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Sixteen months ago, General Electric announced it would place the "largest order in history" for electric cars, to be used by its employees who are issued company cars. Now, those cars are starting to arrive and be placed with employees. A person inside GE recently forwarded a memo to us that covers some of the nuts and bolts of using the 2012 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car. It's from the fleet operations manager for GE Healthcare. Among the interesting points: * All sedans ordered in 2012 will be the Chevrolet Volt * Crossovers and minivans will be replaced by electric-vehicle...

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama. Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms. During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants...

The Obama administration is attempting to persuade U.S. corporations about the benefits of investing in renewable energy in an effort to help the industry after a government grant program expired. The Department of Energy-led effort includes a planned March 13 meeting at which senior financial-firm executives and Energy Secretary Steven Chu would speak. The 79 invitees include some of the largest corporations in the U.S., from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Walt Disney. The idea is to tell companies with big tax bills about the "attractive rates of return and brand benefits" that come with entering the so-called tax equity markets...

Washington — An independent audit of the federal loan guarantee initiatives that backed the troubled solar technology company Solyndra failed to turn up the waste and broad incompetence that critics assert riddled the programs. But the audit showed the laws passed from 2005 to 2009 that established the programs in question at the Energy Department had few provisions for thorough monitoring and oversight of the loan guarantees once they were approved. One program created in 2007 did not “provide any requirements regarding governance and monitoring of loans after closing.” “Neither the statutes nor the regulations governing the programs specify internal...

In the final days of Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s tenure, the state Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth trumpeted the success of green jobs created in the solar industry. “Total job creation projected of 21,592” the April 12, 2010, DELEG presentation claimed. Almost two years later, the large majority of those jobs never saw the light of day. Even if they had come to fruition, they would just be a small part of the entire Michigan economy, says James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. For example, the state of Michigan created 218,137...

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) — Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly once again has vetoed money to fund a commission aimed at developing green jobs. Shelly says legislation that created the Green Economy Commission doesn’t set guidelines on how it would work with the tribe’s executive branch, which has similar goals. He also says the commission is supposed to seek outside funding.

Snips from excerpt website: Japanese solar company Sanyo plans to lay off about 140 employees in California, or about 40 percent of its manufacturing workforce in the United States, as it shifts its strategy in order to compete with large rivals, particularly those from China. The company, which is part of Panasonic, is buiding a large factory in Malaysia that will make wafers and turn them into solar cells and then panels. Panasonic plans to invest 45 billion yen (about $580 million) in the new factory. A fellow manufacturer in Japan, Sumco, announced Friday it would get out of the...

The Obama administration directed $185.8 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to California to help families boost their home energy savings, create jobs and move toward energy independence. Oakland and San Francisco may risk having to return some of the weatherization money, in part since their programs were slow to start. In San Francisco, officials initially reported they had failed to weatherize a single unit by the end of last year but last month told the department the city had completed 300 units. At the end of 2011, Oakland had received $4 million in stimulus funds but had...

The program has shown poor results, and the agency that oversees training has stopped referring people. Government-funded training for so-called green jobs has come to a near standstill in Snohomish County, having produced lackluster results. Nationwide, about $500 million in Recovery Act funds were allocated to train nearly 125,000 people for green careers. Nearly a year and a half later, the audit found, only 52,762 people had been trained and 8,035 had found jobs. The program's underwhelming success rate, both nationally and locally, has people worried. The modest success rate of green training programs didn't come as a surprise to...

Posted by Gateway Guest Blogger on Thursday, February 2, 2012, 5:50 PM Posted by The P/Oed Patriot Accoridng to You Tube: “Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, goes on Fox Business to discuss the Obama Administration’s failed investments of taxpayer dollars into ‘green’ programs.”

While Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich savage each other and just as Rick Santorum releases his own hard-hitting ad against Gingrich, Karl Rove’s nonprofit Crossroads GPS keeps the focus on Barack Obama with a $500,000 weeklong ad buy on national cable.As Ed wrote when the group released its first ad, anybody interested to defeat Obama needs to keep the attacks on his crony capitalism coming. It’s not just that it’s an easy target. His tendency to reward insiders is also revealing of his overall preference for government interference. This is a president who by his actions suggests he thinks government...

Even before he took the oath of office, Barack Obama embraced the financial crisis of 2008.  In the words of his then Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” and Obama saw the recession as an opportunity for him to play investor picking winners and losers with hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars.  This was his moment to “transform” the American economy to match his vision for a brave new world.  Lavishing billions on green technology was high on Obama’s list of favorites.  In just three years, his Administration has pumped $80 billion into...

Time's up Saturday on the White House-ordered review of Energy Department loan guarantees, but the assessment won't be made public right away. Herb Allison is expected to turn in his findings on Monday on the controversial now-bankrupt California solar company Solyndra. After that, Obama officials plan to "take some time" to review its recommendations before releasing them, an administration official said Friday. Allison's review won’t look at specific decisions involving loan guarantees like Solyndra. Instead, White House lawyers said earlier this month that Allison “is focused on evaluating the current state of the DOE loan guarantee portfolio."

Obama-backed electric car battery-maker files for bankruptcy By Andrew Restuccia - 01/26/12 11:55 AM ET An Indiana-based energy-storage company, whose subsidiary received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department, filed for bankruptcy Thursday. Ener1 is asking a federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in equity funding. “This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company,” Ener1 CEO Alex Sorokin said in a news release. “We are extremely pleased to have the strong support of our primary investors and lenders to substantially reduce the company’s...

Mitt Romney penned an op-ed in the Orange County Register Monday carrying the new line of attack on President Obama's energy policy: the Solyndra collapse is more evidence he wrote that the government "shouldn't be playing venture capitalist" when it comes to alternative energy projects. "It's not merely that government bureaucrats are bad at picking winners" he wrote. "The very process invites cronyism and outright corruption." But Romney is a private-sector venture capitalist by vocation, and during his tenure as Massachusetts Governor, he set up a program almost exactly like the ones he's now denouncing. In 2003 Romney launched the...

Danish wind turbine maker Vestas will cut 2,335 jobs in a bid to restore profitability after rising costs wiped out its 2011 earnings. Vestas Wind Systems A/S said the cuts, about a tenth of its workforce, would help it reduce costs by more than 150 million euros ($190.3 million) by year-end. Another 1,600 jobs could go at U.S. plants if a tax credit for renewable energy is not extended. The world's biggest wind turbine maker is battling fierce competition, including from Chinese rivals , as well as the threat of subsidy cuts for renewable energy by hard-pressed governments forced to...

Michigan economic development refundable tax credit (subsidy) “winner” GlobalWatt, Inc. faces a January 9 eviction from its Saginaw facility for failure to pay rent. In 2009, the solar module manufacturing firm was awarded $42 million in state and local government financial favors, thanks in part to applications that contained misrepresentations, as reported by the Mackinac Center in September 2010. In its bid to gain government subsidies in Michigan, GlobalWatt misrepresented up-front incentives allegedly available to it from the state of Texas, suggesting that if Michigan didn’t produce some corporate welfare benefits the firm would instead locate there. But Texas officials...

Energy Policy: Congress let the corn-based fuel's tax credits expire when it adjourned, but continuing mandates for its use means pump prices will go even higher and the money saved will be spent elsewhere. Subsidies for ethanol expired over the weekend, ironically just days before the Iowa caucuses. In their 33 years of existence, ethanol subsidies, the original poster child for crony capitalism, with an estimated cost of at least $45 billion and an annual price tag in recent years of $6 billion, have been a political sacred cow, letting farm state politicians bring home the bacon in exchange for...

