COMMENTARY | Discussions over Solyndra’s controversial demise are bound to resurface as another taxpayer-funded, green-tech company filed bankruptcy Thursday, after one of its subsidiaries collected a $118-million grant from the Obama administration. Ener1, the financially mangled parent company of electric car battery-maker EnerDel, announced a restructuring plan in which primary investors and lenders will provide $81 million to recapitalize its business model.
“This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company. We are extremely pleased to have the strong support of our primary investors and lenders to substantially reduce the Company’s debt,” CEO Alex Sorokin stated in a press release. “Their support demonstrates that our business partners have an appreciation for our future business opportunities in providing energy storage solutions for electric grid, transportation and industrial applications.”
EnerDel, one of Ener1’s subsidiaries and a poster child for President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, collected $118 million in stimulus money from the Energy Department in 2009. In 2011, the President made a pledge to curb U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and vowed to pave America’s roads with a million electric vehicles by 2015.
This goal, Obama alleged, could only be achieved through government assistance, as he stated in his 2011 State of the Union address , “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.”
That same month Vice President Joe Biden visited Ener1’s new plant in Greenfield, Ind., which the administration ambitiously claimed was the type of investments the government must pursue to achieve its lofty goal. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, here at Ener1, we’re going to harness electricity and bring it to the world like Edison did more than a century ago,” Biden declared to a group of company staff and executives. “We’re going to reshape the way Americans drive, the way Americans consume, the way Americans power their lives. And in turn, we’re going to reshape America itself.”
However, with this new development, Mr. Biden’s applause and President Obama’s environmental fervor have been stunted. Ener1 is now the third company filing for bankruptcy protection after harvesting millions of federal dollars under President Obama’s economic stimulus law — including a $535-million loan for solar panel-maker Solyndra and a $43 million loan guarantee for energy-storage firm Beacon Power.
Indeed, Ener1’s financial deficiencies have further scarred the Energy Department’s blundering role as a “green investment” bank.