Solar company Suniva Inc. filed for bankruptcy Wednesday after receiving millions in government subsidies to manufacture solar panels.
Suniva blamed its bankruptcy on competition from cheap Chinese-made solar panels, but the company received about $20 million in support from federal and state taxpayers, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“For many years, Chinese manufacturers of solar cells have benefited from favorable, state-sponsored financing and lower labor costs, allowing them to flood the United States market for solar cells and modules with cheap imports,” David Baker, the company’s restructuring officer, said in a statement. “This has negatively impacted manufacturers based in the United States, such as Suniva.”
Suniva, founded in 2006, used federal and state subsidies to produce solar panels in the U.S., but the company struggled to compete with a flood of imported panels from China. Baker said Suniva’s lost $56.3 million since the end of 2014.
But Suniva got help from taxpayers. The company received $8.8 million from the federal government between 2010 and 2016 on top of up to $11 million in state incentives so they could manufacture more solar cells, the Journal-Constitution reported.
The company also received a $5.7 million federal tax credit in 2010 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Suniva is considering filing a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission to protest Chinese subsidies for solar panel producers, and for Chinese attempts to circumvent U.S. tariffs by shifting production to factories in other countries.
The directors of the solar companies know they’ll go bankrupt, even before they start business. They keep the scam running as long as possible for the fat salaries.
So why are tax payers eating this business failure / How about aligning interests
If a company bankrolled by tax payers goes broke all Directors VP ‘s and other senior management pledge their assets including houses ,yachts and other toys as collateral .
otherwise no grants , loan guarantees or tax credits . You know get everyone on the same page . Guaranteed the pigs at the trough took down massive “salaries,
bonuses and other perks while they burned through tax payer cash .
How much did the owners put up for this caper ?
Let’s get this straight …no one knew in 2004 that they would be competing with Chinese slave wages ? No one knew that without the government piggy bank this venture was nothing more than an opportunist scam to use politically correct
government subsidies to create a venture virtually guaranteed to go bankrupt .
Who in the government authorized the extension of cash to another solar panel titanic ? Was the Energy Department doing it’s job ? What reporting was in place
while Suniva lost over $50 million dollars in less than 4 years and no one in government did anything ? No alarm bells went off no weekly updates showing the cash burn ?
Any idiot can hand out other peoples money (Trudeau , Wynn , Moonbeam and mini Moonbeam ) but who is protecting tax payers from organized theft ?
Mr .Trump is seeing first hand who the pan handlers are and he won’t be draining any swamp by furthering the corporate welfare state or breaking his election promise to exit the cowardly Paris Agreement . JUST DONE IT .
Another taxpayer propped Solar Company going bankrupt.
How unusual !
Tromp de Soleil !
Subsidies are necessary for green energy because it doesn’t pay for itself. If green energy is so vital to Earth’s health, where’s the line up of buyers waving fists full of cash ? I know farmers in Ontario who took the Liberals offer for solar installations. They’d mount the panels on half the roof of a new drive shed. After 10 years, the people of Ontario will have paid the entire cost of the installation AND the drive shed!!!
I sometimes wonder if the best solar panel is a leaf. It gives shade in the summer while creating fuel for the winter.
Meanwhile, venture technology that discovered and delivered efficient, clean-burning natural gas was demonized and penalized by the same government.
Washington bureaucrats are not capable of organizing a two-car funeral procession.
Wind energy,solar energy a total waste of our dollars on a rediculoius idelogy based upon the pipe dreams of people who spent too much time in the sun and its baked their brains windfarms are harmful to birds and bats and their horribly noisies as well as solar power is no better plus the fact is the sun dont shine for a full 24 hours