Solar company bankrupt despite 'win-win' DOE loan

By Joel Gehrke

In keeping with the recent trend of so-called green companies going into the red, another solar energy company supported by President Obama’s top administration officials declared bankruptcy today.

Solar Trust for America received $2.1 billion in conditional loan guarantees  from the Department of Energy — “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project,” according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu — for a project near Blythe, Calif., but declared bankruptcy within a year. It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded.

Read the rest at the Washington Examiner.

25 Responses to Solar company bankrupt despite 'win-win' DOE loan

  1. Rob N. Hood April 3, 2012 at 1:46 pm #

    “It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded.” Maybe this info would be good to have PRIOR to posting it as a scandal directed toward anyone. Just a thought.

  2. NEILIO April 3, 2012 at 6:30 pm #

    How many is this now? I’ve lost count. I have to say that it is my observation that the “green energy” sector is not panning out. I thought “green energy” jobs were going to save us from the bad economy. I guess they were wrong about that too.
    Question. Which “green energy” source can get a 747 jumbo jet off of the ground and fly it half way accross the planet?
    Answer. It’s a trick question, so far there isn’t one that can even get a 747 off of the ground, much less fly it half way around the world.

  3. Rob N. Hood April 4, 2012 at 7:00 am #

    Wow- tricky question. BTW-what else have “they” been wrong about?

    • NEILIO April 4, 2012 at 5:38 pm #

      I don’t know. My ignorance is legendary. Perhaps you could enlighten me wise one.

  4. NEILIO April 4, 2012 at 9:06 pm #

    Question. What do all these companies have in common?
    Solyndra, Evergreen Solar Inc., SpectraWatt, Mountain Plaza Inc., Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Co., Ener1, Range Fuels, Solar Trust, Beacon.

    Answer. They are all “green energy” companies. Oh, and they all recieved money from the government. Oh, and they are all bankrupt.

    • NEILIO April 4, 2012 at 9:08 pm #

      Woops, I should have said they WERE all “green energy” companies.

    • Rob N. Hood April 5, 2012 at 7:05 am #

      Ok, so that’s what you meant by “what else they’ve gotten wrong.” That appears to be basically the same wrong. Sorry for my confusion with your use of language. What’s this compared to other new companies and the rates of bankruptcy? Pretty close I bet. Maybe even when the newness, give or take is calculated in too, I don’t know, but would guess it stands up in comparison, not to mention the state of the overall economy at this time. But, hey, I guess some questions and details are just nit-picking…? And “prattering”…

      • NEILIO April 5, 2012 at 5:49 pm #

        My apologies for not being concise, it’s just that the answer to your question is so obvious I thought you were kidding.

  5. NEILIO April 5, 2012 at 5:35 am #

    Uh oh, there seems to be a glitch in the Arctic. You know, the sea ice that is supposed to be on track to be completely ice free by the summer of 2015? Well, it has appeared to gone off that track:
    http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

    • Halgroar April 5, 2012 at 9:08 pm #

      Neilio I give you credit for putting up with Rob’s bull. He has been preaching the same crud here for literally years. He is “the Lefty” at the party that won’t go home. He has no life I guess. Anyway, I like your posts so keep it up and don’t let RNH get to you! (Hard to do!)

  6. Rob N. Hood April 6, 2012 at 9:00 am #

    Georgia’s double-reactor Vogtle project has been sold on the basis of federal loan guarantees. Last year President Obama promised the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power, $8.33 billion in financing from an $18.5 billion fund that had been established at the Department of Energy by George W. Bush. Until last week most industry observers had assumed the guarantees were a done deal. But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, has publicly complained that the Office of Management and Budget may be requiring terms that are unacceptable to the builders.

    Southern and its supporters remain ostensibly optimistic that the deal will be done. But the climate for loan guarantees has changed since this one was promised. The $535 million collapse of Solyndra prompted a rash of angry Congressional hearings and cast a long shadow over the whole range of loan guarantees for energy projects. Though the Vogtle deal comes from a separate fund, skepticism over stalled negotiations is rising.

  7. NEILIO April 7, 2012 at 12:24 am #

    It is just despicable what is going on in CA. Read the whole story.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/06/the-ugly-battle-between-rural-residents-and-alternative-energy-mandates-in-california/#more-60851
    “In 2006 California’s Senate Bill 107 codified a requirement that by 2010 all electricity retailers in the state were to procure 20% of their electricity from “renewables.” That same year L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich established Nuisance Abatement Teams that started combing the Mojave desert hitting isolated residents with ever-expanding lists of code violations, imposing whatever it took to drive residents out, and they made their intentions perfectly clear:

    As her ordeal wore on, she heard one agent, looking inside their comfortable cabin, say to another: “This one’s a real shame — this is a real nice one.”

