Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Oops: even legitimate solar companies suffering "carnage, layoffs, and plant closings"; Obama's green jobs scam hardest hit.

It's not just President Obama's "green energy" payoffs to campaign contributors companies like Solyndra, Fisker, et. al. that are suffering.

Even legitimate companies are melting down thanks to a serious lack of demand for their wares.

Solar carnage hits suppliers, as Sanyo, Sumco, Schott cut manufacturing, causing jitters downstream


Carnage in the solar industry is spreading upstream as companies that make ingots and wafers used in cells and panels announce layoffs and plant closures...

...A spokesman for Sanyo, a Japanese company with a plant in Salem, confirmed Monday that it would shut a California factory that makes solar wafers using older technology.

Producers blame a worldwide glut of silicon ingots and the wafers they're sliced into to make the solar cells that go inside panels. As with cells and panels, much of the oversupply results from increased production in China, analysts say, as well as demand declines from reduced European subsidies for solar power...

The analysts say industry turmoil and continued low prices will at least indirectly affect Sanyo, SolarWorld and other companies with Oregon operations that the state has subsidized to attract. Across the United States, some factories could move to other states, such as Texas and Mississippi, that offer rich incentives, said Fatima Toor, a Lux Research analyst in Boston. She expects more closures, layoffs, mergers and potential bankruptcies... "There's going to be a lot of blood in the coming couple of years," Toor said...

Meanwhile, America's vast, natural treasure trove of gas, oil and coal goes largely untapped thanks to an administration beholden to radical eco-Marxists.

And thus we remain the only country on the planet that restricts access to its own energy supplies.


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