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Interest Grows for Receiving Government Handouts

April 16, 2009, 10:04 pm

The AZ Republic has an article today entitled, "Interest grows for solar plant at city landfill."  It is telling who is interested:

It's a sign of the growing interest in Arizona's renewable-energy market, as solar manufacturers, civil engineers, investors and attorneys showed enthusiasm for the $1 billion project

I am quite sure that a number of solar engineering firms and parts manufacturers are interested feeding off a billion dollar project.  Now, the article tries to anticipate my concern about this being a government pork-fest by saying the project "would be financed and built by the private sector."  This is an odd statement given this note a couple of paragraphs later:

That would help the solar company meet a strict deadline to apply for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds....

the economic-stimulus package provides grants of up to 30 percent of construction costs if companies can break ground by December 2010, said Brian Rasmussen of California-based BrightSource Energy Inc., a potential bidder.

So the billion dollars is privately financed, except for the real estate provided by the city and the $300 million in federal government funds and a gauranteed above-market subsidized purchase price for the power from the public utility plus any number of other government subsidies and incentives to be named later (such as government municipal bond financing).

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Category: Energy
  • Mesa Econoguy

    How about “Interest grows for public-private partnership at SkySong development”, or “ASU [publicly-funded university], company form new solar partnership”.

    Why not just say "Private rent-seeker interested in relationship with bloated bureaucratic government sloth, preferably well-funded"?

    Perhaps we should place these "stories" in the New Times Singles Ads....

  • Mesa Econoguy

    Also,

    the economic-stimulus package provides grants of up to 30 percent of construction costs if companies can break ground by December 2010, said Brian Rasmussen of California-based BrightSource Energy Inc., a potential bidder.

    Signed,

    Please help us monetize California bankruptcy across the country

    P.S. Wann koennen Si- er, When can you shtart?

  • morganovich

    mesa-

    well, if arnold gets his way, the fed's will guarantee califonia debt anyhow... (words fail me on what a bad idea that would be)

    i find it interesting that huge GRANTS to comanies come with no stings on who they can hire or what they can pay, whereas INVESTMENTS that need to be paid back do and even when paid back, conditions will persist.

    bloomberg reporting this morning that treasury looking to keep hiring to americans only and possibly cap salaries as well at TARP banks even after they repay the funds because the governement will still own warrants.

    gee, i wonder why none of the financial institutions are showing any interest in the new government programs.

    jamie dimon even came out and said "we have learned a hard lesson about doing business with the government" on the Q1 conference call.

    odd that the greentech guys have no such qualms. (of course, without subsidy, they have no business so...)

  • http://blog.jackalopepursuivant.com/ Dan

    Oh, don't forget the carbon credits they'll undoubtedly sell.