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An investigation by the Energy and Commerce Committee has revealed that, for political reasons, the White House rushed a $528 billion federal loan to solar firm Solyndra, which went bankrupt two weeks ago. Taxpayers should be outraged. Not just about Solyndra, but about the inherent corruption of government's entire push to pick winners and losers in the energy sector, and micromanage the economy in general. In case anyone has missed it, here's a refresher on what happened with Solyndra. After the Department of Energy had tentatively approved Solyndra’s loan, White House officials unduly pressured the Office of Management and Budget...

Political fury over a failed $535 million loan guarantee to an Obama administration-backed solar company is threatening to poison the well for future green investments. The Obama administration is doubling down on its support for renewable energy, stressing that it will move forward on more loans like the one to Solyndra, the California-based company that announced its bankruptcy late last month. In fact, as many as 14 new loan guarantees from the Energy Department — nine of which are for solar projects — could be finalized by the end of the month. But congressional Republicans have signaled they’re prepared...

Obama Fundraiser Llnked To Loan Program That Aided Solyndra The revelation is likely to spur new inquiries about the solar company's political influence. Separately, California lawmakers seek investigation of a state tax break the firm received. By Matea Gold and Stuart Pfeifer September 17, 2011 The White House faced mounting political complications as a second top fundraiser for President Obama was linked to a federal loan guarantee program that backed a now-bankrupt Silicon Valley solar energy company, and as two California lawmakers called for investigations of a state tax break granted to the firm. Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the...

Failed solar panel maker Solyndra’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that seven months after the Obama administration’s Department of Energy approved a $535 million federal loan guarantee, Solyndra applied for a second one valued at $469 million. “On September 11, 2009, we applied for a second loan guarantee from the DOE, in the amount of approximately $469 million, to partially fund Phase II,” Solyndra wrote in a report it filed with the SEC on December 18, 2009. “If we are unable to obtain the DOE guaranteed loan in whole or in part, we intend to fund any financing shortfall...

Obama's Solar ScandalHe's tainted by the loan guarantees to Solyndra. One factor favoring President Obama’s reelection, according to a recent article by political scientist Alan Lichtman, is the absence of scandal in his administration. Lichtman may have spoken too soon. The reason can be encapsulated in a single word: Solyndra. That’s the name of a company that manufactured solar panels in Fremont, Calif. (which voted 71 percent for Obama in 2008). It was the first company to receive a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy as part of the 2009 stimulus package. This wasn’t small potatoes. The loan guarantee...

Solyndra, the solar panel company whose highly publicized failure and consequent investigation by federal authorities has flashed across headlines recently, isn't the only business to go belly up after benefiting from a piece of the $800 billion economic stimulus package passed in 2009. At least four other companies have received stimulus funding only to later file for bankruptcy, and two of those were working on alternative energy. Evergreen Solar Inc., indirectly received $5.3 million through a state grant to open a $450 million facility in 2007 that employed roughly 800 people. The company, once a rock star in the solar...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Residential solar power provider SolarCity and the U.S. government announced a deal Wednesday to put solar panels on military housing units, a move that could double the number of rooftop solar power installed in the United States. The complex plan calls for SolarCity to receive a $344 million Department of Energy-backed loan from financiers U.S. Renewables Group and Bank of America. SolarCity will then use the money to put up to 160,000 rooftop solar installations on top of privately run military housing complexes at 124 military bases across 34 states. SolarCity will own and operating the...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration said Wednesday it is providing a loan guarantee for a massive solar energy project that could double the number of glimmering solar panels on residential rooftops in the U.S.The Energy Department said it provided a partial guarantee for a $344 million loan to San Mateo, Calif.-based SolarCity for the SolarStrong Project, which seeks to place solar panels on 160,000 homes across 124 military bases in 33 states."This is the largest domestic residential rooftop solar project in history," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a news release. "This groundbreaking project is expected to create hundreds of...

Last week, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy announced it is extending an $852 million loan guarantee to something called the Genesis Solar Project in California. Genesis, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, will be built on federal land and ultimately employ perhaps 800 people during its construction and 47 people once it is up and running. This would seem to be a lot of money to generate very few jobs at a time when the nation is on the verge of bankruptcy, but the project really isn’t about jobs. It’s the latest in the administration’s attempt to turn us...

In a preview of what’s likely to become a common occurrence in the Obama energy strategy, a California manufacturer of solar systems that was financed by a half-a-billion loan through the Obama administration announced that it would seek bankruptcy protection last week. Last month publicly-traded Evergreen Solar filed for bankruptcy protection as the solar market continues to shake out on declining government handouts and fierce competition. More trouble is expected in the solar industry in the weeks to come. Some of it will come from Congress. "Last February, the House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation. Now that Solyndra has bit the dust, the DOE loan...

