Obama Promised Green Jobs.
He Got FBI Raids, the Fifth Amendment, and $2.2 Billion Gone.

The DOE Section 1705 program handed $16.15 billion in loan guarantees to 28 green energy projects — 82% to solar. The GAO calculated the program’s net taxpayer cost at $2.21 billion. Four projects collapsed outright. A fifth, Ivanpah’s 392-megawatt tower farm, burns birds alive in the Mojave and is now heading for early closure — with $1.6 billion in guarantees still outstanding.

$16 Billion, 28 Projects, and a September 2009 Photo-Op

Section 1705 of the Energy Policy Act — expanded by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — authorized the Department of Energy to guarantee private loans to renewable energy projects deemed too risky for commercial lending. By the time the program’s authority expired in September 2011, DOE had closed $16.15 billion in guarantees. Eighty-two percent went to solar projects.

The program was run out of the DOE Loan Programs Office under Executive Director Jonathan Silver, who joined in November 2009 and resigned in October 2011 — days after the Solyndra scandal erupted. The political sponsor was Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (D), a Nobel laureate physicist who would later testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee for 5.5 hours defending a program he approved under time pressure from the White House.

The GAO reviewed the program in 2015 (GAO-15-438). Its conclusion: total expected net cost to U.S. taxpayers — $2.21 billion, of which $807 million had already been lost to defaults at the time of the report. That figure does not count the ongoing exposure from guarantees that remain outstanding on operating but underperforming projects.

$527 Million. FBI Raid. Executives Took the Fifth. Obama’s Bundler Got Paid First.

Solyndra Inc. was the program’s showpiece. The Fremont, California solar-module manufacturer received a $535 million loan guarantee — the first loan closed under Section 1705 — and hosted a White House groundbreaking ceremony on September 4, 2009, with President Barack Obama (D) attending in person. The ceremony was arranged in such haste that the Office of Management and Budget — which had flagged Solyndra’s financial risks — was rushed to complete its review in time. An OMB staffer’s August 27, 2009 internal email: “[G]iven the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra, we don’t have time to change the model.”

On September 1, 2011, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That same month, FBI and DOE-OIG agents raided the company’s offices and the home of its CEO. On September 23, 2011, CEO Brian Harrison and CFO Bill Stover were called before the House Energy and Commerce Committee — and invoked the Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times.

The political detonator: George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire who had bundled up to $100,000 for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Kaiser’s firm, Argonaut Ventures, was Solyndra’s single largest shareholder with a 39% stake. In February 2011 — while Solyndra was still operating but clearly struggling — the DOE approved a loan restructuring that placed Argonaut Ventures and co-investor Madrone Partners ahead of U.S. taxpayersin the repayment waterfall. When the company went bankrupt seven months later, taxpayers recovered approximately $24 million of the $527 million lent. Kaiser’s fund recovered proportionally more.

A four-year DOJ and DOE-OIG investigation concluded in 2015 with no criminal charges. The restructuring that paid Kaiser before taxpayers was deemed legal — which is the point. The law was followed. The result was that an Obama campaign bundler’s investment firm was legally made whole ahead of the American public.

“[G]iven the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra, we don't have time to change the model.”

OMB staff email · August 27, 2009 · cited in House Oversight Committee documents

$400 Million Guaranteed. Toxic Panels. Criminal Investigation.

Abound Solar Manufacturing LLC of Loveland, Colorado received a $400 million loan guarantee approved December 9, 2010. Before the company drew down the full amount — it drew approximately $68–70 million — House Republicans flagged an engineer’s report documenting performance problems with the panels. The DOE closed the loan anyway.

Abound filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 2, 2012. What followed was not simply a financial failure. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ordered the company to cement-bury thousands of defective, unsellable solar panels — panels containing cadmium telluride, a heavy-metal compound classified as a probable human carcinogen. At peak production, the facility generated 630 pounds of hazardous cadmium waste per month. Cleanup cost at least $2.2 million.

A three-pronged criminal investigation was launched — Weld County District Attorney, FBI, and DOE-OIG — examining financial misrepresentations and consumer fraud. The taxpayer loss on drawn funds: approximately $68–70 million.

$737 Million. Molten Salt Leaked. Filed Bankruptcy Twice.

