Good news, everybody! A gang of government bureaucrats who couldn’t run a business if their lives depended on it are about to start shoveling billions of your tax dollars at alternative energy firms that are on track to start producing a significant percentage of America’s energy sometime around two thousand never.

The Energy Department said Thursday it expects to begin tentatively approving new taxpayer-backed loans for renewable energy projects in the coming months.

The announcement comes about seven months after Solyndra, the California solar firm that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the administration in 2009, went bankrupt, setting off a firestorm in Washington.

“The Department expects to begin issuing conditional commitments over the next several months after completing a rigorous internal and external review of each application,” Energy Department loan program chief David Frantz wrote to the top lawmakers on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Frantz – in the letter to committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) – stressed that projects receiving loan guarantees will be “subject to a robust monitoring effort to ensure that taxpayers’ investments are protected.”

He defended the loan program from GOP critics, who have alleged that the administration is wasting taxpayer money by supporting risky renewable energy projects.

“By any measure, the Energy Department’s loan programs have helped the United States keep pace in the fierce global race for clean energy technologies,” Frantz wrote.

Oh boy, we’re right in the thick of the “fierce global race” to spend money on nearly irrelevant energy sources! Do people realize that wind, solar, algae, and pixie dust powered engines only supply roughly 1.5% of our energy needs today and may NEVER be a significant source of energy? After all, there is a reason that private industry isn’t pouring investment dollars into these alternative sources of energy.

Additionally, if any of these alternative energy sources were starting to take off, the first thing that would probably happen is that the Democratic Party would oppose them. Isn’t that how it works today? Over 90% of our energy is supplied by oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power and the Left is doing everything possible to discourage the use of all of them while it funnels money in engines driven by hope and the power of love. If the government spent a lot more time trying to encourage the production of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power and a lot less time trying to find a Solyndra that works, we’d all be better off.