'Clean Energy' Ruined Spain; now Obama is Dragging the US Over the Same Green Precipice

James Delingpole, Breitbart.com
Spain was one of the first countries to buy heavily into the "clean energy" chimera and - from the mid-90s attracted billions of dollars' worth of local and foreign "investment" from rent-seekers attracted by the guaranteed 14 per cent per annum rate of return offered on solar park projects and the similarly huge subsidies for wind farms.
But there was a problem. As should have been obvious from the start "clean energy" is - and almost certainly always will be - unviable in a free market. The limited energy it produces is next to worthless because it is only available when the wind blows or the sun shines - which is not necessarily when it is actually needed. Hence the need for all those government subsidies, without which not a single one of those renewable energy projects exist.
By the time the Spanish government woke up to the problem, the damage was done. Green energy projects have cost it a staggering 200 billion Euros in subsidies, 56 billion Euros of which it has paid out, another 143 billion Euros it still owes but which its hard-pressed coffers cannot possibly spare. Successive administrations have tried to reduce the cost by drastically reducing subsidies - causing a wave of bankruptcies among local businesses foolish enough to have leapt aboard the green bandwagon. But this has only exposed the Spanish government to costly lawsuits by the various foreign investors which piled in to take advantage of the green energy scam."