Attacking Penny-Ante Cleantech Waste While Ignoring Dirty Energy’s $10-Billion-Plus Gravy Train

This article bashes a battery company that got stimulus money:

A company that received $150 million in government stimulus funds to build a facility to manufacture battery cells for electric cars has yet to begin mass-market production and misused some of the funds in questionable labor costs, according to the Energy Department’s Inspector General.

In a report released Wednesday, the IG found that LG Chem Michigan Inc. (formerly Compact Power Inc.) had yet to produce a single battery cell and was likely to miss the grant’s May 2013 deadline for completion. What’s more, the project created fewer than half of the projected 440 new jobs anticipated by proponents.

Compare this to the subsidies and protections the dirty-energy companies get every year:

In the United States, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from $10 billion to $52 billion annually, while even efforts to remove small portions of those subsidies have been defeated in Congress, as shown in the graphic below.

But when the dirty-energy crowd exerts such influence over our media and our political processes, it’s not surprising to see the obsession with motes in cleantech companies’ eyes while the I-beams sticking out of Big Oil’s and Big Coal’s and Big Gas’ eyes get ignored.