On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

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Isn’t it time for politicians to denounce the devious companies that are restricting supplies of a product vital to solar panels?

What happened to our leaders’ commitment to the New Energy Economy anyway?

When the price of oil rises, politicians can hardly wait to batter and blast Big Oil for supposedly manipulating markets. Why aren’t they stepping forward to do the same with Big Silicon?

Why isn’t state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff deploring “price gouging” in the silicon markets? He certainly wasn’t shy about alleging price gouging when gasoline prices soared in 2005.

Back in the nation’s capital, the silence is equally disturbing. The same presidential candidate who has declared herself “tired frankly of being at the mercy of these large oil companies” has yet to be heard on this critical matter of the silicon shortage.

Yet as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the shortage is no joke in the solar energy business.

“This refined silicon, the most costly and crucial element in solar panels, has been in short supply for the past four years,” the Journal reports. “There are only about a half-dozen companies worldwide that purify silicon from sand and quartz, and they haven’t built new refineries fast enough to keep up with rising demand. That’s left solar-panel manufacturers . . . to grapple with high prices from straitened supplies just as politicians and clean-energy advocates are pressing them to cut the steep cost of solar to compete with cheaper, less environmentally friendly fuels like coal.”

The price of solar installations was supposed to slide as their volume grew; instead the price has climbed. So why don’t we hear from angry politicians demanding congressional hearings and even criminal probes into the silicon shortage — as they routinely do whenever gasoline prices spike?

Here’s why. First, even demagogues are capable, when it’s convenient, of understanding how well-run companies can be caught flat-flooted by surging demand. Even political blowhards are smart enough to realize that major investments take time and that they must be justified, in any case, by the expectation of reasonable returns.

Another reason politicians hold their tongues, of course, is a reluctance to undermine the morality tale they’ve come to rely on when out on the hustings. There they depict ruthless, greedy fossil fuel suppliers pitted against the plucky, virtuous suppliers of renewable energy who need all the help they can get.

A final possibility: Renewable energy mandates require suckers like you and me to subsidize the purchase of solar panels by well-heeled homeowners. Better to keep quiet about what those solar gizmos actually cost lest utility ratepayers begin questioning the justice of it all.

Mythbusters

Twenty-two years ago, in the midst of national hysteria over abducted children, The Denver Post published a myth-shattering report proving that the vast majority of missing kids were runaways who returned within a few days or were children taken by another parent in a custody dispute.

The reporters won a Pulitzer Prize.

The Washington Post may not win a Pulitzer for its report Sunday on human trafficking in the United States, but it too torpedoes a widely held belief.

Human trafficking exists, of course — mostly in the form of women forced into the sex trade. But when Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, it stipulated that “approximately 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States each year.”

In fact, reports The Washington Post, “The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000” — which, in a nation this large, is a puny figure.

And the huge sums spent to fight this alleged scourge? “Many of the organizations that received grants didn’t really have to do anything,” said the former head of Health and Human Service’s anti-trafficking program. “They were available to help victims. There weren’t any victims.”

Colorado has been busy, too, creating an Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking and collecting federal money to help the victims.

If you want to help sex slaves in any quantity, though, first you’ll need a passport. Because the real epidemics of this vile phenomenon can only be found abroad.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

READER COMMENTS

Renewable energy , like global warming and carbon credits, is intellectual sasquatch. This enviro-hoax is finally getting peeled like the rotten onion it is and the snake-oil peddling tree-huggers are finally getting called out.

Thanks Vince, again the check is in the mail

If this is really a crisis, you can bet Algore will be pounding sand into solar panels to save us. Ted Kennedy might even get hands-on if he hears of a silcone shortage. Last of all let the free market work and blame the oil companies.

Vince

Again, you are dead spot on.

The enviros simply don't want it out that renewables are going to cost BIG! The Colorado utility ratepayers will be paying out their nose. Hell, the cost of transmission lines alone to get this intermittent source to the user will be absolutely staggering.

Thus, when Gov. Ritter goes to Capitol Hill and exclaims that Amen. 37 and this year's progeny doubling renewables to 20% will SAVE Colorado ratepayers money, we can see the man behind the curtain.

The enviros have given the Democrats a bomb with a slow-burning fuse that will ignite when ratepayers start seeing the inexorable march up in their utility bills because of this feel good rush into staggeringly expensive renewables.

Vince wrote: "A final possibility: Renewable energy mandates require suckers like you and me to subsidize the purchase of solar panels by well-heeled homeowners. Better to keep quiet about what those solar gizmos actually cost lest utility ratepayers begin questioning the justice of it all."

THIS passage by Carroll (and not that intellectual "progressive" midget who edits the CSU paper) is speaking truth to power.

Solar-generated electricity is incredibly expensive - multiples above coal generated electricity - and only produces dispatchable power intermittently and never at night. Thus, we, the Colorado consumers, will be paying hundreds of millions of dollars to erect transmission lines for an intermittent power source.

We are being sold a bill of goods by the Ritter administration and Colorado consumers will get stuck paying the bill.

I see the "Sky is Falling" Crowd is still at it.

Keep up the good work.

I see that Jay, the Green Sophist, has weighed in from LaborReady with nothing substantive to say, once again.

lol...Labor Ready.

Don't confuse your own aspirations with mine.

At least you guys seem to realize that we need to do something to curb our usage of fossil fuels and develop alternatives.

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Over the course of a few generations we will have used up most of the fossil fuels accumulated over millions of years. In the pursuit of the remainder, we will destroy much of the natural environment that we should have bequeathed to our grandchildren and their descendents. But everything's fine, folks, just put your heads back in the sand.

Vince I never thought I'd get you, but this time you are nailed.

This time you are living in the last generation of photovoltaics. The newer generation (fourth) is actually being brought up to speed and eventually will cost 10 cents per kw. the solar field will be able to run in dim light and will be run from the grid to a voltage regulator to the home or business. Surplus will go back to the grid and the power company.

See: Konarka Technologies, Inc. Photo cell printed on film.

The only problem I see with this scheme is that government will have to figure out how to regulate (tax) this giant leap into public independence. Who gets taxed? The sender or receiver and is it light or dark and what about those expensive nuclear facilities? Where will the guards go to sleep?

Vince (cont'd)

Add the fact that terrorists may hack the "grid" in the future, thus prompting electrical users to get off the grid.

Vince is not nailed. He is talking about the short-termer politicians who screw things up. In the long term, if we can keep our freedom and independence, many things are possible. Technology is the answer. And don't worry, they will find a way to tax us!

Gene

You mean the idiots that want the job but have no skill other than BS--and don't make it to the "second term"?

So many folks want the government to help..so in the end it is very expensive and the job gets done half -assed.

No, by short-term, I certainly didn't mean anything more than short-sighted - meddling in the energy business. And if they had such great skills, they wouldn't be in government. The longer they are in office the worse they get!!! Folks want the government to help - give me another break. . . I don't want the government to help - I want it to get out of the way.

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