Another $118 Million Lost on Failed Energy Plans

Another $118 Million Lost on Failed Energy Plans
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Jan 26, 2012 2 Comments ›› Staff Writer
What a difference a couple of days makes! Barack Hussein Obama, speaking in the State of the Union address, told us that America is leading the way in electric car battery technology. Oh, happy day! We’re Number One! Two days later, the clean energy company which is manufacturing these batteries after being propped up by your tax dollars, has filed for bankruptcy. Another day, another dollar. Except in this case, it’s $118 million of your dollars that Obama has thrown down another rat hole.

The company in this case is Ener1, not to be confused with Solyndra. The Obama administration was already embarrassed to have lost $535 million in taxpayer funds when Solyndra went belly-up last year. Now another feel-good, pie-in-the-sky, saving-the-planet-from-global-warming-at-taxpayer-expense scheme has failed. Joe Biden was singing the praises of Ener1 a year ago, but has fallen strangely silent today.

Ener1 is trying to develop lithium-ion batteries that don’t explode or catch fire when they’re in a vehicle that’s parked in the owner’s garage. This of course is part of a broader strategy of the environmentalist movement to cripple the U.S. economy even further, by pretending that gasoline engine cars are somehow causing the earth to warm up. In spite of all of the leaked emails from scientists that admit that they’re faking the data on warming temperatures, and NASA admitting that its temperature data is compromised, faked or otherwise suspect, the left continues to advance its environmentalist extremist agenda. At your expense, no less.

Digging a little deeper into the picture, Obama was also spending your taxpayer dollars at Ener1 in order to ship jobs overseas. Don’t believe us?

Ener1 has spent $320,000 in lobbying fees to Barnes & Thornburg LLP since Obama has been in office. Here are three of the key lobbyists for Barnes & Thornburg that worked specifically on behalf of Ener1:

Edward Ayoob – Former Legislative Counsel for Harry Reid
Richard Boykin – Former Chief of Staff to Rep. Danny K. Davis (D) Ill.
Robert Grand – Mitt Romney Campaign Donor
Those fees, spread out from 2009 through 2011, were spent on obtaining Energy Department grants to fund the green battery development. However, another portion of the lobbying fees was spent so that Ener1 could acquire the necessary permits from the Department of Transportation to ship the battery components in from overseas – from a manufacturing plant in Chungbuk, South Korea.

So in a nutshell, Ener1’s parent company EnerDel received grants and loan guarantees to build a domestic plant for the batteries here in the U.S., but all of the components for the battery packs are built in South Korea.

EnerDel claims in its bankruptcy filings that its investment in Think Global – a Norwegian electric car company – is part of the reason for its failure. Think Global went under last June in its fourth bankruptcy filing in 20 years. Your tax dollars at work!

EnerDel also claims that volatility in the Asian markets is to blame for its bankruptcy filing. Would that be the same Asian market where the company chose to have its battery components built? Let’s check the map. Yep! It is in fact the same Asia.

This is all just further evidence that Barack Obama’s stimulus package was a failure. Rather than create jobs here in the U.S., the money was spent shipping jobs overseas. It was also spent on “clean energy” projects that many have described as magic unicorn deals – pure fantasy that doesn’t work. But that won’t stop Barack Obama from spending other people’s money. Look for Republicans in the House of Representatives to add Ener1 to its list in the coming days or weeks as the investigation of Solyndra continues.