Just yesterday, a contributor to Forbes touted Swiss solar panel maker Meyer Burger as “one of many success stories made possible by the IRA.” Mr. Jack Conness, a member of a “nonpartisan energy and climate policy think tank” that (ostensibly) only uses “careful research” and “science-based” information to arrives at its conclusions and policy recommendations, highlighted the company as a tale of smart “investment” into the private sector for a cleaner and greener future, saying this:

Two days after the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law, Meyer Burger, a solar cell and module manufacturing company, announced they entered into a supply agreement with D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments to supply solar panels in order to meet the uptick of solar demand in the United States.

On the heels of their initial 2021 announcement to build a new 400 megawatt facility and create 500 jobs in Goodyear, Arizona, Meyer Burger then doubled down on their plans and their solar production capacity, thanks to the IRA.

…

Finally, two-and-a-half years after committing to a solar facility in the U.S., Meyer Burger’s Goodyear facility started production in June 2024. Their Colorado facility is expected to be online by the end of the year. Between the two facilities, nearly 1,000 American jobs were created, making the Meyer Burger story one of many success stories made possible by the IRA.

Only two years in, the IRA has already had an outsized impact on the U.S. economy.

Okay, fast forward to… less than 24 hours later, or today, from Reuters via Yahoo News:

Meyer Burger halts solar plant in Colorado, plans restructuring

Swiss solar panel maker Meyer Burger said on Monday it was suspending plans for a plant in Colorado as it announced restructuring measures and suggested profitability would be lower than previously expected.

‘Meyer Burger Technology AG announced today that the planned construction of a solar cell production facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, is no longer financially viable for the company due to recent developments and that the project will therefore be discontinued,’ the firm said in a statement.

Looks like Conness was way off, and that Colorado facility will not be online by the end of the year—what laughable and horrendous timing. I mean, were none of the signs there? Well of course they were, but Conness and other energy and climate policy “experts” don’t really want to follow the facts when they conflict with personal biases, so allow me to help him out: When the product is insanely expensive to manufacture, and a major portion of the industry relies on slavery, as is the case with Chinese solar panel firms, companies not using forced labor are at a financial disadvantage, because they have to actually compensate their workers (as well as comply with environmental regulations to which China is not beholden). The solar panel industry is notorious for its unethical practices, particularly its use of forced labor; from the Jo Nova blog:

Solar Panels now in ‘top five’ worst slave industries

It’s no accident 84% of all the world’s solar panels are made in China[.]

No one else can compete with slave labour [sic], and no one else has as much coal fired electricity.

But, Conness must be a progressive, which means he either knows about the communist’s slave labor market and refuses to acknowledge it, or, he’s just ignorant. Too harsh or presumptive? Please, try and tell me that Conness is just an analyst, following the data where it leads, and his political beliefs have no bearing on his professional opinion:

In the two years since IRA and the CHIPS and Science Act passed, we’ve seen an unprecedented flurry of manufacturing investments. The Biden-Harris administration and the 117thU.S. Congress made history two years ago with these laws, and the U.S. is once again onshoring industries at scale and creating tens of thousands of new good-paying jobs in communities across the country.

“Tens of thousands” of new jobs? Is Conness also really bad at math like the people who were off about the jobs reports by 818,000, which was a “thirty percent” drop? More jobs? Try a recession, growing unemployment, and historic and “unprecedented” national debt, in the trillions.

Progressive Democrats and their economics: One day you’re flying high, elevated by a propagandistic and friendly media, and the next day (literally) you’re crashing to Earth, and back to reality.

Image: Oregon Department of Transportation, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.