When times are good, green technologies can make projections stating that they will develop a prototype and the miracle of capitalism will make it popular and cheap and people will basically turn a blind eye to the suspect math but when things are tough, there needs to be an actual business plan.
Global warming will still be there in a year or two and, sure, it will be more expensive to fix, but subsidizing jobs hasn't worked in the US so subsidizing more won't be popular - that means that projects in the works are fine but they have to compete and fewer new ones will be built. Companies reliant on subsidies for alternative energy say that thinking is short sighted, but that is the nature of politics.
Yes, in this instance, politicians care about cost more than utilities - utilities are happy to pay more, they can pass that cost along to consumers, and in order to get the costs reasonable, the cost for renewable energy have to be subsidized to be competitive, which also comes from consumers.
