Solyndra II: Energy Company Busts on Eve of Climate Summit

As President Barack Obama departed for the climate summit in Paris, he faces a new “Solyndra” scandal as Spain’s Abengoa SA, which received $3 billion in administration sustainable energy loans and Export-Import Bank guarantees, announced that it has started bankruptcy proceeding and may soon default on its debt.  The Obama administration tucked $90 billion of stimulus money for energy projects into a huge corner of the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed with no Republican votes barely a month into Obama’s presidency.  The money was supposedly allocated to fund “strategic clean energy investments intended to promote job creation and promote deployment of low-carbon technologies,” but much of it was squandered. The General Accounting Office in April warned that of the 38 sustainable loans and guarantees, “the total expected net cost over the life of the loans” was “to be $2.21 billion, including $807 million for loans that have defaulted.” Until now, the most infamous of the Department of Energy renewable energy projects was Solyndra, whose bankruptcy cost the U.S. taxpayers $535 million. But with $2.7 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees and $225 million since 2010, Abengoa SA just began insolvency proceedings in a Spanish court on November 25 as a technical first step toward a possible bankruptcy, according to the Washington Times...more