Originally Posted by
The Riddler
More? Obama threw away much more than a billion. Solar Trust, Solyndra, Energy Conversion Devices, LSP, Sun Power, Beacon Power, Ecotality, UniSolar, Azure Dynamics, Ener1, A123 Solar, Abound Solar, Evergreen Solar, Spectra Watt, Amonix, NRG Energy, Bright Energy... Just to name a FEW of the companies that have either gone completely bankrupt, or otherwise had to downsize/fold. Between them all, Obama has sunk more like around 25 billion into Solar. That's not even touching all the money he's flushed down the toilet with the Volt, Fisker, Tesla, and all these other unprofitable money pits.
Regardless of that... So what if China has dumped that much money into panels? Solar is still far over 5 times more expensive than coal or natural gas as a means of generating electricity. There's no shortage of coal or gas. Why forcibly change over to a more expensive energy when there is no need for it? I say let China be the king of solar panels, and let the US stay on coal/gas for the next 100 years by which time something far better then crappy, expensive, inefficient photovoltaic panels and dirty, heavy, inefficient, expensive batteries has come along - making the current "solar" market utterly irrelevant.