Mitt Romney’s comment about President Obama’s acumen as a public equity investor: “You pick the losers,” has put Obama’s failed green energy emphasis under the microscope, bringing into question: have any been a success? Well, some haven’t failed, yet.
In our last report, Obama Won’t Admit His Green Energy Failures, we profiled 15 companies that each received funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—the stimulus—and have gone bankrupt. In Wednesday’s debate, Romney listed two of our “bankrupt” list: Solyndra, the best known, and Ener1, now known thanks to Romney; and two that haven’t failed, yet: Fisker and Tesla—both electric vehicle manufacturers.
Fisker and Tesla received their funding from the Advanced Technologies Vehicle Manufacturing Program (ATVM), but they are not the only two green energy stimulus-funded projects that are troubled. Here, in this report, we will profile twenty different companies/projects that received funding from various loan guarantee programs (LGP), grants, and tax incentives. These are projects that are still functioning, but are facing difficulties.
Because of the debate exposure, we’ll look first at Fisker and Tesla. Then we’ll move to those that were funded through the Department of Energy (DOE) LGPs 1703 and 1705. Some of these companies/projects were profiled in our summer green-energy crony-corruption reports that focused on projects that shared these traits: junk bond-rated projects, Department of Interior (DOI) fast-tracked approvals, and politically connected. In these cases, we’ll link back to the original report that offers much more detail than we’ll include here. The last group, listed in alphabetical order, includes companies/projects that received stimulus funds through other programs—though no less important.
As with the previous report, we’ll list the company/project name and the funds received. For those with political connections, for brevity’s sake, we’ll add an * after the name. We’ll then include a description with some interesting details and links to additional information for those who want more or who want to check our research. Once again, I am collaborating with researcher Christine Lakatos.
Before we get to the profiles, here’s a quick overview of the primary funding mechanisms used for the Obama Administration’s pet green-energy public-equity investments.
