Gateway Pundit has this story, via Little Green Footballs.
When President Obama was in Denver to sign the Stimulus Bill, he toured a solar panel manufacturing plant. He then bought a bunch of them, or rather, we bought a bunch of them. It will take 110 years for them to pay for themselves, but the things will only last 20-25 years, tops.
Before signing the $787 billion stimulus package into law on Feburary 17, 2009, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden toured an array of solar panels on top of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The photo-op allowed the President to once again extol the virtues of the coming “green” economy.
According to the Denver Post’s article on the event, “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.” However, that claim cannot be verified at this time, and in fact, seems to be belied by the scant information provided by the museum and other sources.[1] Laura Holtman, Public Relations Manager for the Museum said in an email, “Because the array generates less than 5 percent of the Museum’s power, [the purchased energy] is not a particularly large bill.”
The Independence Institute asked the Denver Museum of Science and Nature to provide certain statistical information regarding the now-famous solar array. Specifically, the Institute asked for:
1 ) Two years worth of electric bills prior to the installation of the solar array,
2 ) All electric bills following the completion of the installation.The Museum denied those requests.
The solar array is not owned by the Museum, however. It is owned by Hybrid Energy Group, LLC. HEG owns the solar array, sells the electricity to the Museum, and receives tax incentives from the state and federal governments, while also receiving “rebates” from Xcel Energy. The rebates are funded by a surcharge collected on the monthly bill of every Colorado Xcel customer.
A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.”
Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.
So, in order to save a few pounds of CO2 from being emitted by some dirty coal fired power plant, the brilliant Obama will have a solar panel plant spewing who know what into the atmosphere. Wait, I know what. Check out what gets put in the air when you make a solar panel:
Weiss’ research focuses on trace gases like nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, a greenhouse gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. NF3 is commonly used in the manufacture of electronics and some solar panels. The gas is confined but a fraction often escapes during the process. In October, Weiss and other scientists found NF3 levels were increasing at 11 percent each year, although the cause is unclear. Production of some other panels involves another gas called sulfur hexafluoride — the most potent greenhouse gas known to science.
Meanwhile, nuclear power plants built in the 1970s are still running, create very little carbon dioxide and produce far more electricity than those little solar panels.
Brilliant.
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