Upton raises concerns DOE will rush approval of remaining loan guarantees

Top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised concerns Tuesday that the Energy Department will rush the final approval of 14 pending loan guarantees in order to meet a Sept. 30 deadline.

The Energy Department has until the end of the month to finalize 14 loan guarantees totaling $8.9 billion under a stimulus law program for advanced energy projects related to renewables, biofuels and transmission projects.

The program — known as Section 1705 — has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks from Republicans after Solyndra, a company that received a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009, filed for bankruptcy late last month.

“With so much of DOE’s Section 1705 loan guarantee portfolio not yet finalized, and the Sept. 30, 2011, stimulus deadline to close these guarantees just days away, we are concerned that another rush to meet stimulus deadlines will result in DOE closing these deals before they are ready,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu Tuesday.

Energy and Power subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Oversight and Investigations subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) also signed the letter.

The GOP lawmakers urged Chu to provide the committee with information on the pending loan guarantees, including whether the Energy Department intends to finalize them and whether it can extend the Sept. 30 deadline.

The Republicans asked for the information by Friday, when Stearns’s panel will hear testimony from top Solyndra executives.

The Energy Department said Tuesday it will subject all of the pending projects to a detailed review before making any final decisions.

“We are committed to ensuring that every deal closed before September 30 is fully vetted and will not close any deal that has not received full due diligence by September 30," DOE spokesman Damien LaVera said in a statement. "We are not rushing to complete deals, we are using the full amount of time Congress allocated for the program so we can ensure that we fully complete all due diligence and make informed decisions based on the most recent data."

Upton and Stearns are heading up an investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee. They’ve released a series of emails they say show that the White House tried to rush a final decision on Solyndra’s financing so that Vice President Biden could announce approval of the loan guarantee at the September 2009 groundbreaking of the company’s new factory.

The GOP has used the Solyndra bankruptcy to bolster long-time frustrations with the Obama administration’s push to invest in renewable energy.

But the White House has dismissed Republicans’ allegations, arguing that the emails were a “scheduling matter,” not an effort to rush a final decision on the loan guarantee.

—This story was updated at 4:18 p.m.