AP Photo

Monday’s news that yet another solar company that received Energy Department backing is filing for bankruptcy protection at first looked like the Obama administration had funded another expensive loser.

But unlike Solyndra’s high-profile and costly flameout, this time the news came with a twist that tripped up wire services, talking heads and members of Congress.

The company, Solar Trust, never took the money….

Even The Associated Press and Reuters got it wrong.

When the media latches on to a narrative, mistakes happen. Why? Confirmation bias sets in, so reporters and editors don’t do the same amount of due diligence as they would on a story that strikes their intuition — their nose for news — as incorrect.

The media mistakenly believes unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases are unlikely to have a catastrophic impact, so they downplay the story and play up the 1 in 20 articles that doesn’t show  the situation is more dire than scientists thought.

Now, the media erroneously thinks solar power is flaming out and that government support for solar isn’t a good idea. They have wildly overhyped Solyndra, ignoring anything that would undermine the narrative, such as the December Bloomberg report that concluded: “The focus on Solyndra is not proportional to its impact.”

So I suppose it’s no surprise that leading news outlets got the Solar Trust story wrong. Politico notes in its story, “A $2 billion solar mistake — from the media“ that the error underscores “the eagerness of many in the media to discover the next Solyndra.”

Precisely. In this case, their error was abetted by the right-wing disinformation machine:

Read more

by Richard W. Caperton

Here we go again.

After spending the last year investigating the scandal-free DOE Loan Guarantee Program, House Republicans have thrown in the towel.  Instead of getting down to serious business, though (like, extending the Production Tax Credit), they’ve decided to waste more time and taxpayer money investigating another clean energy incentive: the Section 1603 tax credit reimbursement program.

Here’s what Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had to say on this topic yesterday:

“You know, I made clear earlier this year that oversight of the Obama administration’s policies on jobs, on the economy, and its spending taxpayer dollars was going to be a priority. Two weeks ago, Chairman Upton at the Energy & Commerce Committee began looking into the Department of Energy’s Section 1603 grant program, a Solyndra-style ‘stimulus’ program that offers cash payments to renewable energy companies. More than $10 billion – that’s with a ‘b’ — $10 billion has been spent on this, and Secretary Chu said it created ‘tens of thousands of jobs,’ except there’s no evidence to support that.

“The Energy & Commerce Committee set a deadline for today for the Energy Department & Treasury Department to produce documents or information about what taxpayers got for their $10 billion. The administration thus far has failed to provide the committee with any information to justify this claim.

“Listen, the American people continue to ask the question ‘Where are the jobs?’ They deserve answers and they deserve the truth.”

Fair enough. Americans deserve to know the truth, and here it is: the 1603 program led to thousands of clean energy jobs, leveraged billions of dollars in private investment, and helped clean energy industries grow despite tough economic times.

You know how you can tell that Boehner is not interested in the truth?  The entire premise of this investigation is based on a misleading statement, that the 1603 program is a “Solyndra-style” program.

Read more

Marking the one-year anniversary of the Solyndra investigation, the Republican National Committee released an infographic on President Obama’s supposed “insider deals.”

But after 187,000 documents, 10 hearings, and multiple independent media investigations concluding there was no evidence of political “pressure” to approve the loan guarantee, Republicans show no signs of ending the political games around Solyndra. In response to the RNC, Climate Progress created its own infographic that puts the politics-infused investigation into perspective:

And if you hadn’t seen it, here’s the RNC’s version:

Read more

After 185,000 pages of documents, ten hearings, and two subpoenas, we still haven’t found any evidence improper behavior

by Richard W. Caperton

Today, the fruitless investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee turns one year old. Sadly, fruit is the traditional gift on the fourth anniversary. So what do you give on a first-anniversary to someone who already demanded all the paper they could ever need for the rest of their lives?

On February 17, 2011, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns sent a letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu requesting all DOE communication about the decision to issue a loan guarantee to Solyndra.  Thus began the most over-hyped, over-covered, and over-examined stories in recent memory — including Tim Tebow.

Since Upton and Stearns sent their letter, the House has received 185,000 pages of documents, held ten hearings, heard from 26 witnesses, and issued two subpoenas. Despite this, they have yet to find any evidence of improper behavior.

The key figure in the House investigation has been Stearns. Not since Ponce de Leon went searching for the Fountain of Youth has a Floridian led a less successful hunt for an illusive prize. To be fair to de Leon, at least he knew what he was looking for and had he found it, his youth would have been restored. Stearns didn’t even know what a loan guarantee was as recently as October, and this investigation is definitely getting old.

It’s not as if the House Republicans are the only people pursuing this story. The mainstream press has devoted countless column inches and hours of coverage to the Solyndra non-story, while virtually ignoring real scandals that are a full order of magnitude bigger in dollar terms.

