problems and debate the major issues of the times.”
Despite all the places CAW could have located the mammoth structure, it picked Port Elgin, “considered — one of the leading recreational playgrounds in Ontario” for an industrial wind turbine. CAW’s vacant 128-acre property nearby was deemed too environmentally sensitive. Besides, the land had just been subdivided and its lots stood to rake in $2 million. The FEC’s densely-populated neighbourhood didn’t have such sensitivities.

Technology Review;

In its early years, biotech company Amyris described itself as a start-up “applying its proprietary breakthrough technologies to address major global health and energy challenges.”
Its originally planned to make an anti-malaria drug, as well as renewable diesel and jet fuel, by feeding sugar to genetically-engineered microorganisms. Having spun off the anti-malaria technology to another company in 2008, yesterday Amyris said it’s giving up making fuels too. Instead, it will to focus on higher value products, such as moisturizers for cosmetics.
The company learnt first hand just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of yields seen in lab tests in large-scale production. In an update call for investors, CEO John Melo said he is “humbled by the lessons we have learned.”

Via

Go ahead. Make my car. (new link)

If the U.S. president told the bank holding your mortgage to cancel your debt and hand you the house free, it wouldn’t make you more productive or efficient. It just screwed someone you owed money to. And clearer than ever is that GM could have survived the Lehman episode with a simple bridge loan. America’s biggest auto maker could have returned to the slog without dishonoring billions of dollars in obligations to bondholders and other creditors.
But the most egregious aspect of the Obama bailout is its annexation of the auto sector to the administration’s green energy schemes. It’s no exaggeration to say the auto industry is being used to fulfill a throwaway line in an Obama speech calling for one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

Fisker Automotive, an electric car maker that received a half-billion-dollar loan from the federal government, said Monday that it has laid off workers in Delaware and California.

h/t Bluetech

School officials at Spanish River High School thought they had found an environmentally-friendly, cost-saving solution for their bathrooms when they installed Falcon Waterfree urinals in their boys bathrooms…

h/t Jason

Heh.

Related – It’s Half Time, America! (Extended segment here.)
h/t Marc

SDA gets results!

David Cameron has been hit by a major protest by Conservative MPs over the Government’s backing for wind farms, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

The Guardian;

Nearly three years ago, the mayor of London told fellow international mayors in Seoul that he would ensure 100,000 electric vehicles were in London “as soon as possible”. But the London assembly’s environment committee found that since Johnson’s announcement, only 588 extra electric cars were registered in London.

Clearly the word we Canadians pronounce as “journalist” means something quite different in English;

The more experienced London journalists have developed a naturally sceptical eye which they cast over untrustworthy mayoral press releases. For example, on the subject of electric charging point infrastructure, the media did a wonderful job of correction in response to a mayoral press release of 14th February 2011 announcing that there would be 1,300 electric charging points by the end of 2013.
This was actually the same 1,300 charging points from which the mayor achieved very positive coverage for when he announced the previous February that they would be built over the subsequent next twelve months – something which clearly didn’t happen.

h/t Maz2
Meanwhile, across the pond….

OMG! Does SaskPower know about this?

Slowly, information is leaking from nations that have spent heavily on wind and solar, such as Germany. This information should give pause to those touting solar and wind, including politicians. England is pulling back from wind, Germany has announced drastic cut-backs on its subsidies to solar, and Spain has announced the elimination of subsidies for renewable power. These actions are not the result of success.

Someone must get this information to the people planting giant fans in the middle of our oil fields before it’s too late. Who has a horse?

Bloomberg;

Spain halted subsidies for renewable energy projects to help curb its budget deficit and rein in power-system borrowings backed by the state that reached 24 billion euros ($31 billion) at the end of 2011.
“What is today an energy problem could become a financial problem,” Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria said in Madrid. The government passed a decree today stopping subsidies for new wind, solar, co-generation or waste incineration plants.

h/t Bemused