PORTLAND, Maine — A congressional inquiry is raising questions about a $102 million federal loan guarantee for a wind power project in which U.S. Senate candidate Angus King had a stake, yet King’s former company contends it followed federal guidelines and did nothing wrong.
The report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this week focused on federal loans and loan guarantees to dozens of green energy projects after the high-profile failure of California-based solar company Solyndra. Among them was Record Hill, a 22-turbine, 50-megawatt wind power project in Roxbury.
Rob Gardiner, president of Independence Wind, one of the partners on the Record Hill project, said the company followed Department of Energy guidelines and, unlike Solyndra, is repaying the loans.
“Our project met all of the qualifications, despite what the report might say,” Gardiner said.
In Tuesday’s report, the congressional committee questioned whether the technology employed in the Record Hill project was sufficiently innovative to qualify for loan guarantees, and whether loan guarantees were even necessary given the strong credit rating of Yale University, one of the project partners.
The report was issued two days after King, who’s running for U.S. Senate as an independent, completed the sale of his stake in Independence Wind to Gardiner, the company’s co-founder.
Lance Dutson of the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center described the timing as a “miraculous coincidence” but acknowledged he didn’t know whether King or Independence Wind was aware of the investigation.
King and Gardiner were co-owners of Independence Wind until Sunday night, when King completed the sale of his share to the former president of Maine Public Broadcasting Network. King said he sold his stake in the company to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during his Senate campaign.
The King campaign brushed aside any questions of timing, saying he didn’t know about the federal report and that he initiated the sale more than a week before the report came out.
“Angus is smart, but he’s not clairvoyant,” said Crystal Canney, his spokeswoman.
Dutson said the bigger issue is whether King’s company received loan guarantees under false pretenses, and how King would handle the issue of loan guarantees for renewable energy if he’s elected to the U.S. Senate.
But Gardiner described the attacks as part of a larger political battle.
“What’s really going on is a battle between those who want to see renewable energy supported by the federal government, moving to a green energy future, and those who want to stay with fossil fuels,” Gardiner said.
“It’s just a nasty political battle over one ideal versus the other.”
“Angus is smart, but he’s not clairvoyant”, according to his spokesperson Crystal Canney…..well, there goes my vote……
Angus is a scammer and is a Democrat
One thing about Angus, he reminds me of a dilettante. Seems like the smartest guy in the room, but when you actually probe deeper into this knowledge base the BS meter rings off the hook.
If you follow his career, that always seems to be the case.
I agree. He’s nothing but a common con-man dressed up as an elitest snob. I’m thinking it’s about time he and his cronies over at First Wind go down for the count. Word on the street is that First Wind is about to receive the state’s first ever outright denial of a wind power project proposal (Bowers Mt.), and that if the PUC commissioners follow the advice of their staff, they will conclude that First Wind’s merger with Emera would be detrimental to the consumers in the form of increased electric bills due to the merger, it’s likely First Wind will go down for the count – and it can’t happen fast enough for most everyone who has delt with this company.
And yes, Wind Power is likely to be the fall from grace for Mr. King. He and his partner have done some really shady dealings in their rush to get rich quick with wind power based on all the tax payer loans, subsidies, production tax credits and on and on. Corporate welfare for the King! Say good bye now Angus because you’ll be yesterday’s news very shortly.
Wind power = Farce = Gus King
If Lapage had done this, they would be falling over them selves to get at him, King does it, nothing to see here folks, just move along.
As I mentioned in a recent post, wind will be the Achilles’s heel for Angus. I’m surprised BDN put it up within 24-hours of the story breaking.
They would if he was with the GOP.
Was Lance Dutson really the only Maine politico available to comment on this? And why isn’t the role of Republican Darrell Issa, who chairs House committee, explained?
Why?
Issa is the best.
Take a ride to the Orient in Maine and see the “million dollar view” now.
A crooked scammer and a Democrat. He will put us back to the former administration…
Summers for Senate is looking better each day.
Summers is the only one of these candidates that has actually helped small business, and he is not a bought and paid for mouth piece of the green groups…
Actually, the green groups are mouthpieces for the pickpockets like King. The wind companies pay them off so they champion the cause, even though it doesn’t work. The green groups, in some parts would be called prostitutes. Except prostitutes are honest about what they do.
Taxpayer funded wind is a SCAM and Angus King is leading the parade.
Good grief , is this the best we can do ??
And now he wants to run for office again???
Ugggghhh.
They are all scammers dose not matter the party.
Not surprisingly, this smells of insider dealing.
Meanwhile, back in a dark corner like a mewling spider, Cutler tests his mandibles, waiting to pounce on King’s withdrawal.
Next to King, Cutler, who I can’t stand, would be a saint.
King is everything wrong with our clueless and soulless society, the ultimate user.
How did the former president of MPBN get millions of dollars?
