The big question for SolarCity when it didn’t secure a federal loan guarantee for an ambitious project a few months back was this: could it carry on with the plan? The answer is yes. SolarCity will get a $350 million loan from Bank of America . Read More »
Cleantech
Beacon Power, the flywheel maker that filed for bankruptcy last month after winning a $43 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, announced on Saturday that it plans to sell its 20 MW flywheel plant in Stephentown, New York, to pay back the DOE loan.… Read More »
I look at the numbers for whether the DOE and Obama will be able to meet the goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Read More »
Electric vehicle startup Fisker Automotive has dramatically scaled back production plans of its first car, the Karma, in the fourth quarter of 2011, and it won’t ramp up to full production until the second quarter of 2012. Read More »
Flywheel maker Beacon Power declared bankruptcy on Sunday after winning a $43 million loan guarantee from the DOE in the summer of 2009. This is the second company to declare bankruptcy that had a loan guarantee from the DOE program, following solar maker Solyndra’s bankruptcy. Read More »
Fighting for funding is a perennial, bloody sport for just about every federal agency. But the budget funding cycle is seriously out of whack with the development cycle for clean energy, according to Arun Majumdar, director of the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E). Read More »
As the failure of now-defunct solar panel maker Solyndra continues to make headlines, the Department of Energy’s Loan Chief Jonathan Silver plans to step down. Silver will become a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the think tank Third Way. Read More »
It’s been over a month since the Solyndra news came out, but it’s still dominating. Because it just won’t go away, here’s my top five list of projects that the DOE also backed with loan guarantees and that are showing some early signs of success. Read More »
The DOE’s new No. 2, Richard Kauffman, started his job on the Tuesday after the Solyndra announcement. He sees Solyndra as an example of cheap Chinese financing, which is behind the decline in Chinese solar cells, compared to the high costs of financing in the U.S. Read More »
There is no escaping the dark spell cast by Solyndra’s bankruptcy in cleantech discussions these days. At two cleantech conferences in San Francisco this week, speakers gave their takes on the impact of the Solyndra controversy, from money flows to public perception. Read More »
Is the clean power industry not doing enough to win political support in the nation’s capital? While Solyndra has gotten flack for its significant lobbying efforts, the reality is that the industry should do more, not less. Read More »
On Friday, the DOE announced the closing of three loan guarantees, but also said solar installer SolarCity won’t be securing a loan guarantee for a military solar housing project. SolarCity said they lost the loan guarantee partly because of an investigation into the Solyndra loan. Read More »
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