“Regulatory and policy uncertainties in recent months created significant near-term excess supply and price erosion,” Solyndra’s CEO said.
A California-based solar company that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration announced Wednesday that it will shut down.
The company, Solyndra Inc., said Wednesday it would suspend its manufacturing operations and lay off 1,100 employees effective immediately. The company said it intends to file a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
“Regulatory and policy uncertainties in recent months created significant near-term excess supply and price erosion,” Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison said in a statement. “Raising incremental capital in this environment was not possible. This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate.”
The announcement comes at a tough time for the solar industry, which has faced free-falling solar panel prices.
Solyndra received the $535 million stimulus loan guarantee from the Energy Department in 2009 to help finance the construction of a new plant to manufacture solar panels.
The Energy Department said Wednesday that it is “disappointed” that Solyndra is shutting down its manufacturing operations, but added, “We continue to believe the clean energy jobs race is one that America can, must and will win.”
“We have always recognized that not every one of the innovative companies supported by our loans and loan guarantees would succeed, but we can’t stop investing in game-changing technologies that are key to America’s leadership in the global economy,” said Dan Leistikow, director of the office of public affairs, in a blog post Wednesday.
Leistikow called Solyndra a “once very promising company that has increased its sales revenue by 2000 percent in three years and sold more than 1000 installations in 20 countries.”
Republicans have blasted the Obama administration for approving the loan guarantee to the company, which has faced financial hurdles for months.
Solyndra announced last year that it would close a plant, lay off employees and delay the expansion of its newest facility. It also canceled plans to go public.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans launched an investigation into the loan guarantee in February, alleging that the administration didn’t adequately vet the company’s financial situation.
As part of the investigation, Republicans in March requested a slew of documents from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) related to the loan guarantee.
After OMB refused to provide all the documents, Republicans on the House Energy panel’s Oversight and Investigations subcommittee voted in July to issue a subpoena. OMB in August agreed to provide all the requested documents.
The ONLY thing GREEN about all this green jobs BS is the WASTE OF GREENBACK US Taxpayer $$$ this POS Fraud living in the WH has flushed into the pockets of cronies who will pay to play… The entire green agenda is BS! ALWAYS has been and doesn’t take rocket surgery to understand that fact!!! IT doesn’t work and they know it! Look at SPAIN? China’s green attempt bellying up! Nobody wants it b/c it cost more than it produces. I cannot wait for the day U-haul comes to the WH to pack the Marxist Fraud and his traveling, licking the lobster & butter from her fingers angry wife with him! When they’re finally sent packing, the bounty of Maine lobsters in the Atlantic will take a decade to recover from the way those people gorge on them! Can probably put an entire lobster tail all at once, in that underbite of the taxpayer money spending wife of the Muslim, Marxist Fraud!
We don’e need no stinkin Green Solar Pannels, I bleed we’s needs mo bridges, yeah at’s it, mo bridges, big bridges, lotsa bridges and mo and mo skoos and infraredstructrues. What ever uh infraredstructure be? We be needin mo bridges and infursturcturs fo a longest time, skoo’s too. I think we need roads n sh_t too.
Good Lard! Please find a new mantra ya Jug eared wuss.
Seriously Obama wold be told to clean out his desk over this fubar if he were a private sector CEO. No doubt about it.
You are on the nails GG, this guy is a blithering idiot. Case closed.
It may be even worse than just a ‘failed federal jobs/green initiative.’ A former IRS agent acquaintance of mine has suggested that this company (along with other green companies who have similarly failed recently despite huge injections of federal stimulus dollars…) is and always WAS nothing more than a shell organization for the Admin. to funnel taxpayer dollars to, a large portion of which ended up as campaign donations to…(guess who?) The CEO’s receiving large cuts of the dough for their cooperation.
The companies never WERE intended to succeed, just to funnel money through. He is currently digging through the public records on this.
Wow that’s interesting. I believe in any event even in Chapter 11 the IRS can come back and challenge them for tax on the money they received. It happens if a bank forgives your loan, you get the 1099 possibly different in Chapter eleven. Thanks. Do you receive my daily blast? If not would you like to? I send it out once a day. I’m J.C.
Yes, I already do J.C. Thanks!