When we hear the words “jet fuel,” we tend to think in terms of exotic, volatile mixtures, something akin to that which sends top fuel dragsters roaring down a quarter-mile track. In reality, jet propulsion fuel is pretty ordinary stuff. Depending on the type, it can be nothing more than the same kerosene we used to put in lanterns. So when I heard that the Navy was now paying as much as $16 a gallon for some of its jet fuel, every alarm on my internal radar sounded off in a deafening squeal. My first call naturally went to my...

There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling. Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable. There were always known to be additional untapped reserves of oil and gas in the petroleum-rich Gulf of Mexico, off America’s shores, and in the American West and Alaska....

It’s another day, and another round of layoffs by a recipient of millions of dollars under the Obama Administration’s renewable energy initiatives, administered by the mismanaged Department of Energy. This time the Recovery Act largesse – taken out of the hide of taxpayers – went to A123 Systems, Inc. The Massachusetts-based energy storage company was given $249.1 million to help launch two battery-manufacturing plants in Michigan. A123 also received grants and tax credits from the state that could total more than $135 million. In a separate federal grant as a subcontractor for another grantee, A123 received nearly $30 million...

Battery maker A123 Systems, which has been celebrated as one of Michigan's biggest alternative energy successes, laid off 125 workers at its Livonia and Romulus battery plants this week, according to a report by the Observer & Eccentric. It was not immediately clear whether there were additional cuts at the company's research-and-development center Ann Arbor's Research Park, where the company has about 35 workers. A123 spokesman Dan Borgasano told the Observer & Eccentric that the company expects "to be calling these people back in six months or less" and attributed the move to a reduced battery order from California electric...

Boondoggles: With the administration's approval, the recipient of another half-billion-dollar loan to build electric cars is outsourcing the work and any jobs that might be created or saved to Finland. The Fisker Karma electric car, heralded two years ago by Vice President Joe Biden as the future of the American auto industry, may prove to be another administration "bad bet," just as President Obama called Solyndra, heralded by Biden as the future of American energy. "Folks, we're making a bet," Biden said Oct. 27, 2009, using a familiar administration metaphor. "We're making a bet on the future, we're making a...

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones...

Batteries in Electric Cars Examined After Chevy Volt Fire By NICK BUNKLEY DETROIT — Federal safety regulators said Friday that they are examining lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars after a Chevrolet Volt caught fire three weeks after it underwent a crash test. General Motors, which began selling the Volt plug-in hybrid last December, defended it as “a safe car” and said the fire would not have occurred if G.M.’s protocols for deactivating the battery after the crash had been followed. In a statement, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it is working with all automakers to develop post-crash...

A series of emails provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee from individuals tied to Solyndra offer striking characterizations about running strategy with the White House to secure assistance for the now-bankrupt solar energy firm. Emails among George Kaiser, head of the George Kaiser Family Foundation; Ken Levit, the executive director of the Foundation; and Steve Mitchell, who manages Argonaut Private Equity and was a member of Solyndra's board; show that Vice President Joe Biden's office were very gung-ho. "They about had an orgasm in Biden's office when we mentioned Solyndra," reads a Feb. 27, 2010, email from Levit...

General Motors has staked much of its credibility on the Chevy Volt. GM has a goal of selling 10,000 of the vehicles in 2011 and is only about half way there with two months remaining. Ad spending seems to have ramped up faster than sales though with much of GM's marketing dollars going towards Volt commercials while only 1,108 of the vehicles sold in October. I can't remember ever seeing as many TV ads for a vehicle that has sold in such low numbers. Despite the low proportionate sales to hype ratio for the Volt, sites like Mother Nature...

“Energy independence.”Doesn’t that sound like a great idea? Unfortunately, in the era of Barack Obama the goal of enabling the United States to meet its own energy needs has been subverted by some very destructive politics. First, the term “energy independence” has been confused with the term “green energy.” While some people use the two expressions synonymously, the Obama Administration has gradually phased-out references to “energy independence” and moved towards “green energy” references exclusively. This language shift from the Obama Administration raises some important questions: are we no longer seeking to become “energy independent?” And if we are still seeking...

