…when work is completed on the Nordsee Ost wind farm, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the island of Helgoland in the North Sea, the sea air will be filled with a strong smell of fumes: diesel fumes.
The reason is as simple as it is surprising. The wind farm operator, German utility RWE, has to keep the sensitive equipment — the drives, hubs and rotor blades — in constant motion, and for now that requires diesel-powered generators.

How many solar panels does it take to make a solar panel?

Idaho Power plans to cut off electricity on Tuesday to plant in Pocatello, Idaho, that makes material for solar energy, because the factory owes $1.9 million in unpaid utility bills. The dispute is with Honolulu-based Hoku Scientific, Inc., which is backed by Chinese financing and enjoys federal and state incentives…

h/t Maz2

It’s always darkest before the lights go completely out…

With at least seven solar-panel manufacturers filing for bankruptcy or insolvency in the last several months and six of the 10 largest publicly traded companies making solar components reporting losses in the third quarter, public-market investors are punishing the solar sector, sending shares down nearly 57% this year.
Although winners are expected to emerge eventually…

The things you’ll never see at the CBC;

Gevo, a prominent advanced-biofuels company that has received millions in U.S. government funding to develop fuels made from cellulosic sources such as grass and wood chips, is finding that it can’t use these materials if it hopes to survive. Instead, it’s going to use corn, a common source for conventional biofuels. What’s more, most of the product from its first facility will be used for chemicals rather than fuel.

Via

That the rise of the oceans began to slow and the re-election coffers began to fill…

Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal ­e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials.
The records, some previously unreported, show that when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra.
The documents reviewed by The Post, which began examining the clean-technology program a year ago, provide a detailed look inside the day-to-day workings of the upper levels of the Obama administration. They also give an unprecedented glimpse into high-level maneuvering by politically connected clean-technology investors.

h/t

Not just synonyms anymore! – “Six men jailed following €300million tax evasion on carbon permits”

Via Climate Depot

It’s the physics, stupid – BP quits solar power industry
Update! Sometimes they quits the industry, and sometimes the industry quits them.

Hey, Who’s Up For Another $2.1 Billion In Stimulus Money Lost on Yet Another Bankrupt Solar Company?

And it’s a German company.

Things you’ll never see at the CBC;

Since 2007, Geneva-based Oak Foundation, set up by British billionaire Alan Parker, has divided almost $2.6 million among six groups for campaigns against the “tarsands.”
While Oak did not respond to QMI Agency’s interview request, the foundation’s database of grants shows Greenpeace Canada has swallowed more than $860,000 “to create financial and political uncertainty” about the oilsands.
Tides Canada took money to stop “new infrastructure development” like pipelines, while Forest Ethics accepted cash to stop the Northern Gateway and for “creating a perception of economic risk” around the oilsands.
West Coast Environmental Law, Environmental Defence Canada, and the World Wildlife Fund Canada received Oak’s anti-oilsands money, too.

And then, there’s the British government…
Related – “Impressive! He’s found a way for a president to vote ‘present.’”

SDA gets results! Congress suspends light bulb ban. Update: More details here.

Via Tim Blair;

EU carbon prices fell to their lowest ever level on Wednesday as the euro currency and equities slid on renewed fears over the bloc’s debt crisis and oil prices tanked after producers promised to maintain high output. […]
“I still don’t see any bottom to this market,” said one carbon trader, who said any positive sentiment from this weekend’s landmark U.N. climate summit in Durban was purely psychological as it brought no increase in demand for permits.

Update: Looks like a false alarm. Content at the WCO link has been updated, click for further details.
Original post below:
Looks like somebody can’t handle the truth. This just went up at Wind Concerns Ontario;

Due to a threat of legal action, this site will no longer be updated. For more info, please contact: wco-board@googlegroups.com .

And then some;

A Los Angeles firm has quietly assembled a Trojan horse electric car designed to carry the Chinese military-industrial complex deep into America’s auto market. Detroit should be afraid, very afraid. And anyone in the U.S. unemployment line — along with American taxpayers, who are subsidizing this sham — should be outraged.

More at Death By China. (h/t Brian)

Your “safe, renewable power” Quote of the Week;

“All staff vacate wind farms when wind speeds exceed 55mph and therefore no one was present on site at the time of this incident.”

Related: “When Europe is fighting just to stay afloat, and tea party style balanced budget amendments are being imposed on every country in the eurozone, emptying government coffers to raise the price of energy is not exactly an attractive proposal.”

Background: Another sparky car bites the dust.
h/t Instapundit

If only there existed a technology to transmit news of this most recent in a long line of green energy failures to our own Saskatchewan energy minister … some sort of long wire with a speaker at each end ?

In one of the most scathing indictments of government mismanagement we have ever witnessed, Ontario Auditor-General Jim McCarter reported Monday that Mr. McGuinty’s green dream has rapidly become an $8-billion nightmare for Ontario taxpayers and electricity users. Almost no new net power will be generated by all the green-energy projects hastily funded since the bill was passed, but the average residential consumer will see more than $400 a year added to his power bill for a decade to pay for all the bad contracts with and subsidies to eco-friendly power suppliers.
Over the past year, the McGuinty Liberals have been forced to conduct a series of embarrassing climbdowns from their grand promises about the benefits that would flow from the switch from carbon fuels to renewables.
[…]
While it’s too late for Ontario to avoid these costly mistakes, other provinces can still learn from them. Other provincial governments may be tempted to consider similar green-energy programs, either for environmental reasons or in the hopes of establishing a productive, lucrative and morally pure industry by the magic of government fiat and wishful thinking. Let Mr. McCarter’s findings be a warning for them: Don’t copy the McGuinty example. It is good for neither the environment nor for consumers.

Health Canada and the Electrical Safety Authority report of a recall involving Luminus 13W, Compact Fluorescent Lamps. The lamp may overheat and melt the enclosure exposing live parts, posing a risk of fire and/or electric shock.

h/t Tim

Chevrolet Volt Battery Issues Growing, Safety Findings May Have Been Suppressed

Joan Claybrook, a former adminstrator at [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.”

Had there only been more government oversight…

Shhhh….

So far, they haven’t noticed.

So sayeth the Duke;

In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the [Duke of Edinburgh] said the farms were “a disgrace”.
He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”.

No need to tell the Dutch;

[F]ve years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour — some 4.5 billion euros last year.
The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers in order to secure the funds for wind power and try to attract private sector investment.
It will start billing consumers and companies in January 2013 and simultaneously launch a system under which investors will be able to apply to participate in renewable energy projects.
But the new billing system will reap only a third of what was previously available to the industry in subsidies — the government forecasts 1.5 billion euros every year — while the pricing scale of the investment plan makes it more likely that interested parties will choose less expensive technologies[…]

When the money runs out – 14,000 abandoned wind turbines.
But not everyone involved in this scam is going broke: The growing James Hansen scandal. Of course, he’s one of the scam’s chief architects. That’s how scams work.
Has anyone asked Bill Boyd what newspapers he reads?