President Barack Obama stood up last week to defend the indefensible – “green” energy projects that nearly always prove to be a waste of money, time and effort.

“We refuse to surrender the hope of a clean energy future to those who fear it and fight it, and sometimes provide misinformation about it,” he said at the National Clean Energy Summit. “For the first time, we can actually see what our clean energy future looks like. And, yes, the closer we get to this future, the opposition will fight even harder to keep things the way they’ve been.”

As usual, Obama labored mightily to construct a straw man argument. Opponents of many of Obama’s green energy boondoggles don’t “fear it and fight it” – they are simply weighing the costs against the benefits.

“Let’s cut to the chase: ‘green’ energy projects funded by the government with taxpayer dollars are doomed to fail and must end,” writes Vance Ginn of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “We are reminded of this with the 4-year anniversary of the solar company Solyndra filing for bankruptcy on September 1, 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).”

And Solyndra is far from atypical. History shows that green energy projects almost always over-promise and under-perform.

Ginn pointed to California’s Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2012.

“This Act, otherwise known as Proposition 39, was sold to voters as a tax loophole closure for multistate corporations whereby about half of the estimated $1 billion in new taxes would fund ‘green’ energy projects at local education agencies and create tens of thousands of clean energy jobs annually,” he explains. “Based on this rhetoric and a large $30 million donation by an environmentalist, 61.1 percent of voters approved the measure in November 2012.”

So did it deliver?

“In the three years since Proposition 39 went into effect, the removal of corporate tax loopholes contributed only $973 million, or 59 percent, of the expected $1.65 billion in revenue,” Ginn writes. “Of this amount, $297 million has been spent on clean energy projects and more than half going to energy auditors and consultants. Job creation projections of more than 11,000 per year has also been ridiculously overshot with only 1,700 jobs created, or 5 percent of the estimated 33,000 during the last three years. These 1,700 jobs have come at a cost of $175,000 each.”

The real problem, he explains, is government interference in free market processes. Subsidizing green energy projects merely props up inherently flawed business models, based on political preferences, not objective reality.

“Letting markets work in the energy sector so that prices aren’t masked from sending appropriate signals to producers and consumers instead of government-blocking prices with corporate welfare is the best path forward for taxpayers,” Ginn writes. “Crony capitalism whereby governments pick winners and losers must end. Free markets whereby individuals decide the outcome must be the solution.”

That won’t stop Obama from continuing to push green energy projects – at the expense of the taxpayers.