Among the many accolades showered upon him during his presidency, Barack Obama was lauded as a genius. Maybe the smartest president in U.S. history. Just a total whiz kid.
Apparently he wasn't smart enough to wisely invest nearly $2 billion in our hard-earned money. But hey, nobody's perfect, right?
That's according to the Daily Caller:
The sun will soon be setting on the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California's Mojave Desert. Boosted by $1.6 billion in taxpayer-backed loans in 2011, the gargantuan project was hailed by President Obama's first energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, as 'an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.'
This is how the government feels when they spend our money on stupid green tech boondoggles:
The reality, of course, is slightly less romantic:
Since going into operation in 2014, Ivanpah, built at a cost of $2.2 billion, never came close to meeting its boosters' lofty expectations. In the world of solar energy, Ivanpah found itself unable to compete with conventional photovoltaic installations, which themselves are unable to meet the soaring demands of electricity-hungry artificial intelligence (AI).
You're telling me a massive taxpayer-backed solar farm was a practical bust pretty much from day one??
You can just imagine how they spun the slow-rolling disaster out over the last decade:
Alas, solar energy is still in its relative infancy. It can't come anywhere close to meeting energy demand for the foreseeable future, if ever — and certainly not to the point that we should be plowing massive sums of taxpayer dollars into it.
Indeed, apparently the only thing solar is super-efficient at is bird-killing:
The light generated from the mirrors' reflection of the sun can reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees. Birds unfortunate enough to fly over the 'clean-energy' facility could be burned alive in the intense heat. According to the Association of Avian Veterinarians, Ivanpah 'is believed to be responsible for at least 6,000 bird deaths each year.'
$1.6 billion for 6,000 dead birds per year. Quite an exchange rate!
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