The Biden Green Energy Slush Fund

Washington’s return from Thanksgiving break will feature another go-round on whether to provide vital aid to Israel and Ukraine and how to pay for it.

Here’s a thought: Ask Jigar Shah for a couple hundred billion.

He’s got that and more—and is otherwise using it for political “investment.” [emphasis, links added]

Mr. Shah isn’t a household name—unless your household includes lobbyists, financiers, or crony capitalists. Those are the clients of Mr. Shah’s fief, the revived Energy Department Loan Programs Office.

Last humiliated a decade ago, it’s part of that crack DOE bureaucracy that bet on such green tech ventures as Abound (the failed solar company), Fisker Automotive (the failed electric carmaker), and A123 (the failed battery maker).

“This announcement today” is about “investing in the infrastructure and technology of the future,” crowed Vice President Biden in 2009, unveiling a $535 million DOE loan for a solar outfit he promised would power 500,000 homes and create 1,000 jobs. That outfit was Solyndra.

As if to prove that anything Mr. Biden could botch 10 years ago he can botch bigger and better now, the loan office is back, baby.

Americans gasped at the audacity of Barack Obama’s $814 billion stimulus bill in 2009—and of gambling some $80 billion on clean energy—but that’s peanuts.

The Biden spending rampage has bestowed on Mr. Shah, director of the loan department, a stunning $400 billion to hand out to green companies too risky for traditional lenders, or too politically powerful to turn down.

According to a July Journal story, the “pile of cash is at least 20 times as big as most private green-energy funds.”

With that kind of funny money, Mr. Shah and DOE aren’t restricting themselves to small-time bets. The agency agreed to a $1 billion loan for Monolith, a company that promises to make hydrogen out of natural gas.

Sunnova, a solar company, landed a $3 billion loan guarantee. Then there are all the real paupers. General Motors and LG scooped up $2.5 billion to build electric vehicle battery plants.

Ford landed a record $9.2 billion battery commitment. The Ford loan would be $3.3 billion larger than the company borrowed during the Detroit meltdown of 2008-09.

Accusations of cronyism tarred the Obama-era loan office; dollars had a way of going to the politically connected.

Now Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, have sent a letter to Mr. Shah demanding answers about an October report in the Washington Free Beacon.

It claimed a private trade association Mr. Shah founded as a “networking hub” in 2017 has “become a gatekeeper for companies seeking billions of dollars in financing from Shah’s office.”

The report explains that the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable didn’t even “have a website until three years ago,” though in the year after Mr. Shah left, its revenue “more than tripled.”

It says Cleantech “hosts sold-out receptions featuring Shah for its paying members.”

In September Cleantech and the loans office “co-hosted an invitation-only conference” in D.C. “for companies looking for loans—and Cleantech Leaders was in charge of the invite list and ticket sales.”

Since 2021, when Mr. Shah was named loan office head, “companies connected to the trade association have raked in cash from Shah’s office.”

The report quoted an “energy industry insider” who griped that the event was “a slap in the face to all the companies following the rules.” (The Energy Department told the Free Beacon that the conference was a “nonfinancial partnership and not a government-led event.”)

One recipient of DOE largess, Sunnova, shares a board member with Cleantech—an executive also married to a former Democratic National Committee chair.

Several of the conference’s financial sponsors were also seeking or had received DOE loans. Questioned about conflicts by Sen. Barrasso in an October hearing, Mr. Shah said “federal staff” make decisions and he has “no role to play.”

Then again, the Journal story related details of Mr. Shah pitching loans and recruiting a firm (battery recycler Li-Cycle), while making clear that “White House officials” weigh in on potential loans.

In a statement after the committee hearing, Cleantech said it “is proud of the role it has played in bringing together thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors” and that as a “nonpartisan nonprofit” its “networking events” are “open to non-members.”

Ford announced recently it is putting on hold production at one of three massive EV plants to be financed by its DOE loan.

In October, Li-Cycle (with a $375 million loan commitment) suspended construction of its flagship Rochester, N.Y., facility citing costs, a development that Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle called “frankly shocking.”

Defenders will no doubt justify future failures as a cost of business as they creatively suggest that DOE’s “investments” over the years have cumulatively produced a “return.”

These analyses fail to account for the far greater wreckage—economically and in foregone innovation—that results from government distortion of markets.

It also ignores that money isn’t limitless and $400 billion is a shocking misappropriation of funds while Congress is struggling for basic national security dollars.

Clawing back this Energy Department slush fund is a no-brainer.

h/t Steve B.

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