While House Republicans have wasted day after day in hearings, independent analyses continue to find that the DOE loan guarantee program is actually exceeding expectations. Most recently, Herb Allison — John McCain’s former national finance chair — led a team of accountants and auditors who found that the Program will cost a full $2 billion less than DOE initially expected. This follows analyses by Bloomberg Government, who found “The focus on Solyndra is not proportional to its impact,” and the Congressional Research Service, who found that the great majority of guarantees were extremely low risk.

Instead of wasting more staff time and taxpayer dollars on a fishing expedition for political scandal, it’s time for the House to do things that can actually move clean energy forward and put Americans back to work, like extending the Production Tax Credit, passing a clean energy standard, and creating a Clean Energy Deployment Administration. That would be a gift all Americans would welcome.

Richard W. Caperton is director of clean energy finance at the Center for American Progress.

In an independent review, John McCain’s former National Finance Chairman finds the loan guarantee program was cost-effective for taxpayers

by Richard W. Caperton

Take a deep breath, because what I’m about to tell you may be shocking: loan guarantees for energy have been successful, cost-effective investments.

That’s the message from Herb Allison, former national finance chairman for John McCain, who led a team of accountants and auditors in conducting an independent analysis of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program.  Allison and his team found that, despite the hysteria around Solyndra, this program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected.

Today, the White House released Allison’s review.  It includes an analysis of every loan guarantee issued from DOE, as well as recommendations for managing this portfolio of guarantees going forward.  This independent review was requested by the White House in late 2011, to make sure that the DOE loan guarantee portfolio was cost-effective for taxpayers.

The Allison review confirms what we already know, thanks to the Congressional Research Service and Bloomberg Government.  Instead of looking at individual investments, CRS examined the entire DOE portfolio, and concluded that the overwhelming majority of the portfolio was in electrical generation projects, which DOE structured to have very low risk.  Bloomberg Government took that a step forward, and concluded that the media’s incessant focus on Solyndra was “not proportional to its impact.”

There are multiple reasons why the risks to taxpayers from this program are so low.  First, most of the guarantees went to support projects that have very secure contracts to sell their power to investment-grade rated utilities. Allison and his team of independent auditors endorsed the methodology that DOE initially used to evaluate these types of projects, writing, “The Independent Consultant used the same Nine Criteria as did DOE because, in the opinion of the Independent Consultant, they comprise the salient factors for evaluating the credits and are substantially similar to the criteria that would be employed by private sector credit analysts for these types of loans.”

Read more

Perhaps a bit flustered from losing three primary races a day earlier to fellow GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney got his energy talking points confused at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday.

Speaking about his plan to encourage domestic energy production, Romney got the solar company Solyndra and the Keystone tar sands pipeline mixed up:

“My course for America is to become energy secure and to open up that Solyndra – that, that pipeline, excuse me, the Keystone pipeline,” Romney told about 400 supporters at a stone importing company in northern Atlanta. “Not Solyndra. … The Keystone pipeline to get energy here in this country.”

The small stumble could have been a good opportunity for Romney to throw some support behind solar as an important domestic energy source. After all, the industry was the “fastest growing in America” for two years in a row, supports more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in all 50 states, and accounted for a $1.9 billion trade surplus in 2010.

Instead, Romney quickly fell back to his talking points and called federal loan guarantees an example of “crony capitalism.”

The Solyndra slip up is not the first for a Republican presidential candidate. Last December, Texas Governor and former candidate Rick Perry thought Solyndra (which he called “Solynda”) was a country that America gave money to.

 

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has released a new smear ad criticizing President Obama on the administration’s investment in the solar company Solyndra. The $500,000 ad is scheduled to run throughout the week, nationwide.

As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, his administration is committed to the promise of American clean energy, even though some companies may fail to others in the marketplace. 180,000 pages of documents from a Congressional investigation confirmed that the Department of Energy’s investment in the advanced technology of Solyndra was based on the merits.

The group, created by Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, launched their 35-second TV spot dishonestly painting “the Solyndra loan guarantee as a corrupt deal aimed at benefiting the president’s campaign donors,” the Hill reports:

“He gave his political backers billions – a big government fiasco- infused with politics at every level,” says a female narrator over the obligatory “SE7EN”-style, cut-and-paste imagery typical of super-PAC attack ads. “Laid off worker: forgotten. Typical Washington. Tell President Obama we need jobs not more inside deals.”

This is the second Crossroads GPS attack ad that uses Solyndra as a scapegoat for the clean economy.

Fossil-fueled conservatives are dead set on turning their imagined Solyndra scandal into a coordinated attack on the clean energy industry. The Crossroads GPS campaign is only the latest in a string of attack ads meant to play up the Solyndra bankruptcy as a potential liability for Obama in the coming election year. To date, Americans for Prosperity, the front group for the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers, has spent over $8 million in battleground states — Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — on two intentionally misleading ads taking aim at President Obama over Solyndra.

-Fatima Najiy