Rich Lowry calls it “Obama’s Enron.” Over to you, House Republicans: House investigators said they have uncovered evidence that White House officials became personally involved in an Energy Department review of a hot-button $535 million loan guarantee to the now-failed California solar company Solyndra…“We have learned from our investigation that White House officials monitored Solyndra’s application and communicated with [Department of Energy] and Office of Management and Budget officials during the course of their review,” the letter says…“Here’s the bottom line,” [solar industry analyst Peter] Lynch said. “It costs them $6 to make a unit. They’re selling it for $3....

The 17th century English philosopher, Francis Bacon, once observed that, “knowledge is power. So, here’s some power knowledge that the West has overlooked, but may well contain critical information for jumpstarting Western interest in solar power. It’s based upon more than five decade’s worth of solar research by the sole 20th century competitor to the U.S. for global influence, the USSR. In 1965 the Uzbek Academy of Sciences began publishing the “Geliotekhnika” ("Applied Solar Energy") quarterly journal the former Soviet Union's sole scientific publication devoted to solar power. Topics covered ranged from solar radiation, photovoltaics and solar materials to direct...

Cheap solar panels. The most powerful transistors ever. Even the ability to make a fighter jet invisible. Each of these breakthroughs has been announced in the last two weeks. Each relies on one of the most basic elements mined from the earth. And each could line your pockets with cash if you move quickly enough. They all involve a wonder substance called graphene. It’s made from graphite – the same stuff you find in the center of a pencil. Except graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms. Let’s hopscotch through these new developments… Researchers in India have discovered...

White House misses deadline for solar panels By: Darius Dixon June 21, 2011 09:17 AM EDT The official onset of summer signals the Obama administration's unmet deadline to install solar panels at the world's most famous address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced in October that after a nearly three-decade hiatus. the White House would once again have a solar water-heating system mounted on its roof, as well as photovoltaic cells. Chu said the panels would be up “by the end of this spring." Spring ended Monday, and the panels aren't there. "The Energy Department remains on the...

As the dire news continues to leach out of Fukishima, the silver lining in its nuclear cloud is that renewable energy technologies, despite their daunting start-up costs, are receiving renewed scrutiny. Make no mistake - given the trillions of dollars invested over the last five decades in nuclear energy, the industry and its lobbyists will not go down without a fight, promoting new, “safe” reactor designs, etc. etc. etc. But the Fukushima debacle has finally bared the industry’s darkest secret, it inability to manage its nuclear waste. The six reactor TEPCO Daichi Fukushima stored all its waste onsite, and the...

Researchers at the University of Michigan have made a scientific discovery that is intriguing all on its own but it is the breakthrough’s potential applications in solar power generation that have them excited. According to Stephen Rand, a professor at the university and author of the paper that discusses his team’s discovery in the “Journal of Applied Physics”, the researchers found a way to make an “optical battery” which harnesses the magnetic attributes in light that, until now, scientists didn’t think amounted to much of anything. The report explains that light has both electric and magnetic components but, until now,...

Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System will be world's largest solar power tower plantGoogle announced yesterday that it has invested a large sum of money into a new solar energy power tower plant that will be located in the Mojave Desert in California.  Google is catching a lot of heat lately between the FTC's possible antitrust investigation into the web search giant's internet dominance and Microsoft's problem with Google's "misleading security claims to the government." But with this latest project, Google is investing in a project that is sure to have some positive reviews. The project is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), and Google...

Shale gas supplies may last 250 years and make renewables uneconomic China reportedly has some two-thirds of the US$39-billion global market for solar panels, but it doesn’t use them very much. Why? Because they’re uneconomic. The Chinese subsidize their manufacturers to take advantage of the ultra-expensive alternative energy forced on western consumers via feed-in tariffs. Smart for them, dumb for us, but since everybody is subsidizing renewables, it’s hard to condemn the Chinese. Indeed, the terms “solar panels” and “free trade” don’t belong in the same conceptual time zone, even if they are reportedly an issue at this week’s meetings...

A determined House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo is demanding answers from Gov. Deval Patrick and a top Republican is calling for an independent probe into how the state dropped nearly $60 million in a bad bet on a green energy firm that critics say took the taxpayer money and ran.Evergreen Solar Inc. scored one of the biggest state investments into a private firm in history — only to announce last week it would ax 800 Bay State workers, shutter its state-subsidized factory in Devens and ship operations to China.“I want to sit down and talk to the governor. ... What...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A U.S. conversation group has sued the federal government over its approval of a major solar power plant in the California desert, the latest in a string of challenges to the nation's renewable energy goals from the environmental community.