(snip)""BP Solar announced Friday it is laying off 320 manufacturing workers at its Frederick Maryland facility. There are approximately 430 total workers at the facility...BP Solar also has plants in China and India (WHO'DA THUNK IT?). The company laid off 140 assembly line workers at the Frederick facility last year."
BP Solar, a subsidiary of British energy giant BP, is discontinuing its silicon casting, wafering and cell manufacturing at the Frederick plant."(snip)


Some business acquaintances tell me that a major reason that US 'green industries' are suddenly becoming much more attuned to their high US costs of doing business is that their US 'marketplace' is now becoming far more economically competitive. As it was explained to me, a major component driving the sales of 'green industry' products i.e. solar, wind, ethanol has been the appropriation of both US federal gov't granted tax credits and US state gov't financed rebates / incentives / grant money. However, as both federal and state budget deficits worsen, future federal and state spending priorities are changing ... which in turn will mean less 'free money' for these 'green industries' to cash in on.

In the absence of this 'free money', arguably there isn't any way that US made 'green' products ( carrying US environmental / worker safety costs, carrying US employee benefit costs, carrying US energy costs etc.) can come close to competing with similar 'green' products made in China, India etc. As has been discussed on many previous occasions, the production processes needed to manufacture 'green' products are usually extremely BROWN !