Gosh...

A solar firm goes bust and taxpayers may be responsible for over $500 million in loans.

Sort of makes you wonder whether "funding" green energy is such a good idea. Put it this way - you can see why a liberal government would fund such a project. Ideally, it brings all the right things together - puts people to work building a technology that will yield long term environmental results. Problem is: it doesn't work. They can't make it profitable. And arguably, the government assistance only enables them to be bigger failures and pushes the cost onto the taxpayers.

The alternative, of course, would be the government giving me $500 million in loans and I'd start a movie studio and put tons of people to work and I'm guessing I could at least break even, if not make a profit. I know this sounds silly and doesn't seem to help the world, but at least people would be working, the taxpayers would not lose any money, and there would be some good movies to see.

I dunno. I know we need to throw spaghetti against the wall to make R&D progress, but it kinda sorta feels like the government picks winners and losers by the way the press and ideology fits into the narrative and who is connected with who rather than any real sense of whether the project is viable.