The U.S House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform
yesterday released an extensive report on questionable funding for
projects authorized through the U.S. Department of Energy. The report,
titled “The Department of Energy’s Disastrous Management of Loan
Guarantee Programs”, reveals that the Record Hill project received a
loan guarantee based on “questionable reasoning” by King’s company.
The Untold Story of Record Hill Wind, continued
Posted by Steve Thurston on March 21, 2012 at 10:30pm
View Blog
In view of Angus King’s intention to seek election to the US Senate, and in light of recent revelations about the lack of justification for the Federal
Loan Guarantee that Record Hill Wind sought and was granted, I am
reposting (1) the following blog post as well as (2) my comment to the
DOE during the public comment period on the loan application, and
(3) the relevant section of the report titled, “The
Department of Energy’s Disastrous Management of Loan Guarantee
Programs” issued by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, Darrell Issa (CA-49), Chairman.
Lots of stuff about citizen King right here:
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/developing-u-s-senate-hopeful-angus-king-wind-project-cited-by-co Come join the conversation and put a fork in the King Kandidacy.
Angus King is very responsible for putting Maine in the basement of places to do business. This interloper from Virginia cares not for the unwashed common folk, whose mountains he destroys and electricity rates he skyrockets with his total scam. But now it is the revenge of the common folk who will travel from Maine, at their own expense to testify before the United States Congress.
He covered his wind project tracks pretty well, but he overlooked one thing. And that one thing could potentially mean the difference between a U.S. Senate seat and a toilet seat without a cover in a very confined space.
The corruption of Angus King, Kurt Adams and First Wind is obvious. They scammed the Maine tax payers to fill their own greedy pockets and the DOE gave them millions in tax payer grants. This is Solyndra all over again. Finally the extent of their corruption is coming to light.
In 2009, Angus King said low natural gas prices were holding up his Roxbury project. Natural gas prices continued falling and King moved the project forward anyway with a loan guaranteed by the American taxpayer – even when the $17 billion dollar Yale University Endowment, his other partner, could have funded it outright.
So who is King looking out for? It’s certainly not American taxpayers! Is this who we want for our Senator – someone who will put his own business interests ahead of the taxpayers’? And now it appears that his loan guarantee was secured on questionable grounds. Isn’t this just more of the behavior of which we’ve been trying to rid the legislature?
“But Gardiner described the attacks as part of a larger political battle.”
This is called avoiding the issue – a diversion. The Oversight Committee makes it pretty clear that Gardiner and King’s company knew they were stretching the limits of believability with their “innovative technology”. Gardiner now wants to divert attention away from his company’s suspicious behavior and pretend there’s some kind of conspiracy against them.
Bottom line. King and Gardiner saddled the American taxpayer with the financial risk of a project no one else wanted to back.
The Allison Report clearly indicates that the DOE did not have the expertise or experience to run the loan guarantee program. King took advantage of an agency that was ignorant of the business of energy project finance. The DOE’s program was cited in the Report for a multitude of core weaknesses.
The DOE provided loan guarantees not actual loans. The loans are provided by third party commercial lenders. Yale’s credit standing was not relevant to the deal because the loans are made “non-recourse” directly to the project. This means that if the project fails the lenders can seek repayment only from the project and NOT from any of the project investors or participants. Investors view this as a no risk investment due to the DOE guarantee.
The Record Hill project was singled out in the Committee Report due to the fact that it did not have a long-term power purchase agreement (“PPA”) with premium rates from a utility. The absence of a PPA greatly increases the risk of loss/failure by a project in the future because it must compete at market rates which are driven by the price of natural gas.
Record Hill Wind needs to generate revenues of at least $52 to $57 per megawatt hour just to pay its annual debt service. In 4Q2011 FERC reports it received an average of $47.18 Mw/Hr. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out how long this project will continue to operate if NG prices stay where they are.
Maine is not the place to put these wind farms. it is ruination for the State as it is known and for which it has a reputation as rich in wildlife, peaceful living and beautiful nature. Wind turbines destroy all of these and great expense financially and otherwise, including destroying forests, killing birds and bats and making an intermittent noise that drives nearby humans crazy and causes headaches, heart issues and more while costing taxpayers plenty. All these politicians pushing it simply do not care. And Angus is one of them.
Angus King (and son) exemplify the worst in crony capitalism.
He is in good company with his friends at scheming scamming First Wind.
The only thing “innovative” about the Roxbury wind complex was the deceptive owners plans to ruin the area to gain a DOE grant comprised of our tax dollar.
His self-serving high level federal subsidy seeking activities, utilizing feckless wind scamming as his modus operandi should be closely scrutinized at high levels.
It obviously helps to have friends at high levels to scam tax dollars and get away with it.
Only via their high level elitist connections have they been able feed off taxpayer dollars.
