“Green” is also the colour of slime.
Subsidies are fundamentally corrupting.
Instead of promoting the commercialisation of a nascent technology (whether for later job creation or for pursuing policy goals), they lead more often than not to companies just maximising the subsidies they can get. And very often the vast amounts taken from tax money end up in the pockets of opportunistic individuals. It is no great secret that the “green” label has provided the path for the extraction (or is it extortion) of subsidies by developers and companies who have never had any intention other than maximising what could be extracted.
ABC News (here and here) lists a number of cases in the US where subsidies have been extracted, huge bonuses paid and then bankruptcy filings prevents any possibility of getting any recourse to the beneficiaries. They point out that “the Energy Department explicitly allows for federal funds to be used to pay out executive bonuses.” The “subsidy” industry is of course already well established in Europe with exorbitant “feed in tariffs”, carbon trading certificates and grants to solar and wind developers.
The k2p blog 