Feds pour $32 million more into beleaguered solar industry

The Department of Energy has doled out another $32 million to support the solar industry, a sector fraught with technology challenges and scandal – and nevertheless propped up with billions of taxpayer dollars during the Obama Administration.

This latest funding isn’t dedicated to training a workforce of solar technicians, developing new technology and implementing a database to share performance data, the DOE announced in a press release last week.  The training goal is 75,000 workers by 2020 and an undisclosed amount of “other professionals” in other fields such as real estate, finance, insurance and fire and safety.

If they took all that money and burned it, it would produce more energy than the solar industry has since the 1970s. The problem is training, it’s the laws of physics. Solar energy is feasible in places like Arizona, but far less so in the Northeast, Middle West, and Northwest. There just aren’t enough sunny days to make it work.

You’d have thought we’d have learned our lesson with Solyndra, these projects are really just ways to funnel money to politically connected con men.