According to a report in the Midland Daily News, the now defunct Evergreen Solar plant in Midland is set to go on the bankruptcy auction block. Scott Walker, a local economic development official, told the Daily News that he hopes the facility can be put to use again in a new way. Perhaps Mr. Walker should talk to Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, who sponsored a bill that would allow a company to manufacture incandescent light bulbs in the state, notwithstanding a federal ban on light bulbs of more than 40 watts that use traditional technology. House Bill 4815, which...

Yesterday, another shoe dropped in the chronicles of the Obama administration’s crony capitalism. A start-up electric car company with ties to Al Gore got a $529 million loan guarantee from Obama’s Department of Energy to build luxury electric cars...in Finland! Leaving aside the fact that to date only two of these $97,000 cars have been sold (one of them to a movie star), we might at least hope that this ridiculous exercise in the government picking winners minus any competitive, transparent process (Al Gore’s venture cap firm) and losers (the taxpayers subsidizing a car no one wants) would produce manufacturing jobs in the...

ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS Today, 9:47 PM EDT With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work. Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job has been outsourced to Finland.

We wondered whether the mainstream media would start connecting the dots on Solyndra and Barack Obama’s failed “green jobs” stimulus. ABC News has done a great job reporting on the scandal itself, including its connection to an Obama campaign bundler and the remarkable manner in which taxpayer funds were subordinated to George Kaiser’s investment by the Department of Energy — in direct contravention of Congressional mandates protecting taxpayer-funded loan guarantees. The first major media outlet to view Solyndra in the larger context of stimulus failure turns out to be Newsweek — and Eleanor Clift, surprisingly (via Instapundit): The article is...

When Tesla’s application was before DOE loan managers in 2009, there were many indications it was not even in need of the loan. Tesla’s private investors included Google co-founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page, former eBay President Jeff Skoll, Hyatt heir Nick Pritzker, and VC firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Capricorn Management, and the Bay Area Equity Fund (managed by JPMorgan Chase). In May 2009, Daimler Chrysler took a stake in Tesla for a reported $50 million. Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments reportedly bought 40% of Daimler’s investment.

The United States is spending tens of millions of federal economic stimulus dollars to replace streetlights and traffic lights nationwide with energy-efficient ones made mostly in Asia, a Tribune-Review investigation found. An exemption in the "Buy American" clause of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- legislation President Obama championed to create American jobs -- says components and subcomponents of green-energy products need not actually be U.S.-made. As a result, the Trib found, many products needed to make streetlights, traffic lights and other high-tech products are manufactured in China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Before his American Jobs Act failed to pass a Senate cloture vote Tuesday, President Barack Obama made a last-ditch speech to talk up his troubled bill. Not once did Obama mention "green jobs" -- his erstwhile jobs of the future. Smart move. Obama's 2009 $787 billion stimulus package included $500 million for training programs that were supposed to create new green jobs for thousands of middle-class Americans. Last month, however, the Department of Labor's inspector general conducted an audit that found that as of June 30 -- with one-third of the funds spent and more than 50,000 participants -- only...

Low demand continues to hit the global solar market. As price drops continue, some solar firms have been reportedly trying to sell their in-house equipment. However, demand for the equipment is low. Oversupply continues to cast a cloud over the solar market. Many firms have been forced to sell solar products and materials with low prices to maintain cash flows. As the fourth quarter is the traditional low season and lowly-priced solar products have failed to stimulate demand, most firms have been unable to operate at full capacity, leaving little room for used equipment in the market. During previous boom...

Green Jobs Are a National ScandalMore bankruptcies are to come. Solargate is just the tip of the iceberg.This cliché within a mixed metaphor reflects the madness of President Obama’s obsession with “green jobs.� It would be bad enough if this disaster were limited to possible criminality at Solyndra — the solar-panel maker that Obama stimulated with loan guarantees, despite repeated warnings about its rickety finances.“The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,� Obama proclaimed at its Fremont, Calif., headquarters on May 26, 2010. Not quite. Solyndra’s August 31 bankruptcy transformed 1,100 green jobs into pink slips...