In September 2011, DOE guaranteed a $737 million loan for the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project outside Tonopah, Nevada — operated by Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, a subsidiary of SolarReserve. The 110-megawatt concentrated solar power plant used a central tower and molten salt thermal storage system. Total construction cost: $975 million.

The plant opened in September 2015. Within a year, its molten salt storage tank developed a major leak. The plant’s last recorded production was April 2019. NV Energy terminated its power purchase contract in October 2019. SolarReserve, the developer, shut down entirely and took its website offline.

Tonopah Solar Energy filed its first bankruptcy on July 30, 2020, with $425 million in outstanding public debt. The settlement announced at filing was $200 million — less than half of what was owed. DOE was described as “poised to lose up to $225 million.” The project’s electricity, while operational, cost approximately $135 per megawatt-hour — versus less than $30 per megawatt-hour from a conventional photovoltaic solar farm.

On January 21, 2026, Crescent Dunes filed for bankruptcy a second time.

Burns 6,000 Birds a Year. Costs Twice the Market Rate. Heading for Early Closure.

The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in the Mojave Desert is the largest of the Section 1705 projects that did not formally default — and the most expensive still-standing monument to the program’s logic. DOE issued three loans totaling $1.6 billion in April 2011. Total construction cost: $2.2 billion ($2.86 billion in 2024 dollars). The plant covers 3,500 acres of federal land and operates 173,500 computer-controlled mirrors focusing sunlight on three boiler towers.

The technology works — but at a cost no market would bear. The plant’s planned capacity factor was 28.5%; actual 2018 performance was 24.1%. It currently costs approximately twice as much to operate as an equivalent photovoltaic solar farm. UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein has stated plainly: “The technology used at Ivanpah is no longer really competitive with a new solar farm that uses conventional solar panels.”

The plant also incinerates birds. Concentrated solar flux from the heliostats creates “solar flux zones” in the air above the towers where birds, insects, and bats combust mid-flight — the industry term is “streamers.” Estimates of annual bird mortality at Ivanpah range from 3,500 to 6,000. Federal wildlife agencies have been unable to halt the kills because the plant predates current mitigation requirements.

In January 2025, plant operator NRG Energy announced it would close Ivanpah and cancel its power purchase agreements with Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison — 14 years before those contracts were scheduled to expire. The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously rejected the closure in December 2025, ordering two of three units to continue operating. The outstanding $1.6 billion DOE loan balance has not been publicly disclosed.

“Ivanpah is yet another failed green energy boondoggle, much like Solyndra.”

Jason Isaac, American Energy Institute — Fox News Digital, 2026

Rushed Approvals. Donor Ties. OMB Warnings Ignored. Taxpayers Last.

The DOE Section 1705 program did not produce a string of random failures. It produced a pattern. The Solyndra loan was rushed through OMB on a timeline set by a White House photo-op. The George Kaiser restructuring — placing a major Obama bundler’s firm ahead of taxpayers — was documented, deliberate, and legal. The Abound Solar loan was approved with engineer performance warnings already in hand. The Crescent Dunes loan was issued in September 2011, one month before program authority expired, with the program already under congressional investigation.

In April 2025, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee convened a hearing titled “Risky Business Part 2: The DOE Loan Guarantee Program” — noting that the Inflation Reduction Act had increased DOE loan authority from $40 billion to $412 billion, with Solyndra-style defaults already appearing in the expanded program. The committee specifically cited the Sunnova Energy loan guarantee ($3 billion, now at risk of bankruptcy) as an early warning sign.

The projects that survived — Desert Sunlight, Genesis Solar, Antelope Valley, California Valley Solar Ranch, Agua Caliente — are operating, largely because they used conventional photovoltaic technology and secured long-term utility power purchase agreements before construction. They are not vindications of the program’s design; they are the cases where the market eventually found a use for assets the government had already subsidized into existence.

The cases that failed share a common feature: novel or unproven technology (cylindrical CIGS modules at Solyndra, cadmium telluride thin-film at Abound, molten salt CSP at Crescent Dunes, heliostat CSP at Ivanpah) backed by political urgency and donor proximity rather than demonstrated market viability. The GAO’s 2025 follow-up report found that the DOE loan program still lacks adequate risk controls — and now has $412 billion in authority under the IRA to deploy.