The Department of Energy bragged about giving a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to SunPower, a politically connected solar energy company, to create “10-15 permanent jobs,” raising critical questions as to if California SunPower is the next Solyndra in the ongoing Crony-Gate scandal.

Unlike Solyndra, which went bankrupt after receiving the loan from the government leaving taxpayer on the hook, SunPower’s deal is more complicated.  Many questions are being raised about how the company was able to obtain the loan and what they did after they got the money.  Questions include:

• How could the Department of Energy give a loan to a company that was under a shareholder suit alleging securities fraud and misrepresentations?
• The son of Rep. George Miller (D-CA) who was paid $178,000 to lobby on behalf of the company represented SunPower as a lobbyist.  Why did Rep. George Miller tour the SunPower facility – which is outside his congressional district – and what other official action did Rep. Miller take on behalf of the company that is represented by his lobbyist son?
• Did the company’s hefty political contributions to the Obama campaign and the DCCC play a role in the deal?
• Did U.S. taxpayers help pay for the company to open a facility in Mexico after the announcement of the loan?
• Was the U.S. government aware that company executives were in the process of selling a portion of the company to a French company – an action that was undertaken two weeks after the loan was awarded?  Did the loan allow insider’s to cash out leaving other investors holding on to the stock that has dropped by more than 60% since the loan was awarded?

Questionable Finances

In 2009, a year before the DOE awarded the loan, investors in SunPower filed a class action lawsuit against the company alleging SunPower and certain of the Company`s executive officers were in violation of federal securities laws.

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With the administration rushing out billions more in these final hours before the fiscal year — and apparently their political slush fund — expires, and news reports rapidly exposing that the ‘green stimulus’ money was something of a Democrat “friends and family” — now for major donors, too! — it’s time to recall what each and every such project had in common, possibly assisting in explaining the proliferation of what might be described as ‘cronies’.

Solyndra may only, as administration apologists cite, represent about 1% of ‘green’ stimulus loot, and friends and family may prove to be parties in some percentage — say, between half and 99% — of the greendoggle recipients. But 100% of the recipient projects require government schemes to exist, and 100% are designed to socialize the risk, keep reward with private ‘investors’ (term used loosely for reason of the socializing of the risk), and pay off for reasons other than their performance or their economics.

When such projects exist — and they do always thanks to the political process — well, cronies do tend to abound. It’s less a bug than a feature.

Specifically, think back to that October 2010 internal memo to the president from senior administration officials including then-National Economic Council chair Lawrence Summers, reported on by the Wall Street Journal and noted (with somewhat less context and illumination) this week by the Washington Post. In it, Summers shared a commonsensical worry: “He believed the government would end up funding projects that would have been built anyway or funding projects that flopped.”

Those two categories represent precisely the universe of what these programs fund.

In the order described by Summers, that would be guaranteed-market schemes like wind farms and solar arrays, and manufacturers of the wind and solar gadgets.

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What could go wrong? From The Hill:

The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized more than $1 billion in loan guarantees for two separate solar energy projects.

The decision comes several weeks after Solyndra, a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009, filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington.

DOE announced a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.

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Every time we turn around these days President Obama is touting the idea that the “future” of America lies in green energy and one of those greenie ideas is an Obama favorite: electric cars. Not to let him down, Government Motors has obliged by pushing the Chevy Volt as the car of the future. But thus far the future looks a lot like GM’s present; a whole lot of failure leaving a whole lot of questions.

While Obama continues to tout his — meaning our — investment in GM others are not so sanguine. For instance, billionaire Warren Buffet has invested in a Chinese electric car company instead of putting his considerable investment acumen to use with the Chevy Volt. Buffet may be a dolt on taxes, but apparently his investing senses haven’t gotten any spark from the Volt.

One of the reasons that Buffet went for the Chinese company is that some of its technology seems superior to various systems of the Chevy Volt. According to Forbes, Buffet has targeted the company because the, “car can travel 186 miles, more than the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, on a single charge with a top speed of 87 miles per hour.”

Naturally, sales of the Chevy Volt are dismal and have been for quite some time. Sadly, some reviewers are saying that the Volt is overly flashy and techy and isn’t a good value for the money, so no help for GMs sales record there.

