Solyndrafication

Jennifer Granholm is highly experienced at gamifying green giveaways. She has acquired lots of badges, awards, stickers, and trophies – and now she’s leveled up.

Her latest accomplishment is the “If you fail, just do the same thing again. Only bigger,” badge, with “Fed cluster.” It grants the power to reuse your old speeches just by changing a few numbers.

Biden Administration Rolls Out $3 Billion EV Battery Program

“As electric cars and trucks continue to grow in popularity within the United States and around the world, we must seize the chance to make advanced batteries — the heart of this growing industry — right here at home,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “With funding from Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re making it possible to establish a thriving battery supply chain in the United States…

But the White House acknowledged that China controls an “outsized share” of global mineral refining capacity in a supply chain report published in June. Mineral refining is a key component for renewable energy technology including battery manufacturing.”

Compare that announcement with this one from 2010:

Our first clue should have been that they didn’t name it ‘MichiganWatt’ – December 9, 2010.

Despite bad reviews of ethanol and an unrequited flirtation with windmills, the Governor thinks she has a clue about THE NEXT BIG THING:

“In Michigan, we are trying our own version of this race — focused on the lithium-ion advanced battery for electric cars, a high-tech product previously manufactured almost exclusively in Asia.

We offered irresistible state tax incentives for manufacturers of “advanced energy storage.” We pancaked our state incentives on top of the competitive federal Department of Energy grants to advanced-battery companies and suppliers. We also created robust public-private partnerships.”

Her reasoning was that if we gave A123 $100 million it would make them a success. What it did was encourage bad business decisions. “Irresistible tax incentives,” are so hard to resist you don’t worry about business plans.

That mention of ethanol? It was the previous BIG THING. Granholm had just watched the bankruptcy of her earlier irresistibly incentivized green boondoggle – $20 million for an ethanol plant that never got built.

That bright future for batteries in Michigan didn’t work out either.

One of the reasons China has an outsized share of battery manufacturing is because Jennifer Granholm hand picked winner went bankrupt. And then the Chinese bought it for pennies.

And the winner the statists picked is… China – August 13, 2012.

A123 has ripped off the American taxpayer for $249 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. It was one of former governor Granholm’s favorite picks, to the tune of $100 million. The Chinese are grateful, I suppose, for taxpayer assistance while A123’s stock dropped from $26.00 to $0.82. Without said assistance, A123 might have been gone before they could buy it. Worse yet, from Obama’s point of view, Bain Capital might have turned it around.