KY Fails to Acquire Funds for Battery Plant – Bummer.

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Governor Stevie B. broke the news this morning that Kentucky did not receive the funding from the Department of Energy for a battery manufacturing plant for western Kentucky. In Hardin County, a not for profit company alliance, NAATBatt hoped to build a plant with federal and state dollars. Now $1 billion is going to projects in Michigan, nearly half of the $2.4 billion total.

The not-so-stimulus strikes again! Seriously, though, we need the jobs (the plant possibly would’ve employed 2000) but this smelled of BS all along. This further proves the benefits of Free Enterprise. If companies had the money rather than the government, things may get done. I wonder how far the $1 billion will go in Michigan? My guess, not terribly far. Here’s the Guvnuh’s response:

“We are, of course, disappointed by today’s announcement that the NaaTBatt consortium’s proposal did not receive a grant award from the Department of Energy. However, we knew at the start that we were entering an extremely competitive process as evidenced by the fact that only 20 percent of applicants received awards. The bottom line is that we cannot and we will not let a brief setback deter us from our goals. You can’t win in economic development, ultimately, if you are not willing to compete. We will continue competing and we will win more than our share. With respect to today’s announcement, we plan to meet soon with our consortium partners to discuss what steps we may be able to take in the future together. With the continued strong bipartisan support that this initiative garnered, I am convinced Kentucky can and will be a central player in advanced auto manufacturing in the future. We have made significant strides already to that end. We are developing a federal lab with Argonne National Laboratory to conduct research on the car batteries of the future. Kentucky will serve as host this fall to a national battery conference and we are continuing discussions with several companies that are extremely interested in our efforts in this emerging area. Finally, our actions in this administration already have helped secure for the long term many of the 80,000 jobs related to the auto industry in Kentucky through our close partnership with Ford, Toyota and General Motors. That will be strengthened as Kentucky continues its role as one of the country’s major auto manufacturers.”