Stimulus Money for Energy Companies Going, Going…

By Michael Kanellos

If you won, you probably know by now.

The Department of Energy has already selected recipients for $28 billion of the $32.7 billion in grant money allotted to the Department under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, according to Matt Rogers, the senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu. Rogers spoke at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley at the opening of the school's Energy Institute.

"Over 85 percent of the selections have been made," he said. At the end of September, $16.7 billion had already been awarded in total.

The DOE also received around $10 billion to facilitate credit for energy projects.

The ARRA has moved at a relatively quick speed, he noted. The program only passed this year. Until Memorial Day, most of the time was consumed in devising programs. $17.8 billion of the $28 billion has already been made available to recipients and the DOE has already got confirmation from recipients about how they employed their grants.

Although the DOE has had to work quick, it turned down around 80 percent of the applicants.

How will history judge the program? It's hard to say. On the plus side, the billions the DOE has awarded in grants and loans has prompted triple that amount to trickle in from the private sector. A $249 million grant to battery-maker A123 Systems (AONE) helped usher in the successful IPO that raised $380 million for the company. The stock has zoomed in trading. The $3.3 billion in smart grid stimulus has lead to $4.7 billion in private funding.

Solyndra, the solar maker which landed the first DOE loan, has since raised more money and has been hiring people from the nearby Nuumi factory that General Motors and Toyota (TM) closed.

In the short term, the stimulus package will be judged by job creation. In the long term, it will be judged by how well the technologies and companies selected perform. And no one knows the answer to that last one yet.

Comments

[jerrydd:]

Sadly there are better ways to stimulate at far lower costs Here is some.
We can have a stimulus that costs almost nothing to the taxpayer, in fact paid a lot by Iran, Russia, oil dictators!!

How is start up loans for RE companies and energy eff ones. Let most anyone with a good business plan through the SBA get start up loans to build or install windgenerators, solar CSP unit, CHP, small lightweight, aero 3 wheel EV's, etc. Then loans to buy, install, etc these.

Loans for home, building eff upgrades from windows, insulation, etc are next.

All these can be paid for in energy savings in 5 yrs so no new income costs either. This will create about 3 million jobs directly and probably 6 million indirectly of people supporting them.

Next is a fossil fuel tax to pay their full cost of the direct, indirect subsidies we already pay in our income tax, health care, etc. it's time those who make, benefit from those costs to pay them It should be a $1.50/gal on oil and about double the price of coal.

But you say a tax will kill the economy. Not if it's put in over 2 yrs each month and loans given to buy more eff cars, etc. Switching truck, semi's to NG is very cost effective now being under 50% of the cost of diesel/gasoline. The beauty of this is oil, coal will drop in price making Iran, Russia, oil dictators pay most of the oil tax, coal is only 25% of your electric bill so it won't go up much.

But new, more eff cars, trucks, EV's, PHEV's and mass transit will create more new jobs too.

The fossil fuel tax revenue, 1/3 would go to a tax cut so those people paying it have the extra money needed if they continue to use the same amount or better, use less and have extra income, the more likely outcome. 1/3 to to help switching to more eff cars, trucks, homes, buildings and 1/3 to balance the budget fossil fuels have been a large part in making.

So this program would have a net increase of about 8-10 million jobs of both direct and supporting those who have the new jobs, solve our imported oil problem, let us leave the Persian gulf between the 2 are about $1T/yr in a few yrs if we don't, stop subsidizing our enemies, oil corporations and balance the budget.. All at little cost to the gov, in fact get rid of our debt on our children and make our country strong again.

Or we will be broke, at war, our enemies strong and we will be weak. To me it's the only real patriotic way to go.

Nov 02 09:23 AM

[481086:]

If we must, then raise fossil-energy taxes across the board but cut and simplify every other kind of tax: sales, income, payroll, corporate, capital gains, dividend

Nov 02 02:42 PM

[Doc 224899:]

If we had a majority party with any sense, we'd have "green" projects all over the country, throwing together nuclear power plants. What do we have instead? A department of energy doing its level best to bankrupt the only American corporation that does low grade uranium enrichment to make reactor fuel that can't be used in nuclear weapons.

If we had a majority party with a conceptual time horizon longer than 1 presidential term, and with more than a shred of loyalty to our ideals of liberty and responsibility, we'd have universities all over the country doing research on the most efficient ways to use the 2 century's worth of coal in our country. What do we have instead? A politically correct energy secretary backing the president in his efforts to bankrupt America's coal utility companies, and trying to bribe freedom's enemies by selling the controlling interests in America's coal miners to foreign interests.

Nov 02 03:46 PM

[Windsun33:]

The key phrase is "if we had a majority party". We don't, Independents have for the past year at least have outnumbered both Republicans and Democrats, far too often what is left in both parties are the "fringers".

Which means that the biggest group of voters - those of us more or less in the middle - end up with choices that are too extreme on both ends. What we end up with far too often is misplaced and very expensive subsidies and programs like Ethanol or Cap and Tax. And it appears that 90% or more of the stimulous cash has been dispensed in the same way.


On Nov 02 03:46 PM Doc 224899 wrote:

> If we had a majority party with any sense...

> If we had a majority party with a conceptual time horizon...

Nov 03 10:20 PM