GOP's Hatch urged $20M in earmarks for bankrupt clean energy firm
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Orrin Hatch, a vocal critic of the Obama administration's backing of a Department of Energy loan guarantee to solar manufacturer Solyndra, pushed for more than $20 million in government funding for a bankrupt clean energy firm in his home state of Utah.
Hatch aides told USA TODAY earlier this month that the Republican lawmaker had never pushed for taxpayer money to be used for Raser Technologies, which operated a geothermal power plant in southern Utah and also developed hybrid plug-in vehicles. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in April, and recently re-emerged as a restructured company known as Cyrq Energy.
But on Friday, Hatch spokesman Matthew Harakal said that after an internal audit following publication of the USA TODAY story on Hatch's support for Raser, the Utah senator's office found that Hatch actually requested seven earmarks for more than $20 million from 2006 to 2008 to help fund research and development projects for the automotive wing of the company. None of the requests were funded, Harakal said, and he noted that the earmark requests only went to the automotive branch of the company—which was spun off by Raser before the company filed for bankruptcy in April. The earmarks that Hatch's staff revealed on Friday included requests for:
• $1.2 million for the design of hybrid snowmobiles that would be used by the National Park Service.
•$9.2 million for research and development of "future power vehicle needs" for the Defense Department.
•$7.9 million for development for Integrated starter alternators for hybrid combat vehicles
"They got the same treatment as any Utah company," said Harakal, who added that Hatch was merely pushing forward a request for a constituent by backing the earmarks.
Earmarks — once something lawmakers boasted about to voters back home — fell out of favor as Republicans took control of the House in 2010. There's a ban in lower chamber, though not in the Senate.
Since Solyndra's collapse, Republican lawmakers have criticized the Obama administration's attempt to boost the clean-energy industry, and Hatch has been among those who have hammered the administration's decision to back the company. In an interview with Fox News last month, Hatch called Solyndra a "disgrace" and questioned the administration's decision to "put $535 million into a program that has a poor business plan."
But Hatch has been quiet about the failure of a green energy firm in his own back yard.
The company touted that the geothermal power plant in Beaver County would deliver 10.5 megawatts of electricity for Anaheim, Calif. But the power plant never produced more than seven megawatts of electricity and the company was mired in debt before they broke ground on the plant.
Hatch was on hand for the Raser's ground-breaking of what the company dubbed the "Hatch Plant" in honor of the senator, and he spoke of the construction of the facility as a "turning point" for the U.S. green energy industry. But a month before the groundbreaking, the company had $51.2 million in debt and less than $6 million on hand, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records.
Hatch's relationship with Raser officials dates back to 2004, when Raser officials met with him for the first time to asked him to back tax incentives for hybrid vehicles. Hatch later wrote on behalf of the company to Edward Wall, the director of the Department of Energy's FreedomCar, a program focused on improving the energy efficiency of cars and trucks. And in 2009, he drove a Raser prototype of a hybrid Hummer on Capitol Hill, and called on President Obama to scrap a plan to sell the Hummer line to China as part of General Motors restructuring.
Raser applied for loans under the same loan guarantee program that funded Solyndra, but was rejected. On Friday, the White House announced it would bring in outside auditors to conduct an analysis of the entire Department of Energy loan program.