Even lefty profs at Berkeley could see that the Volt was a horrible investment. Berkeley physicist Leon J. Schipper, for one, was not enamored of the Volt.

Analyzing the Chevy Volt, the new sedan that is supposed to go 40 miles on batteries and then use a gasoline engine, he calculated that because of inefficiencies in electricity generation, its fuel economy was no better than a Toyota Prius hybrid running on gasoline, while its price was roughly double that of the Prius.

“Does the extra $20,000 justify the overall fuel and possible carbon dioxide savings?” he asked. “If two drivers switched to Prius, the overall savings of oil likely would be larger than one driver switching to a Volt, for the same money.”

So, why should the American people sit idly by while GM pumps even more money into the Volt, a car consumers don’t want? Maybe because wealthy environmental activists think it’s wonderful and seem to imagine that sales will grow up from the ground as if by magic.

Great, isn’t it?

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Ever since these two interviews in Forbes Magazine, in which CEOs of rent-seeking utilities blurted out that that of course they were behind the cap-and-trade/global warming legislative agenda, because they receive a large wealth transfer in return for helping the statists grow the state, I have maintained the following very basic principle: crony capitalists, when engaged in behavior the public would be less than pleased with were it brought to their attention, ought to not allow their CEOs to give interviews.

But here we go again. Today, T. Boone Pickens went on the air with Bloomberg and proved way too much about his latest great idea — on the heels of also pushing the global warming agenda, specifically a national windmill mandate — to mandate a market for his huge natural gas investments (windmills generally don’t work so require a gas plant to be built for ‘backup’. Windmill mandates failed, politically, but he had a backup ready there, too).

This is, naturally, a backdoor for the climate agenda. As Christine Todd Whitman recently and precisely admitted about the whole ‘clean energy’ Plan B, incidentally, in defending President Obama from Al Gore’s barbs.

His next Pickens Plan is at root a cash or clunkers scheme gone stark raving mad.  And remember, this was considered less appealing than a windmill mandate. It seeks to force the transport sector onto natural gas where that is not in fact economic. Hence the big ol’, new government scheme a la ethanol and wind and solar subsidies and preferences, and the mélange of ethanol subsidies and mandates which it more closely resembles.  Requiring, e.g., auto dealers to float not five grand or so but up to $64,000 per vehicle, to ultimately be paid back by you and I, it is little wonder Pickens thought a windmill mandate was the less-bad bet.

T. Boone is of course not alone among gas interests to have bet big and come up short on the global warming agenda, seeking to scare people into allowing the state to for all intents and purposes regulate coal, our most abundant energy supply, out of existence.

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Consider these two dueling headlines in today’s ClimateWire and their sub-heads (subscription required), as helpful reminders of how absurd U.S. energy politics have become (and why no one points to Europe any more as our ‘green energy’ model).

More important, they bring a little more focus on what appears to be the Republicans’ moment of deciding who they are, and who they will be.

1. BUSINESS: Solar industry sees some economic clouds after Italy slashes subsidies

…Italy, which last year installed 14 percent of global new solar capacity, recently became the latest country to slash its solar subsidies, delivering another blow to the industry as falling solar panel prices and weak demand have led several manufacturers to downgrade their sales and profit forecasts for the year.

2. FINANCE: Bill Gates calls for more U.S. clean energy investment…

Yes, Gates in an ‘investor’ in these things that, according to the various industries’ own press releases, exist only by the grace of, and cannot survive without, wealth transfers and other favors from the government. Oh, on a related note, another erstwhile windmill promoter — because that seemed to be a good way to use the state to create more market share for his gas interests — has decided, upon the failure of said windmill schemes, that a Plan B is in order.

And on cue, while we’re worried about spending and subsidies and distorting markets in favor of things that can’t make it happen on their own, (and told that our political class, are too), 180 Members of Congress are trying to create a new energy subsidy, one that would divert a product used in numerous other applications critical to our economy.

Because these interventions have worked out so well in the past. Hmm. Maybe, the plan is such a brilliant idea that the economy just can’t see it. Er, four ethanol boondoggles — toss in state-dependent wind, solar and natural gas cars — are better than one. Or something.

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