An Illinois liquidation firm has been named to handle the auction of former Evergreen Solar plants in Massachusetts and Michigan. Hilco Industrial said in a statement Monday that it had been appointed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to take bids on the Evergreen facilities in Devens, Mass., and Midland, Mich., including all related assets housed in the plants. The solar energy company closed the Devens plant in January and moved manufacturing operations to China. It had previously received more than $20 million in grants and $11 million in tax and lease initiatives from Massachusetts.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu denied Thursday that bankrupt Fremont solar manufacturer Solyndra was under serious consideration for a second government loan, and strongly defended the loan guarantee program as essential to maintaining U.S. competitiveness in clean energy. The federal government has prodded investment in strategic industrial sectors for at least a century, Chu said. "Other countries have figured that out," he said. "They're copying from our playbook." Documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee showed that Solyndra had applied for a second loan, of $469 million, a week after receiving its first loan, and that the loan remained...

The head of the Energy Department’s controversial loan guarantee program has decided to step down, department officials confirmed to The Washington Post on Thursday. Jonathan Silver, who was named executive director of DOE’s Loan Programs Office in November 2009, has come under fire from congressional Republicans since the solar manufacturer Solyndra declared bankruptcy Aug. 31 after receiving a $535 million federal loan guarantee. While DOE made the initial loan to Solyndra before Silver took the program’s helm — a point he made repeatedly during his congressional testimony last month — he remained the administration’s point person for the embattled initiative....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says the U.S. must continue to give clean energy companies loan guarantees in order to compete with Chinese subsidies that entice companies to move offshore. Obama is defending his administration's decision to give a $528 million loan guarantee to a solar energy company that later collapsed.

Ever since Solyndra capsized, taking $528 million in taxpayer cash with it, politicians across the country have been lining up to bash the federal program that gave the Fremont company its loan. But with a few notable exceptions, most of the criticism has come from outside California. One possible reason? California scored more of the program’s loans — and more money — than any other state. Together, those seven California companies won loans and loan guarantees worth roughly $6 billion. In addition, three businesses based outside the state received a total of about $4.2 billion to build large-scale solar power...

It's not as if we haven't already learned what a failure Barack Obama's green-tech stimulus has been in creating jobs. Solyndra collapsed with over a half-billion in taxpayer money out the door, wiping out a thousand jobs with it. After spending $17.2 billion of the $38.6 billion allocated for green-jobs stimulation, the programs have created a total of just over 3500 jobs, for a price tag of $4.85 million each. Now the Inspector General at the Department of Labor has recommended the shutdown of a green-jobs training program that has only placed 15% of its participants: A $500 million green...

John Rossomando Follow John on Twitter So President Obama has no regrets on Solyndra despite the mounting evidence that his administration knew there were problems with the loan guarantee before it collapsed. “I don’t have any regrets because if you look at the overall portfolio of loan guarantees, it’s doing well,” Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview on Monday. “Hindsight is always 20/20.” But when you are the president who has racked up over $4 trillion dollars on Uncle Sam’s credit card, $535 million is just another statistic. It’s easy to say hindsight is 20/20 when there weren’t...

The United States faces a clear choice of pushing forward quickly to refine solar, wind and other renewable energy sources or continue to ignore the less obvious costs of reliance on oil, coal, and nuclear energy, Robert Kennedy Jr. told a group of environmentalists Sunday afternoon. In discussing other costs that are often ignored, Kennedy cited the process of transporting coal from West Virginia. The government spends millions of dollars per mile to fill thousands of miles of road in the state with 22 inches of asphalt, Kennedy said. "Coal claims to be cheap but is probably the most catastrophically...

President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan. According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds.

President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan. According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds. At the time, the Associated Press reported that the...

President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan. According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds.