Colorado’s solar energy speculators are screaming over a plan by the state’s largest utility to scale back their massive solar energy welfare program.

“Xcel said the reductions are justified because the cost of solar panels has been declining and customers no longer need higher incentives to offset installation costs,” The Denver Post reports this morning.

“This is absolutely devastating to the solar industry,” Neal Lurie, executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, tells the Post. “No industry can survive this kind of shock.”

The welfare program helps Xcel meet Colorado’s Expensive Energy Mandate, which requires an increasing amount of consumers’ electricity to come from higher-prices, less reliable experimental sources like wind and solar.  The American Tradition Institute has released a study showing how Expensive Energy Mandates send utility bills, consumer prices and unemployment skyrocketing.

Colorado’s Expensive Energy Mandate and other anti-jobs laws have helped send thousands of jobs to other states, like Wyoming and Texas, and will send utility bills and food prices higher.

“Wind and solar rely on government laws forcing consumers to buy their product, and billions of dollars in welfare bailout because no one wants their ridiculously expensive, unreliable product,” said American Tradition Partnership.  “Americans are sick of all the bailouts and corporate welfare, but politicians like Barack Obama and John Hickenlooper keep the money flowing because much of that tax money finds its way into their bank accounts by way of contributions from wind and solar speculators.  Cut off welfare to wind and solar speculators and repeal all Expensive Energy Mandates.”