Two more renewable energy companies promoted by the Obama administration are failing. The developments occurred two months after the collapse of the Solyndra solar energy company which received $535 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The first DOE company in trouble was EnerDel from Indiana. EnerDel received a $118 million DOE renewable energy grant in early 2010 under Obama stimulus funding. The company, which was supposed to make new electric car batteries, was delisted on Friday by NASDAQ. It’s price had fallen to zero. Under the stimulus money EnerDel once had employed 253 people. Today without the stimulus money only 33 are on the payroll.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (D-FL), chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee on energy said today ““This latest failure is a sharp reminder that DOE has fallen well short of delivering the stimulus jobs that were promised, and now taxpayers find themselves millions of more dollars in the hole.”
EnerDel also bought a 30% share in a Norwegian electric car maker, Think Global. That company went bankrupt earlier this year.
The second company to fail under the DOE loan program is Beacon Power, a Massachusetts-based electric storage company that received $43 million loan guarantee from the department. The company filed for bankruptcy on Sunday.
The two company failures come only three days after the White House announced a full review of the DOE loan program as reported on Friday by PJ Media.
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