Solyndra times five: What’s up with the $2.65 billion in federal loans to Abengoa?

   – Ron Ninkolewski, Watchdog.org

…Renewable energy company Abengoa has received a combined $2.65 billion in loan guarantees…. But with the company teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, it’s unclear if taxpayers will get stuck paying off the loans…

Based in Spain, Abengoa SA is teetering on the verge of insolvency…

The renewable giant got — from the U.S. Department of Energy — loan guarantees of $1.45 billion to build the Solana solar plant in Arizona…

… William Yeatman, senior fellow…at Competitive Enterprise Institute… (said) “The total amount of these loans is something like five times bigger than what Solyndra got.”…

Solyndra…received $535 million in a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy in 2010. The next year Solyndra filed for Chapter 11, with taxpayers getting almost none of the money back. ..

President Obama…cited the DOE loan guarantee to Abengoa… saying, “After years of watching companies build things and create jobs overseas, it’s good news that we’ve attracted a company to our shores to build a plant and create jobs right here in America.”…

We Respond & Your Comments

In previous issues we’ve detailed the billions of dollars lost to Oregon and other taxpayers thanks to governments’ obsession with green energy. So here we’ll just summarize why these loans are a lousy idea:

• Governments do a bad job of picking winners because they do so based on their personal preferences, vote-grubbing potential or campaign finance needs;
• The loans they make/guarantee or, worse, their outright grants aren’t made with their own money, so they’re less discriminating in their choices;
• They often make loans to entities that can’t get favorable treatment at banks because they’re bad credit risks.
• In the Obama Administration bureaucrats follow the lead of the boss, who’s chasing green energy like Captain Ahab obsessively pursued the Great White Whale.

Memo to all city, county and state politicos: You don’t do loans for a living. You’re not good at it. Leave it to those who are – they’re called banks.

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