Riots May Have Killed Britain’s Green Consensus

The riots and their fallout will eat up all the political oxygen for months, if not years to come. A party conference season that should have seen at least some debate on the grave threat posed by climate change and the huge opportunity presented by the low carbon economy will now be dominated by much hand-wringing and political jostling over "the state of modern Britain". The riots have undoubtedly emboldened those Conservative backbenchers who are at best indifferent to environmental issues and at worst openly hostile to green policies. Significantly, they are supported by a similarly emboldened right-wing media that has in recent months cranked up its opposition to environmental initiatives, most notably through the Daily Mail's increasingly overt climate scepticism and repeated attacks on green energy policies. --James Murray, Business Green, 15 August 2011

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The sun is setting on Evergreen Solar, whose green-energy business fizzled even though Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration showered the Marlboro company with $58 million in subsidies and tax breaks. Evergreen, which made solar-power panels, cut about half of its 133 remaining employees and sought bankruptcy protection after concluding that it couldn’t compete with low-cost Chinese manufacturers. The company had already shifted some work to China last year in a cost-cutting move, then closed its Devens factory in March and eliminated 800 jobs. --Jerry Kronenberg and Greg Turner, Boston Herald, 16 August 2011 Solar module manufacturer Solon Corp. will lay off 60 local workers as it shuts down its production facility in Tucson, the company said Monday. Solon, part of German-based Solon SE, said it will seek lower-cost sources of solar modules for utility and commercial photovoltaic systems in Asia. --Tucson Sentinel, 15 August 2011 Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods. But more than a year later, Seattle's numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program --Seattle Pi, 16 August 2011

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