You know, I’m really glad America’s worst Governor, Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) is bullish on green energy, because the markets aren’t. Via the Guardian.uk:

Vestas, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, has spread a dark cloud over the renewable energy sector by turning a sizeable second-quarter profit last year into a €120m (£99m) loss over the past three months.

Shares in the company plunged more than 20% on the Copenhagen stock market as analysts took fright, despite claims by Vestas that the financial turnaround was just a delayed reaction to the credit crunch, which had led to delayed orders.

Vestas, which closed down its Isle of Wight manufacturing facility last summer, said it was going to chop 600 more jobs – half of them short-term contracts – in Denmark, its home base.

The unexpectedly poor financial results come amid recent warnings from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) that the previously buoyant US wind market was in precipitous decline and desperately needed positive new policies from the White House.

The global renewable energy sector has become increasingly fearful that governments are now more concerned about cutting public spending than keeping the green energy revolution on track.(emphasis added)

Yep, green energy doesn’t work without subsidies and need ‘positive policies‘ from the US Federal government to survive.

Wind Turbine In Northern Michigan

Going forward, Vestas has lowered its ‘earnings’ (from government subsidies) forecasts from a 11-10% range to a 6-5%.

It doesn’t seem right that a company such as Vestas, from Denmark, derives its profits from the heavy subsidies funded by US tax payers then moves those profits home to Denmark. This wouldn’t be so bad if we were gaining some sort of benefit from the windmills, however, in reality we are not. All windmills have provided to date is a small amount of sporadic, expensive electricity. They have not replace one traditional power plant anywhere in the world and they will not replace one in the United States since wind power needs a backup (and the load balancing is very difficult due to the intermittent nature of wind power i.e. the weather).

In a truly free market, companies such as Vestas would fail because they do not provide any economic benefit to consumers.

Lastly, it seems the public is becoming less willing to subsidize ‘green energy’ because they are starting to catch on to the fact that Global Warming is a hoax.

The recent lack of progress in wider global climate change talks in Bonn has led to a lowering of expectations that the next summit at Cancun in Mexico can make progress after the failures in Copenhagen last December. Recent opinion polls suggest the public in many countries have become more, rather than less, sceptical about global warming in recent months.