Angus is the worst example of leech –like parasitic federal subsidy seeking.
Hopefully he will fail in his senatorial bid and be exposed to the light of day.
It is best to keep such parasitic leech -like subsidy scoundrels local and well exposed to the light of day, so they can dry out and be rendered harmless.
from maineprotector:
“Why would Mainers vote for someone who
made millions having the wind industry ravage the mountain tops and
overlook pristine wilderness lakes of Maine with hundreds of 500 foot
tall wind turbines? And was able to get his son named as an executive
Vice President of First Wind – the company who built these
environment-killing energy-inefficient wind farms and made millions of
dollars for its executives.
Their million dollar salaries were paid by the tax subsidies granted
by the federal government. And who pays for those tax subsidies that
were used to pay the million dollar salaries of the executives at First
Wind including Angus King and Kurt Adams?
You guessed it – the American taxpayer.
Mainers will have to pay higher taxes and higher electric bills to
subsidize these wind farms for many years so Angus King and his son will
continue to make millions by destroying Maine’s environment. “
King is neither virtuous nor wise.
The Wind Developers like Angus King and son ( of First Wind) are mostly cynical profiteers out to make a buck, who pull the necessary strings and grease the necessary palms to win their
approvals.
They are opportunists who travel to rural areas of Maine and
entice unsuspecting residents and rural folks to sign their lease
agreements which neuter their rights to their own land.
Most of the others are ill-informed and idealistic-and maybe a bit impulsive-who
have no idea what they are in for once the blades of the industrial energy generator begin to spin.
They reassure energy committees and town fathers that everything will be fine.
They bribe with other half baked schemes.Talk is cheap!
Subsidy sucking wind associates live off of the backs of Mainers and US taxpayers and scam our taxes and desecrate our environment.
They portray themselves as green ; they are greenback lovers only.
They are this decade’s despicable snake oil salesmen, never telling the whole truth about Industrial Wind Complexes to the public.
The more that is exposed by factual questions (you will never get factual answers) , the more King’s Enronesque and Solyndraesque scam divulges itself.
It is simple.
The only thing “innovative” about the Roxbury wind complex was the
deceptive owners plans to ruin the area to gain a DOE grant comprised of
our tax dollar.
Typical Angus King. He used his influence as Governor to scam the Maine people and now he wants to do it on a federal level. Unfortunately there are probably enough people in Maine with thier heads in the sand or buried in a video game to actually vote for this parisite
Rob Gardiner is wrong. This is a battle of those who do not care a hoot about the mtns. and ridgelines or views from pristine lakes and those who do. A battle between those who use the green angle as a way to make big bucks quickly and people who actually care about the env. If Rob and Angus cared about C02, they would have other plans to replace coal and oil, but we never hear anything from them but windsprawl fallacy. Wind turbines add to the problem and solve nothing and the trans lines strewn everywhere add to the environmental horrorscape. Save ME from wind turbines and greedy profiteers.
This whole loan guarantee program is a scam for the benefit of Obamabushca and his corporate donor buddy cronies. The loan guarantees issued to date are unlawful and being challenged in a federal lawsuit by CAlifornians for Renewable Energy, Inc. (CARE) against the US Departments of Treasury and Energy in the US District Court of the District of Columbia; Case 1:11-cv-02128-JEB. In a recent filing a simple explanation of the case against the loan guarantee program is explained.
“On two occasions since 2005, Congress has tasked the Department of Energy (“DOE”) with
issuing loan guarantees for worthy renewable-energy projects under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (as amended) (“EPAct”). The first occurred in 2005, when Congress created what is known as the Section 1703 program (for innovative technologies that reduce greenhouse gases). The second occurred in 2009, when Congress created what is known as the Section 1705 program (for renewable-energy systems, electricity-transmission systems, and leading-edge biofuel projects) as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“ARRA”). In between, Congress realized that loan guarantees would expose the federal taxpayer to a multi-billion-dollar financial risk and therefore enacted a statutory prohibition against the awarding of any loan guarantee under Title XVII until DOE issued final regulations for vetting potential loan-guarantee recipients. In other words, the prohibition was put in place after the Section 1703 program was created but before the Section 1705 program was created.
DOE issued final regulations for the Section 1703 program in October 2007, roughly eight
months after the statutory prohibition went into effect. However, DOE never issued
regulations–temporary or final–for the Section 1705 program. This lawsuit challenges the validity of loan guarantees under the Section 1705 program only.
Plaintiffs have been actively involved in the formulation, implementation, and enforcement of federal energy policy–and renewable energy in particular–for more than a decade. While much of Plaintiffs’ efforts has focused on the western portion of the country, their focus in fact spans coast to coast. For instance, Plaintiffs are among those challenging the renewable-energy project commonly known as “Cape Wind” in Massachusetts.”