Ira Stoll: Government-Backed Green Energy Goes Bust
The recent Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation filing of the Toledo, Ohio-based solar-panel manufacturer Xunlight Corp. has attracted barely any national attention. Maybe it's gotten to the point—after Solyndra, Evergreen, Abound, and Satcon—that the failure of another government-backed alternative energy company is a dog-bites man story. It'd be newsworthy if any of them actually ever succeeded.
But as Ira Stoll explains, it's worth pausing for an autopsy and retrospective on Xunlight, because it's a great (or terrible, depending on how you look at it) example of how government at all levels—state and federal—and in both parties—Republican and Democrat —wastes taxpayer money by subsidizing politically connected businesses.