Obama’s Green Energy Loan Debacle Grows: Ener1, Electric-Car Firm That Was Granted $118 Million from Obama in Taxpayer Stimulus Funds & That Biden Visited, Has Filed for Bankruptcy
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on January 27, 2012
Ener1 Inc. CEO Charles Gassenheimer took Vice Pres. Joe Biden on a tour of the plant in Greenfield, Indiana on Jan. 26, 2011 - Ener1 is now filing Chapter 11
Remember how our old 45 rpm records would get scratches? And since the record player’s stylus couldn’t move on in the record’s groove, once a record was scratched, the same section of music would be played over and over and over and OVER again until you wanted to scream?
Team Obama’s growing green-energy loan scandal is a stuck, relentless stylus. And many are indeed screaming.
It was announced yesterday that yet another “green-jobs” company, Ener1, that received the Era of Hopenchange’s eco-blessing and millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars is now — try to act surprised, OK? — filing for bankruptcy.
Really difficult, though, to act surprised — Obama’s “Reverse Midas Touch” comes through again. Barack’s Brady Bunch “Tiki Necklace Curse” strikes once more.
Ener1 is the latest rotting, worm-infested log to be tossed onto the Obama scandal loan/bankruptcy fire of companies that are going belly up after receiving billions in taxpayer money.
Solyndra, the California solar panel company that filed for bankruptcy in late August and is now under congressional investigation because of the “shady” multi-million-dollar loan Team Obama granted it, was only the beginning.
Reported by CNS News, Electric-Car Firm That Received Biden Visit and $118M in Stimulus Funds Files for Bankruptcy:
Ener1–a company that manufactures batteries for electric cars, and that received $118.5 million in federal stimulus money, and that Vice President Joe Biden visited last year the day after President Obama’s State of the Union Address—announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
In last year’s State of the Union Address, delivered Jan. 25, 2011, President Obama set a national goal of having a million electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015—a goal that would be achieved, Obama said, by taking money out of the oil industry and “investing” it in new technology.
“With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” said Obama.
“We need to get behind this innovation,” he said. “And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”
The next day, Biden visited the Ener1 plant in Greenfield, Ind.—which the White House said at the time had received a $118.5 million grant from the Department of Energy and was the type of investment the president was talking about in his State of the Union.
Brian Levine, deputy domestic policy adviser to Biden, wrote an article about Biden’s visit to Ener1 on the White House webpage for the White House Middle Class Task Force, which Biden leads. The article was headlined “Our Plan to Put One Million Advanced Technology Vehicles on America’s Roads.”
“Last night, President Obama set a goal of making the United States the first country in the world to put one million advanced technology vehicles on the road,” Levine wrote. “This goal is part of the President’s plan to rebuild our economy by investing in innovation to create the jobs and industries of the future.
From ABC News, Ener1, Parent of Obama-Backed Green Company, Files for Bankruptcy:
The parent company of an electric car battery maker that received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration has filed for bankruptcy protection, the company announced Thursday.
Alex Sorokin, the CEO for lithium-ion battery manufacturer Ener1, said the company suffered when demand for the batteries dropped as fewer Americans than expected opted for electric cars.
“This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company,” Sorokin said in a statement on its website. “We moved aggressively to reduce costs and shift focus when the marketplace did not evolve as quickly as anticipated. Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles.”
EnerDel, a subsidiary of Ener1 dedicated to making batteries for electric cars, was awarded a $118 million grant from the Energy Department in 2009 as part of President Obama’s economic stimulus package and green energy push. Ener1 said that the bankruptcy filing and newly announced company restructuring would allow its subsidiaries, including EnerDel, to “continue normal operation.”
The filing came exactly a year after Vice President Joe Biden visited an Ener1 manufacturing plant in Indiana where he proclaimed the company was the “start” to reshaping the way Americans drive and “the way Americans power their lives.”
[...]
Ener1′s financial collapse prompted a comparison to the doomed solar energy company Solyndra from Rep. Cliff Sterns, R.-Fla., who has been one of President Obama’s most vocal critics concerning the green energy loan guarantee initiative. Solynda received more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money as a loan guarantee from the Energy Department in 2009, two years before it collapsed in August 2011.
Like Biden at Ener1, President Obama toured a Solyndra plant in California in May 2010 where he touted its potential.
“As with his comments touting Solyndra, Biden’s remarks on Ener1 show how wrong the Obama Administration has been with these loan guarantees and grants,” Sterns said on his website. “Instead of producing thousands of ‘clean energy’ jobs, the Administration’s loan guarantee and grant programs are yielding another bankruptcy and the squandering of taxpayer dollars.”
Solyndra is now the target of a federal criminal investigation aimed at determining whether the company was awarded the massive loan thanks to undue political influence, despite what critics said were visible signs the company was already in financial trouble.
From Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s blog, Stimulus-Backed ‘Green’ Bankruptcy of the Week: Ener1:
When the story of the Department of Energy’s green loan program is written someday, the entire book will be contained in chapter 11:
After months of financial turmoil, an Energy Department-backed lithium ion battery company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The company, Ener1, received a $118 million grant from DOE in 2010 as part of the president’s stimulus package. The money, which went to Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel, aimed to promote renewable energy storage battery technology for electrical grid use.
But despite generous federal support for the company, Ener1 was racked by problems last year. In October, NASDAQ delisted the company due to non-compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission filing requirements. A month later, the company’s president, chief executive, and top financial officer were fired.
On Thursday, Ener1 announced it will initiate a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan as part of an agreement to restructure the company’s debt obligations.
The problem? Something the government often fails to take into account when spending tons of other people’s money because they think it can be artificially created later on: Product demand:
In a statement announcing the company’s bankruptcy, CEO Alex Sorokin said that the company’s business plan was crippled by insufficient consumer demand.
“We moved aggressively to reduce costs and shift focus when the marketplace did not evolve as quickly as anticipated. Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles,” Sorokin wrote.
No wonder Obama’s original economic team has pretty much jumped ship. You may recall that radical, self-proclaimed Communist and “truther,” the disgraced, former “green jobs czar” Van Jones was earning a six-figure salary while serving in the White House during this period of bad money management and investment in eco-jobs.
One wonders what his role and/or involvement, if any, would have been in loaning/giving stimulus money to Solyndra, Ener1, and all the other green companies. Since the “job description” of Obama’s greens job czar is pretty vague, it’s anyone’s guess outside Obama’s circle if Jones was a major or minor factor in the granting of these risky loans to green companies.
Just pondering here…
Obama's 'green jobs' czar, Van Jones - Jones abruptly resigned from his non-vetted, White House czar position in 2009 once his radical, Communist background was exposed
