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  • 2011-12-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the Department of Energy Spend $737 Million to Benefit Ronald Pelosi? (en)
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  • On 28 September 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the finalization of a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy, LLC to develop the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project: Later in December 2011, a claim about Harry Reid, Tonopah, and the Pelosi family made the rounds: The claim that the aforementioned loan guarantee is costing us $16 million per job is spurious for two reasons. First off, although the project is eventually expected to result in 45 permanent jobs, it is also expected to create several hundred construction jobs in the near-term in addition to thousands of other related jobs: Second, the dollar figure mentioned is a loan guarantee, so the project isn't going to be costing us (i.e., the taxpayers) $737 million unless SolarReserve defaults on the entire loan amount, forcing the DOE to cover the shortfall. If SolarReserve pays back the loan as expected, the added jobs won't have cost us anything. SolarReserve announced in December 2009 that it had already signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy for the sale of electricity from the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. It is true that one of SolarReserve's investors is Pacific Corporate Group (PCG), a private equity firm which has employed Ronald Pelosi (the brother-in-law of U.S. Representative and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) as an executive since April 2011. However, PCG's investment in SolarReserve is a minuscule 2 percent share, the investment and the DOE loan guarantee process for SolarReserve were both initiated years before Ronald Pelosi joined the firm, and Pelosi had no personal financial stake in the outcome: (en)
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