    A “shame” because the authorities eventually would enact some of the most powerful rules imaginable against rural residents: the order to bring the home up to current codes or dismantle the 26-year-old cabin, leaving only bare ground.

    “They wouldn’t let me grandfather in the water tank,” Jacques Dupuis says. “It is so heart-wrenching because there was a way to salvage this, but they wouldn’t work with me. It was, ‘Tear it down. Period.’?”-“

  8. NEILIO April 7, 2012 at 8:51 am #

    Heres a story that could be under two different headings. One could be “It’s not our fault!” Another could be “How little we actually understand how it works.”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2125219/Could-dust-fault-climate-change-New-research-links-particles-space-changing-weather-conditions.html
    “Cosmic dust that fills space could be playing a part in climate change according to new scientific research.
    Far from being empty, space is made up of tons of dust caused in part by collisions between asteroids.

    So much of space is filled with dust particles in fact it is thought that if all the material between the Sun and Jupiter were compressed, it could form a moon stretching 25km across.

    The new research program has been started as scientists try to see how much of this dust enters the Earth’s atmosphere – in a bid to find out how it might affect our climate.”

  9. Rob N. Hood April 7, 2012 at 12:49 pm #

    Or “Science is an on-going process.” Or “We still have a lot to learn.” Or “Why didn’t God leave us a How-To manual?”

  10. Rob N. Hood April 7, 2012 at 12:51 pm #

    Or “Since we don’t know everything, let’s pretend we don’t know anything.”

  11. Joe April 11, 2012 at 9:25 pm #

    You “pretend” well all knowing. Simply an observation.

  12. Rob N. Hood April 12, 2012 at 7:01 am #

    You pretend well that your assumptions are more than meaningless.

  13. Rob N. Hood April 12, 2012 at 2:26 pm #

    It’s been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved Bank of America from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they’d be beneath your average street thug.”

    They’re in deep trouble, but they won’t die, because our current president, like the last one, apparently believes it’s better to project a false image of financial soundness than to allow one of our oligarchic banks to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. Last year, the Federal Reserve allowed Bank of America to move a huge portfolio of dangerous bets into a side of the company that happens to be FDIC-insured, putting all of us on the hook for as much as $55 trillion in irresponsible gambles.

  14. Joe April 14, 2012 at 9:15 pm #

    I’m heavily in financial arrangements. Sense you post what you read from progressive/liberal sources and not your knowledge or verbiage which I see is not very detailed. Simply based upon talking points from others on liberal posts. I assume that my observation is correct?

  15. Rob N. Hood April 16, 2012 at 7:09 am #

    Joe- I thought we had established this already. I cannot think of ONE or your assumptions that has been correct. But of course don’t let that stop you (or even slow you down). It is the Right that has mastered the talking point. it is the silly Liberals who attempt to interject reality and fact into the brick wall you call your mind.

  16. Rob N. Hood April 16, 2012 at 7:11 am #

    BTW- are you (trying) to say Obama is not guilty of the above? Or just that Bush wasn’t?

  17. Rob N. Hood April 17, 2012 at 7:03 am #

    Is that a too deep or complicated question?

  18. Rob N. Hood April 19, 2012 at 7:06 am #

    Once again the silence of the lambs.

  19. Rob N. Hood May 4, 2012 at 12:56 pm #

    “Entitlements.” When referring to the benefits provided by certain government programs for which people have paid for many years, like, for example, Social Security and Medicare, many politicians, of both major parties, use the term “entitlement.” The (strong) implication is that someone is getting something for nothing, or is getting something only because of who they are (often “poor” or otherwise somehow “undeserving”). But no, they are getting it because they have paid for it. On the other hand, if a hedge fund manager gets $4 billion in a year (and one did in 2011), feeling that he is entitled to such a payout because he is such a smart and grand fellow, even though he “earned” it just by trading pieces of paper in an unregulated market, that’s called “fair compensation.” And so, the term “entitlements” should be replaced by something like “earned benefits.”

  20. Jason C. Scott May 21, 2012 at 4:26 am #

    Every president has to be scrutinized for what they have done including president Obama. The fact is, he’s throwing money at something he has no knowledge of. He thinks he can choose who wins and loses verses allowing the free market to handle it. So just admit President Obama wasted our tax dollars on something that isn’t working, being a democrat doesn’t make Obama any smarter than anyone else.

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