Green jobs

It seems that there is no limit to the chutzpah of the Obama administration.  From the Nevada Journal comes a story of a presidential visit to a solar energy plant funded by the federal government.  Unfortunately, the "stimulus" really didn't provide jobs or economic benefit:

President Obama will tout investments in “renewable” energy Wednesday at the local Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant, although the plant has only five full-time employees.

The plant, owned by San Diego-based energy company Sempra, was built in late 2010 at a cost of $141 million. Funding included $42 million in federal-government tax credits and $12 million in tax-rebate commitments from the state of Nevada.

Construction of the plant involved over 300 part-time jobs, but currently only five full-time employees operate the plant, a Sempra spokeswoman confirmed. That comes out to $10.8 million in tax-dollar subsidies per employee.

 Over TEN million dollars to create one job.  You could skip the investment, just pay someone $100,000 per year for over 100 years and still spend less money.  Where did these folks learn math?

In addition to wanting to create many new jobs, President Obama has claimed green-energy investment will decrease America’s energy costs and reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil.

In Boulder City, however, renewables have produced no lower energy costs. Instead, in late 2009, the city approved a 35 percent rate hike, while power generated by Copper Mountain is to go to Southern California — rather than serve Nevadans whose taxes helped finance the plant.

So, the folks that helped to pay for the plant don't even get the energy from it.  And the green energy picture keeps looking uglier every day:

Nevada received over $1 billion in federal “stimulus” funds for energy and environmental projects, yet state ratepayers still pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Recently, the Nevada Public Utilities Commission approved yet another rate increase.

Solar plants aren’t the only government-funded energy projects in Nevada that haven't lived up to their proponents’ promises. The Reno Gazette-Journal recently reported that seven local windmills that cost taxpayers $1 million to install have only saved the City of Reno $2,785 in electricity costs over their 18 months of existence.

If we survive the Obama presidency, the green boondoggle will likely go down in history as the greatest heist in our existence.  Too bad most people don't know how bad it all is.  

Hat tip to The Lonely Conservative.