New White House report repudiates Republican attacks on clean energy, offers key ways of improving loan program

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released the following statement after the White House released its independent consultant’s report which reviewed the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program. The report found that the loan guarantee program has funded far more successful projects than failures and the overall risk of the loan portfolio is far lower than anticipated. The report also found absolutely no evidence of illegality on the part of the Department of Energy or the White House and no evidence of politicization of the loan guarantee process, contrary to Republican accusations and political sanctimony. However, the report did find shortcomings within the program and suggested measures to address them in order to mitigate financial risk to taxpayers.
 
Below is the statement from Rep. Markey:
 
"Republicans have been infected by a Solyndra syndrome, and hopefully this report is the cure. This report serves a strong dose of reality for Congressional Republicans who have chosen to use the failure of one loan guarantee recipient as the premise for abandoning all support for clean energy. Clean energy has been an economic bright spot in our tough economic times, creating jobs and attracting investment. It is time for Republicans to stop persecuting the entire clean energy industry and join Democrats to start producing America’s clean energy future.
 
“This report also makes some important recommendations about how the Loan Guarantee Program can be reformed. I strongly support the Department of Energy immediately moving to implement any and all recommendations from the Allison Report that will enhance taxpayer protections.”
 
Key recommendations from the report include:

• DOE should assign authorities for decision-making only to individual managers and never to committees where collective responsibility can obscure individual accountability.
• DOE should develop explicit objectives and standards of performance for managing the Portfolio during the construction phase of the projects and beyond.
• DOE should create a new Risk Management department encompassing all DOE functions that monitor LPO and should appoint a highly experienced Chief Risk Officer to head it. DOE should also reorganize oversight of the Program.
• Overall governance of the Programs would benefit from access to senior government officials of other departments and agencies who have knowledge of proven ‘best practices’ across credit programs government-wide.

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